good brothers
Ghost month just ended yesterday, and about time too. Ghost month is the seventh month of the lunar year (what they call the “farm calendar”). As the lady selling me my lunchtime shrimp gung[1] not-explained to me last ghost month around, “You know it’s, it’s that time of year, you know what time of year. It’s the time of year when the gates open, you know the gates, and, you know what comes out of the gates, right? We don’t need to talk about it.” She was hedging on general principle, I assume, but probably also because of our actual physical location: we were in a little alley that borders what I thought was a temple. It has a curved roof and a statue of a jolly little multicolored man hanging off its chimney (I guess so the spirit money you burn can go straight where it is supposed to) and a big incense pot and a bunch of statues that look for all the world to be of gods.
That day it was also very busy: they were having a traditional opera performance in honor of the you know what. I innocently asked if all the temples in the area were having such events (there are about four temples within seven minutes’ walk of one another here); but she denied that this even was temple. This isn’t a temple, this is just好兄弟hao xiongdi, ‘the good brothers.’[2] And this one in particular, she continued, this altar to the good brothers, it’s very very ling, very active and powerful, so you have to be careful what you say around them. If you go to the big famous temple down the street and you mess up the ceremony or say something wrong, that’s okay: the god will understand that it’s just a mistake, that you don’t know any better. But these ones here, these good brothers, you have to be careful around them.
The term ‘the good brothers’ was later glossed for me by someone who actually knows something about Taiwanese religion as “the not-good not-brothers.” It’s a polite term for ghosts. Nobody likes to be called a ghost; this is a way of saying “the differently spiritually abled.” The you know which gates that open during the you know what month are the gates of hell, and the you know what that happens is that, well, all hell breaks loose. In this month you are not supposed to do anything that doesn’t need doing: you shouldn’t move, get married, get born, die, or generally make any big decisions.
Ghost month tends to fall right around typhoon season, at least in my experience, and although I can’t vouch for the causality, all hell breaking loose is not so outrageous as a description. It has also come to my attention that I tend to come to Taiwan during ghost month, promptly try to make a lot of big decisions and to move, and end up feeling a little insane and mildly possessed. I used to attribute it to the shock of the heat and humidity, but this time around the humidity has been at a completely reasonable under 90% pretty much the entire time I’ve been here (except when it’s actually in the middle of a typhoon and there’s flooding all over the place), so I think ghost month may be a better explanation.
It never hurts to give offerings and burn incense during ghost month, but it’s especially important to do so on the 15th and the 30th days, the middle and the end of the month. Jilong, a port town to the north-east of Taipei, has some pretty famous ghost month ceremonies to go along with its world famous in Taipei night market. I ended up going to a mid-month event but I am currently a little drowsy, so I will leave you first with an image of just a couple of the many wonderful things that can be bought at the Jilong night market, and will try to continue this tomorrow.
squid on a stick and other delicate delicacies
[1] Shrimp gung is actually pretty much what it sounds like. I am not totally familiar with the entire production process, although I’ve seen people making it while squatting around a huge bowl in an alley near where I used to live before I moved into this absurd, boring, shee-shee neighborhood where everyone is trying to sell you spaghetti and “English-style tea.” What it looked like they were doing was taking little shrimps and rolling them around in a thick but quite wet brownish batter. Most often though by the time you get the gung in your mouth, you can’t really find the actual shrimp in it—it tastes like a shrimpy batter all the way through. Maybe other people use shrimp powder or cut up little bits of shrimp. Once there are a bunch of discrete pieces of batter-wrapped shrimp (or batter-wrapped batter), they are then, like all good things, deep fried. Deep frying done, they are then thrown into a thick, sweet-and-salty soup. For me, it is this initial crispification by deep fry followed by the subsequent mushification by soupy submersion that is really the essence of gung. Gung also comes in pork and squid varieties.
[2] Of course it being Chinese, it’s actually “the good older brothers younger brothers,” because that’s the only way to say “brothers.”
That day it was also very busy: they were having a traditional opera performance in honor of the you know what. I innocently asked if all the temples in the area were having such events (there are about four temples within seven minutes’ walk of one another here); but she denied that this even was temple. This isn’t a temple, this is just好兄弟hao xiongdi, ‘the good brothers.’[2] And this one in particular, she continued, this altar to the good brothers, it’s very very ling, very active and powerful, so you have to be careful what you say around them. If you go to the big famous temple down the street and you mess up the ceremony or say something wrong, that’s okay: the god will understand that it’s just a mistake, that you don’t know any better. But these ones here, these good brothers, you have to be careful around them.
The term ‘the good brothers’ was later glossed for me by someone who actually knows something about Taiwanese religion as “the not-good not-brothers.” It’s a polite term for ghosts. Nobody likes to be called a ghost; this is a way of saying “the differently spiritually abled.” The you know which gates that open during the you know what month are the gates of hell, and the you know what that happens is that, well, all hell breaks loose. In this month you are not supposed to do anything that doesn’t need doing: you shouldn’t move, get married, get born, die, or generally make any big decisions.
Ghost month tends to fall right around typhoon season, at least in my experience, and although I can’t vouch for the causality, all hell breaking loose is not so outrageous as a description. It has also come to my attention that I tend to come to Taiwan during ghost month, promptly try to make a lot of big decisions and to move, and end up feeling a little insane and mildly possessed. I used to attribute it to the shock of the heat and humidity, but this time around the humidity has been at a completely reasonable under 90% pretty much the entire time I’ve been here (except when it’s actually in the middle of a typhoon and there’s flooding all over the place), so I think ghost month may be a better explanation.
It never hurts to give offerings and burn incense during ghost month, but it’s especially important to do so on the 15th and the 30th days, the middle and the end of the month. Jilong, a port town to the north-east of Taipei, has some pretty famous ghost month ceremonies to go along with its world famous in Taipei night market. I ended up going to a mid-month event but I am currently a little drowsy, so I will leave you first with an image of just a couple of the many wonderful things that can be bought at the Jilong night market, and will try to continue this tomorrow.
squid on a stick and other delicate delicacies
[1] Shrimp gung is actually pretty much what it sounds like. I am not totally familiar with the entire production process, although I’ve seen people making it while squatting around a huge bowl in an alley near where I used to live before I moved into this absurd, boring, shee-shee neighborhood where everyone is trying to sell you spaghetti and “English-style tea.” What it looked like they were doing was taking little shrimps and rolling them around in a thick but quite wet brownish batter. Most often though by the time you get the gung in your mouth, you can’t really find the actual shrimp in it—it tastes like a shrimpy batter all the way through. Maybe other people use shrimp powder or cut up little bits of shrimp. Once there are a bunch of discrete pieces of batter-wrapped shrimp (or batter-wrapped batter), they are then, like all good things, deep fried. Deep frying done, they are then thrown into a thick, sweet-and-salty soup. For me, it is this initial crispification by deep fry followed by the subsequent mushification by soupy submersion that is really the essence of gung. Gung also comes in pork and squid varieties.
[2] Of course it being Chinese, it’s actually “the good older brothers younger brothers,” because that’s the only way to say “brothers.”
posted by blahgstein at 7:22 PM
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