Indeed, my experience is identical to yours. After I wrote what I did, I thought about it last night, and realised that, in actual fact, I had never seen any Chinese actually explicitly worshipping the moon. The "hau-thiN-kong" (i.e. "worshipping Heaven") was very common when I was young, on one specific day of the 15-day Chinese New Year Festival (I forget which), but no moon stuff, as far as I know, on any day of the year (one would expect the 15th of the lunar month, of course). So, yes, I'm now also slightly puzzled by my relatives' remark (while, just like you, realizing that it doesn't at all seem contradictory with what we know about Chinese Folk Religion, for them to worship the moon). I will ask my father about this the next time we speak.niuc wrote:Although theoretically praying to the moon (or sun etc) should be quite natural to Chinese folk religions, I never saw any, neither in Bagansiapiapi (one of the most Chinese town in Indonesia) nor in Singapore.
Thanks very much for sharing those 秘方 with us. I really love that sort of cultural fine detail! Also, I've always wondered what the "-ciu1" in "bak8-ciu1" is, so now I know
. Up to now, I had only known the pronunciation "chu1" for this character (e.g. when we were discussing "pearls" ("chu1") vs "beads" ("manek")). Indeed, I agree with you 100% about the Chinese being practical, and doing all/any thing(s) to achieve the result that they want, even if (from a Western perspective) the different things they do might be contradictory. My father tells some stories about how, when he was young, if people (particularly the children) were sick, the elders would go to the temple to seek advice from the gods, see a sin-sEN (Chinese TCM practitioner), and see a Western physician!
. I suppose I must have read the explanation you gave, but I had forgotten the details (only remembering that it was uniquely Hokkien). Thanks for those details too.