Nine Emperor Gods Festival Parade Ipoh

It's the ninth month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar and this is when the Nine Emperor Festival took place. Every Chinese temple throughout the country will held this grand event. For nine days throughout the festival, temple prayers and devotees will eat vegetarian in order to purify themselves. There are a lots of event and happening going around the temple and for sure, the temple area will be the most crowded place in town, even if it's 3 or 4 am in the morning. The festival goes non stop over the period of nine days and nights.

In Ipoh, the hotspot for the Nine Emperor Festival is at the Tow Boo Keong temple located at the Jalan Kampar roundabout. Every year, ten of thousands of devotees will flood this temple. Myself would also take a glance to visit the temple everytime it held. It's crowded, hot, smokes everywhere and irritates everyone's eye, guess thats what we called Smoke gets in your eyes, lol. Chinese Opera rule the stage at the temple in the old days, today's not only there are Chinese Opera, there are also modern pop song singing and dancing too. Everyone at all level of age get their piece of the stage show.

Rows of stalls selling buns and red tortoise bun flood the main road of the temple. Many will buy a few to eat or given it as a tribute while praying.

The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is held to celebrate the return of the Nine Emperor spirits from the heaven to earth. There will be ceremony for the arrival of the gods which arrive through the waterways such as river or by the sea. So, along the nine days of festival, there will be ceremony where the devotees goes to the river or sea side to held the welcoming ceremony for the arrival for each of the nine gods. Usually, it will be held at midnight. Rain often fall during the festival time and it is believed that the rain was to clean up the path where the Nine Emperor Gods would arrive from the waterways and brought to the temple.

The festival climax happens on the ninth day of the festival where the gods will be send back to the heaven through the waterways. There will be some sort of parade on the street to celebrate the end of the Nine Emperor Gods Festival.

While there are street parade going on at most state or even town throughout the country, Ipoh has been lack of these parade over the years. I believe it is mainly because of lack of support and sponsorship from organizations, companies and individuals. I didn't even remember if there is a parade last year ;( sigh~

This year, the festival seem to turn into a grand celebration, yeah got parade and I heard there are about 120 troops participate in this year's Nine Emperor Festival parade. Thats a whole lots of participant. Other than participants from Perak state, there are also some which were from other state such as Penang, Kedah and some says even Thailand participated in this year's event.

I arrived to the town area near the Sri Maju bus station about 8.00am. Well, usually the parade would start at that time but is seems to goes off very late this time. After a long long wait, crowded started to flood the place and the sun rising higher and higher. Sweat starting to slide down my cheek and at 8.45am, they finally start marching.

The leading Golden Horse starts the parade. Gosh, the horse really got a big mouth.

God statues and deities is carried along the parade. There are all sort of god statues and deities.

Boys and girls carrying flowers walked down the streets greeting everyone with a sweet smiles.

Purified devotees who had themselves possessed by gods carrying weapons walking along the parade. Occasionally, they will hack themselves with the weapons. Having bleeding scars on body is not something uncommon and it is believed that these devotees doesn't feel any pain from the ceremony.

Some pretty girls with some classical musical instruments. wink Wink!

Zhi Gong, the god of monk resting on the chair.

OK, this ain't ordinary high heels they're wearing. Well, I wish I could have one of those so that I could stand higher than everyone else and get a clearer photo shot lol.

The musical band from several different school joins the parade.

The yellow flags is an icon for the nine emperor festival.

An Indian devotee with a long metal rod stitched on his cheek. Its a very tiring journey along the parade especially when you have a heavy metal rod stitched on your cheek! It take a strong will to do something like this.

Another devotee with a metal rod stitch followed behind.

Siam ar !, the devotee charge towards the crowd spinning himself and the metal rod around. Both end of the metal rod is sharp and nobody want to get hit by it.

more statues and deities going along way on the parade.

The classical Volks Wagon cars and van is also among the participants. Here, we call the Beetle as Frog Car !

Blessed candy and bun is given away to the public. No worry if you're hungry. Got FOC food here :)

These giant flag shall never be missed out from the parade. Ever since the tobacco and alcoholic company is prohibited to sponsor these events, there are less such giant flags going into the parade already.

Lion and Dragon dance is certainly something not to missed out.

The Indian community also participated with their kavadi.

The four Season Drummer troupe fascinate the spectators with their drumming skills.

My dad used to be a member of the giant flag bearer when I was a child. He also participated in such parade in the past. Balancing the tall flag is not a simple stunt to do and performing stunts such as balancing the flag on their chin, teeth or putting a blade like metal on the bottom of the flag pole is very dangerous.
Pulling out stunts like throwing and catching the flags requires a lots of training and experience. There are always risk of people getting hurt during training and parade time.

from what I've been told in the past, the giant flag comes in several length and you could see it's difference at the tip of the flag. The highest or longest flag usually has 5 dust cleaning thingy (just like the photo above) while the shorter flag will have less of those.

Though, I could not obtain the size of each of the class of flag but the way each of the flag being handle is different.
Longer flag like the class 5 is heavier than other thus require greater skill and experience to handle. It is not likely amateur flag bearer would be allowed to handle these flag.

I didn't get to see the whole parade since I bring my little boy and wifey with me. As the weather become hotter, my little boy couldn't stand it anymore and it is time for me to called it off. Time to Blah!

Overall, I feel this year's parade was spectacular, three thumbs up if I could get and additional thumbs :)
I hope it could be better if not maintain this way for the years to come.

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