The Hungry Ghost Festival is the most important festival or celebration of the year beside the Chinese New Year. The Chinese believed that during the seventh month, the Gates of Hell are opened. Ghost are free to wander in search for food. It is usually celebrated during the 15th day of the seventh lunar month.
Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mache form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors. Elaborate meals (often vegetarian meals) would be served with empty seats for each of the deceased in the family treating the deceased as if they are still living.
Ancestor worship is what distinguishes Qingming Festival from Ghost Festival because the latter includes paying respects to all deceased, including the same and younger generations, while the former only includes older generations. Other festivities may include, buying and releasing miniature paper boats and lanterns on water, which signifies giving directions to the lost ghosts and spirits of the ancestors and other deities.
Who are the Hungry Ghosts?
It is important to understand the reason why there is a festival for the hungry ghost. It is believed that when the Gates of Hell are opened, all ghosts or spirit are given the opportunity for a one month vacation to return to Earth.
In this hungry ghost festival, it is solely for the wandering spirits or ''hoe heah ti'' or good brothers.
The spirit that has no home to return. Of course without a doubt, the ancestors spirit knows their way around. They will return to their descendants homes and hereby the food feast will be laid for their consumption.
But it is a very different story for the hungry or wandering spirit or most called ghost.
Local beliefs of Hungry Ghost Feast
Two main reason why Chinese performs this rituals. The fear that the revengeful spirit may come back to take revenge. Some even think that the ghosts would seek revenge on those who had wronged them in their lives.
They also felt that, the unseen is a reality and that business prosper because ancestors spirit does their part in helping the descendant to own a successful business.
So what the locals do is that, they would first offer food to their ancestors as they hoped ancestors being the first to be offered food won't be hungry ghost.
As ancestor spirit are being taken care by their descendants, they are not called hungry ghost. Most Chinese descendants does take care of their ancestors by inaugurating name tablets in their homes or associations.
No swimming or late outing as the Gates of Hell are opened on the Chinese lunar seventh month.
The Buddha's joyful day
To Mahayana Buddhists, the seventh lunar month is a month of joy. This is because the fifteenth day of the seventh month is often known as the Buddha's joyful day and the day of rejoice for monks. The origins of the Buddha's joyful day can be found in various scriptures. When the Buddha was alive, his disciples meditated in the forests of India during the rainy season of summer. Three months later, on the fifteen day of the seventh month, they would emerge from the forests to celebrate the completion of their meditation and report their progress to the Buddha. In the Ullambana Sutra, the Buddha instructs his disciple Maudgalyyana on how to obtain liberation for his mother, who had been reborn into a lower realm, by making food offerings to the sangha on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. Because the number of monks who attained enlightenment during that period was high, the Buddha was very pleased.
Besides offerings to the spirits during the Hungry Ghost Festival I also think it's a very good time to connect with departed loved ones or some divination workings. Just like Samhain. The veil between the material and spirtual realm are thought to be the thinnest.
