Half a pound of treacle

Monday, July 11, 2011

Guan Yin Temple, Pitt Street, Penang

The Guan Yin Temple at Pitt Street is locally known as Kuan Im Teng (觀音亭, meaning Guan Yin's Pavillion). It is located at one end of Pitt Street, facing the intersection of China Street and flanked by Stewart Lane on one side. The actual name of the temple is Kong Hock Keong (廣福宫), meaning the Cantonese and Hokkien (Fujian) Temple.

Goddess of Mercy Temple Penang, Pitt Street, Guan Yin Temple

View of Guan Yin Temple, Pitt Street Penang during the Lunar New Year.

Since many Guan Yin temples in Penang are simply referred to as Kuan Yin Teng (e.g. 車水觀音亭), they are differentiated by the location of the temples. The Pitt Street Guan Yin Temple is sometimes know as 椰跤觀音亭. 椰跤 (Iâ-kha) most likely means Where the Coconuts Fall i.e. Beneath the Coconut Trees' or possibly the 跤 is a contraction of 跤叉 i.e. 'The Coconut Tree Intersection'. 椰跤 is the local name for a section of Pitt Street (now Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling) considered by locals to be the beginning of the street.

This 椰跤 section refers to the section of Pitt Street above the intersection with Chulia Street, (Eu Yan Sang building at the corner of the intersection and Masjid Kapitan Keling nearby). Not too sure as to reasons why Pitt Street is being referred to as 椰跤, but possible due to the coconut trees in that area. When talking about Pitt Street in general, Penangites refer to the as Iâ-kha, hence Iâ-kha Kuan Im Teng (椰跤觀音亭).

The temple's foundation stone was supposedly laid around 1728 and the temple was probably completed circa 1800s. This temple built by the early Chinese settlers was originally not dedicated to Guan Yin. Instead, the temple was built for Mazu, the guardian goddess for seafarers. However, by 1824, temple records indicate that Guan Yin had already been elevated as the main deity of the temple. Regardless of whom the temple is dedicated to, it was a place where the local Chinese devotees could seek solace and plead for divine intervention.

Goddes of Mercy Temple Pitt Street Penang, Kuan Im Teng

Intricately designed and highly ornate roof decorations of the Guan Yin Temple, Pitt Street, Penang.

Until today, the popularity of the temple amongst locals has not dwindled a bit, and the crowd can grow so large, especially during one of the major festival days, that you can hardly move about inside the temple without being afraid of getting stabbed in the eye by burning joss sticks. The resulting smoke from all the incense offered by devotees only serves to make the eyes of anyone inside the temple stream with tears. Perhaps this makes the devotees look more sincere and deeply in need of help from Guan Yin, therefore getting their prayers answered swiftly.

Devotees offering incense at the main altar of the famous Guan Yin Temple in Pitt Street, Penang.

Ok, who's Guan Yin and who's Mazu?

Guan Yin is always depicted wearing the Five Dhyani Buddha Crown or a crown of an Indian prince if the depiction is masculine (i.e. Guan Zi Zai Pusa - Avalokitesvara) or if it is female, she wears a shawl over her head, the hair at the top front section is raised like a bun or usnisha and always having the Amithaba crown. If not, the hair would be covered by her shawl. Her assistants are Long Nü (龍女 and Shan Cai (善財, both having serene looking faces.

Mazu, on the other hand, is usually depicted wearing the Chinese Imperial Crown (flatboard crown with tassels on the front and back, usually strings of pearls) though occasionally she has her hair in a neat bun like a Chinese princess with head ornaments. Mazu's assistants (千里眼 and 順風耳) are usually depicted as fierce looking generals (sometimes somewhat demonic, one of them with one horn another with two horns).

Oh really??

If you look carefully at the main altar, you will see that the back row has a few deities. They all wear a 'simplified' version of the Five Dhyani Buddha Crown, hence it is safe to say that the middle one (the main patron deity always sits in the middle) has got to be Guan Yin. (Two upright banners flanking her reads Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa - a confirmation of her identity).

