Hungry Ghost effect

The “Hungry Ghost Festival” falls on the lunar seventh month of each year. Today marks the final day of this year’s festival. For the uninitiated, the Hungry Ghost Festival is the Chinese equivalent of Halloween. And the visitsingapore.com website provides a good account of the festival, which we paraphrase below:

“Also known as Zhong Yuan Jie （中元节）in Chinese, it a festival held in honor of the dearly departed. According to traditional customs, the souls of the dead are permitted to roam the earth during the festival, and these ghosts can get up to mischief if ignored. To prevent this, all sorts of offerings are made during this period, which is the seventh month in the lunar calendar. Food offerings as well as stacks of hell money and paper offerings, such as cars, watches and jewelry, are burned by relatives to appease their deceased family members—taking care of their material needs even in the afterlife.

And as if satisfying the ghosts’ appetites for money and food wasn’t enough, taking care of their entertainment is also important. A mainstay of the festival is the 'getai' (literally ‘song stage’ in Chinese, or live stage) performance, thrown as a popular mode of entertainment for the wandering spirits. Large tents are set up in open fields to host raucous dinners and auctions in heartland estates.”

However, the Hungry Ghost Festival during the past 2 years has largely been subdued affairs no thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. With social distancing and restrictions on mass gatherings, the getai and dinner/auction have disappeared.

We at The Patissier also partake in the offering of food and “cash” to wandering spirits every year during the Hungry Ghost Festival. We typically do this twice within the period, i.e. during the first and last day of the lunar seventh month. Some may find this superstitious and even a tad strange practice for a western cake shop. But being Chinese ourselves, it is a part of our customs that we have adhered to, both at home and the shop. And in a case of 入鄉隨俗 (when in Singapore, do as the Singaporean do), many western business entities also subscribe to such practice of offerings during the Hungry Ghost Festival. During the construction phase of Marina Bay Sands back in the 2007 – 2009, we used to receive large cake orders for their Hungry Ghost Festival prayer/offering session every year.

Maybe it’s pure coincidence. We have several peak business months within the year. And one such has always been during the lunar seventh month. We have no explanation for this. So we just accredit it to the Hungry Ghost effect!

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