Sometimes a little sustenance can run to a lot. In Keelung the port on the North Coast, the more devout families celebrate by slaughtering the fatted swine. The only essential difference from other sacrifices is that the swine are fattened to a quite ridiculous extent. They are said to reach up to a tonne in weight, their majestic frames are gutted and mounted on bamboo frames. Their hair is plucked and their mouthes and flanks are daubed with red paint to make them look even more imposing. The final humiliation is the insertion of a pineapple into its gaping mouth.
In Keelung the parade of the outsized pigs is accompanied by the burning of boats which are floated out onto the harbour. The boats are usually made of wood and decorated paper.
Elsewhere the most common provision for the ghosts are the regulation piles of food which is guaranteed to stay fresh until the family get to eat it. Quite how the ghosts manage to savour these delights through thick vacuum packing is anybody’s guess, but, as there is no obvious indication that the ghosts prefer their food exposed to the air, the practice continues.
The neighbourhood shows are put on as much for the benefit of the ghosts as for the people who gather to watch, from the quality of some of the performances this much is painfully apparent. At events where some other show is the main feature, the brightly lit stage show is often performed by robots. It is assumed that ghosts never tire of watching mythological figures moving their left arms up and down repetetivly, or mysteriously revolving on the balls of their feet.
There are mobile versions of this bonanza which trundle along to as many shows as they can. These garish floats, despite having a very serious religious significance, are in fact a drug users fantasy. Thumping techno music implores the devotee in English to “move your body”, swirling patterns of lights dazzle and confuse the viewer. Stranger still are the robotic passengers, fire breathing dragons with flashing eyes chase each other’s tails in a stately fashion. On one occasion the other creatures caught on the never ending merry-go-round were a swordfish, a reindeer and a rather lost looking grouper.
There are other occasions when the ghost show is clearly much more for the benefit of the average living punter on the street. One such I saw on the television. It basically consisted of a few scantily clad girls cavorting on shiny metal poles. What made this slightly unique was that it was in the open air and in full daylight. A few betel chewing truckers or taxi drivers were humiliated for the crowd, which seemed to consist of, among others, a few robust housewives. They seemed delighted with the spectacle.
The most impressive event organized for the ghosts is similar version of the two hundred year old greasy pole climb which I took part in, in Hengchun. It takes place in the North Eastern Province of Ilan a traditional, agricultural province with a strong Hakka contingent and a political, independence minded tendency.
There is the same arrangement of greasy poles slanting up to a wooden platform on which the ghost offerings are kept. In Ilan there were twelve rather than four poles for twelve teams. But, most importantly, the offerings are tied to hollow,towering, curvaceous, almost conical frames made of bamboo. These bamboo frames are fastened improbably to the top of the wooden platform. The result is that having scaled the twenty metres of greasy pole, the competitors have to then climb up a gift festooned vertical frame of bamboo for a further twenty-five or more metres in order to saw through the final wibbly-wobbly single pole of bamboo at the top, on which is perched the goal, the flag. Each bamboo frame is made by a different village in the vicinity and all are a little different in appearance and have different gifts fastened on them. As well as the flag the final length of bamboo still has leaves. The sight of these magnificent structures perched tightly on a small wooden platform itself on twelve legs is truly impressive. It attracts swarms of people I had yet to see in Taiwan, the photographer nerds. They all dress in slightly too untouched outdoor clothes, and usually have a collection of cameras and lenses as well as a tripod.
We nabbed seats very early right next to the fence surrounding the Chiang-gu as it is called. We steadfastly ignored an officious busy-body who insisted by megaphone that journalists only were allowed to sit so close. We were rewarded with an absolutely exhausting preamble, which rendered May and many of the crowd around me who understood what was being said, almost weak with desperation and boredom.
May said that the tendency of big-wigs and politicians too witter on is due to the Chinese custom of flattery. These people get told so many times how good their speeches are, that they become virtually impossible to shut up. Another rather Taiwanese touch to the proceedings was the number of referees it appeared to need, to control what was essentially about as straight forward a sport as it is possible to imagine. There were a good twenty-five or thirty of them, each with a pair of flags (red and white) and an assortment of gadgets hung around their necks. Needless to say their services were not required throughout the evening. It was remarkable that it was felt necessary to pointlessly monitor an event that is unavoidably (despite the loosely slung netting beneath the platform) extremely dangerous, there having been many deaths in the past.
Somebody was wizzed to the hospital that evening. He fell from the bamboo structure into the netting at a quite startling velocity. He appearing to be fine despite the earnest attempts by the emergency services to damage him further by carrying him away on the stretcher at breakneck speed, but without first applying a neckbrace.
The event was won, irritatingly, by a team sponsored by a political party. The team consisted of a very simpleminded, but physically monkeylike man who swarmed up to the top in about fifteen minutes. The rest of the “team” ponced about at the bottom refusing to get their matching T-shirts dirty. Their party flag, which had been irritating the photographer nerds all evening by the way it obscured essential shots of grit teethed, spotlit climbers smeared with black oil swarming up bamboo spires against the black sky, was given ample exposure to the press as they crowded round the poor, exploited human Lemur.
Then there was the scrum of scooters and Honda civics to negotiate to find out way home.
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