She is flanked (in the front row, at extreme left and right) by a young female (on the left, looking at the altar) and a young male (on the right, again facing the altar). They are unmistakably depictions of Long Nü and Shan Cai. Now, that leaves us with the front row, where a maternal looking deity sits wearing the Chinese Imperial Crown, and having two fierce looking deities flanking her. This looks like the typical depiction of Mazu with her generals.

main altar, Goddess of Mercy Temple, Guan Yin, Mazu

Possible identities of the deities on the main altar of the Guan Yin Temple, Pitt Street, Penang.

Ok fine, so what??

This might explain the puzzling arrangements of the incense burner for the temple. Usually for a Chinese temple (i.e. syncretic with Taoist influence), there is an altar (or free standing censer) to Jade Emperor (altar to heaven) outside the temple building. There is none in this temple. Instead, there is a censer sitting on the table more than a metre from the main door. Then there is another larger, free standing censer closer to the main offering table.

Hence it appears as if there are two censers belonging to the main deity at the main altar. The outer censer on the the table cannot be for the Jade Emperor for two reasons. One, it is rarely put under the roof of the temple (as it must 'face heaven' if there is no image of the Jade Emperor), and if so placed, it will be at the edge of the door (not more than 3 feet as to be able to 'see' the sky).

Secondly, in this temple, the altar to Jade Emperor is on the inner courtyard, at the edge of the open air well (counted as facing heaven. I know this as that is where you pray to Jade Emperor on his birthday and devotees would put their offerings there.

Inner courtyard with an open air well and the altar to Jade Emperor. Noticed how the censer is exposed to 'heaven'. By the solitary yellow Chrysanthemum are rows of 'thay sin' (literally replacement body) to represent the devotees, placed on the altar table.

I believe the two incense censer at the front can only be accounted for if one is for Mazu and the other for Guan Yin. It is after all, a sea facing temple. In the past, you can see right up to the coast by looking out of the temple (roughly in the direction of China Street). The coast in the past used to be at Beach Street, and the steps down to the water's edge at the end of China Street was called 'ghaut'. Land reclamation works by the British circa 1880 - 1904 extended the coastline outwards, and China Street was extended, thus creating China Street Ghaut.

Since the alignment of China Street Ghaut is not in line with China Street, the erected of buildings and godowns blocked the view of the sea (see this article about China Street Ghaut and also the Malayan Railway Building on the interesting story of the feng shui of the temple).

Air well at the inner courtyard. A divine glimpse of earthly matters.

Interesting facts about the temple

The Dragon Eyes

Besides the sea facing position of the temple, there is another interesting fact about the temple that supposedly contributes to the powerful feng shui of the temple. There are 3 wells within the temple compound. Two of these wells are visible with one located outside the temple building near the old tree where one can see many old statues of deities. The other visible well is inside the temple. The third well is hidden and is actually under the front altar! These wells are the 'dragon eyes' of the temple.

View from inside of Kuan Im Teng Pitt Street

In search of guiding light... - photo taken by LHK.

Oil lamps and joss sticks to convey the sincerity of devotees.

Inner sanctum/chamber of the main altar

When I was young, the inner chamber of the main altar was strictly for women only, sort of like a 'pink' train coach. No men were allowed into that section, and however desperate their pleas for help to Guan Yin may be, they would have to do so from the front of the main offering table. This means that only women can have access to stick divination as the stick buckets are placed right in front of the deities, on the inner chamber. Prepubescent boys are however permitted to enter the inner sanctum (else Shan Cai would have to leave too...chuckle). Even so, I remembered that when I was young, my grandmother and mother would still make me stay at the sides when we enter the inner chamber and I am not to take up space in front of the deities. Nowadays, I noticed that the temple isn't that strict on the rule of the inner chamber being for women only.

Old women and a young boy inside the inner chamber of the main altar.

