Group foresees Chinese religious events to remain small

Crowd gathering is not part of the agenda of Chinese religious events this year, Ip Tat, president of Macau Temple Festival Cultural Promotion Association, said at the sidelines of a religious event yesterday.
Normally, Chinese religious events, such as the Feast of God Tou Tei (God of the Earth) which was celebrated yesterday, consists of deity-worshipping rituals, feast gathering and Cantonese Opera performances, with the latter two sections attracting a considerable number of participants, usually the elderly.
Although the dates of many religious events have been announced, Ip stressed they will follow the government’s Covid-19 pandemic containment initiatives and the events will be held with minimal public participation. For instance, gathering for the feast and opera performances will be canceled.
Yesterday, the Feast of God Tou Tei was celebrated in all of the city’s temples or shrines which has deity, with one of them being the Patane Tou Tei Temple, the oldest of its kind in Macau.
Wong Wa Keong, director-general of the Associação de Piedade e de Beneficência Patane, Tu-Tei-Mio, said that this year the association followed the pandemic containment measures, but the rituals were held at a larger scale compared to last year.
The Feast of God Tou Tei applied to enter the National Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2019. Ip expects the result to be announced soon. AL