I'm surrounded by the booms and blasts of what sounds like hundreds of guns and canons firing. Nuuuuuu i'm not in sum battlezone. Its from the hundreds if not millions of fireworks going up in the air for the past hour or so from all directions around me. Tonight is the 8th day of the chinese new year and the hokkien chinese celebrates the birthday of the Jade Emperor (google it). He's like the ruler of heaven according to the taoist beliefs.
This night an altar will be set up at each participating household and laden with food, sweets, fruit, tea, stacks of paper money to be burnt as an offering and sugarcane which is particularly significant cuz in ancient times the hokkien peoples were being attacked on chinese new year day so they ran and hid in the sugarcane plantations and prayed to the Jade Emperor to rescue them. On the 8th day their prayers were answered.
paper money
Anyways all this brings back the memories of my childhood when my grandma would set up an elaborate altar. There would be a whole roast suckling pig, roast ducks, steamed chickens, sticky new year cakes, candies, a sugar pagoda, lots of fruits and of course sugarcane. The best thing was that we get to eat it all afterwards.
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