Side view of the main offering table in front of the main altar. Men would just have to do their prayers here as they are not allowed into the inner chamber.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Oh my sweet Basil

Basil is a herb that can work miracles and lift any dull dish. Imagine what would tomato based pasta sauces be like sans basil. Not only Italian food, but just think of phở without húng quế and you will probably agree with me. I've always enjoyed a bowl of hot chicken broth with either sweet or Thai basil whenever I am feeling a bit under the weather. Sweet basil in Malaysia is an overpriced herb, and only two major suppliers produce it.

In the past, I've grown bush basil, purple basil (most of them need a cool environment to turn purple), Thai basil, holy basil and lemon basil. In February, after realising that I have not planted basil for quite some time (the reason being I would rather buy it from the supermarkets than to keep myself busy pruning and pinching them to prevent it from flowering), I dug through my 'magic box' of seeds to see if I still have any hoarded away.

I have a bad habit of buying seeds and then not planting them and storing them until they are way past the expiry date. I found a pack of unopened Sweet Basil from Yates, with the stamped expiry date of Aug 2003, and decided to scatter a handful of seeds just to see if they will germinate. And boy do they surprise you. And this would be the first time that I've grown it on a balcony of a high rise building.

Basil seedlings on 17 Feb 2011.

Since a large percentage of the seedlings germinated (I was totally unprepared for it), they began to die off one by one due to damping off from being overcrowded. So out comes the fungicide and what I was able to get my hands on at that time from the local store was carbendazim. A metabolite of benomyl, it is a benzimidazole fungicide that do exert some nematicidal effect at high concentrations (it prevents nematodes from feeding but will also make earthworms go berserk and die off, so I rarely use it on the garden).

The application of the fungicide stopped the damping off dead on its tracks, but then I noticed that it does have some phytotoxic effect on the leaves of the basil. The compound gets translocated acropetally, eventually ending up at the ends of the leaves and they will burn the leaves (you can see the burnt tips on the seedlings). In mature plants, they collect towards the edges of the leaves in the areas between the major veins, causing the area to turn dark and scorched.

Seedlings 7 March 2011 after fungicide treatment.

Basil seedlings suffering leaf tip burns from fungicide treatment 16 March 2011.

After they produced a few sets of true leaves, I selected the seedlings based on growth rate (i.e. relatively larger seedlings), and also the strength of the aroma and transplanted them into individual polybags. There were some observed variations as some of the seedlings were very prone to wilting in the tropical heat (they like the sun, but suffers from the heat).

The high relative humidity means that they can't cool off effectively with transpiration. Some were (at that stage) rather mild in terms of scent. I left the runts in a shadier location and let them fend for themselves (though they actually provided quite some amount of basil for daily pickings).

Sweet basil transplanted into individual polybags on 24 March 2011.

Fertilization with 21-21-21 liquid fertiliser weekly gets me this...

Mature plants 4 May 2011.

Big yummy basil leaves.

A sinkful of sweet basil.

For the first round of harvesting (in May), I ended chopping 2/3 of the plants off when I noticed that the leaves were changing shape, indicating that they were ready to bloom. From 6 plants in small polybags, I filled a whole sink with basil, and went on to pack some for my mom, cook a huge pot of spaghetti sauce and let the go to waste.

The second round (June) wasn't that bad and I've now gone on the daily pinching to prevent the plants from blooming. The heat and cycles of wilting (the air can be very dry - water in the morning, dry by midday) only serves to push the plants to put out flowers and end the life cycle.

Recently, I noticed a nursery selling what looks like lemon basil. The scent was very intense when you rubbed against the leaves. Acting on an impulse, I grabbed a plant, even though it has gone to bloom, and something nagging at the back of my head, telling me that there is something odd about the plant. The first thing I did was to chop off all the flowering shoots and thats when I noticed that it was slightly different from the lemon basil that I had before.

A recent addition - lemon basil.

The flower stalk looked different, though I ignored it and threw all the cuttings away. Then I noticed that the lemon scent and flavour was different - very sharp, clear lemony scent, and in my openion, stronger than lemongrass. The leaves and stem and the flower stalk were very hairy, much hairier than Ocimum xcitriodorum that I've planted before. The texture of the leaves in particular, felt very different from two previous lemon basil (presumably Ocimum xcitriodorum) that I have planted before. I passed some of the cuttings to a friend, who said it tasted more like hoary basil (Ocimum americanum syn. canum). Since I've thrown away the flowers, I would need to wait until they bloom again, to observe the lip length and the hairiness of the flowers to confirm its identity, and will leave it identified as lemon basil for the time being. It could be either hoary basil, one of the cultivars of O. xcitriodorum that is highly influenced by one of the parents, one of those promiscuous back crosses or out-crossing with another basil.

Lemon basil with very hairy internode and hairy stems.

In the end, this endeavour proves two things; it is easy to grow basil on the balcony, and secondly, I went back to fighting to keep the sweet basil from going to bloom. However, growing basil does feel like its worth every bit of effort that you put in, since you get fresh basil from your own garden, anytime you need it. No more having to hunt at the supermarkets and paying dearly for it. Well, at least for me it is.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Batu Caves

Batu Caves is a system of tropical karst towers located in Gombak near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. However, when most of us talk about Batu Caves, we are merely referring to the Temple Cave, a site of religious pilgrimage and worship for the Hindu community especially during the yearly Thaipusam festival. The cave is named after its namesake, the Sungai Batu (Batu River) which flows in the vicinity. Since there is no dire shortage of sites offering expert information on Batu Caves, I shall not contribute to the existing information overload on the internet. Instead, this entry is just to pass on the awe-inspiring experience of visiting and taking photos there and a few tips that I became aware of.

Tips for visitors:

1. Bring your tripod along if you want to take photos. It might seemed to be an extra burden to haul up 272 steps, but it is worth it. Else you will regret when your pics all turned up shaken and blurred. Think of the participants of Amazing Race Asia 4 where they had to carry an offering tray and at the same time, count how many steps up to the top of the temple.You might also want to consider doing high dynamic range photos.
2. The steps are not as bad as it seems. Make sure you have some cover from the heat of the sun. The humidity might get to you, so nice breathable clothing is good. Just take it slowly.
3. Beware of the macaques. They are used to being fed, and so would expect you to provide for them if you come with bags that appear to contain food. They appear to be able to read fear and bully those who are afraid of them. I had a bag with muffins and drinks but none bothered me (perhaps I looked grumpy).
4. Try not to get in the way of the macaques' family squabbles. You might be an innocent bystander.
5. Enjoy the sights and sounds of the people going up and down / visiting the temple. The visitors and devotees are just as interesting as the caves and the divinity.
6. The Dark Cave smells of guano. This is normal and if you cannot stand the smell of it, then do not attempt a visit.
7. The Temple Cave, being a place of worship, is filled with the smell of smashed coconut, burning camphor and oil lamps. Be prepared if you have a sensitive nose.
8. Look at the walls of the Temple Cave as well as the inner shrine area with the skylight. They are carved by Mother Nature through the years.
9. The stairs and floors might be wet and slippery, so do be careful. Walk calmly and surely.
10. Try to be calm and contain your awe or excitement or displeasure. There are people seeking solace and/or doing prayers.
11. Bring your own bottled water or snacks as the prices of the foodstuff might be considered a little steep.
12. During non festive periods, there's ample parking in the temple grounds. It cost RM2 for a car when I visited the place
13. Last but not least, enjoy yourself.

P.S. If you do get a heart attack on the way up, think of it as if you are on the stairway to heaven. Jokes aside, make sure you have whatever medical aids that you need and do not force yourself. There are plans in the future for a cable car system to provide access to the Cave temple, so better late than dead.

From the car park to the Temple Cave (warning - picture heavy).