Source: The Sunday Times, September 8, 2002)
It is not just the living who get married. In a small temple near
Tanjong Pagar, even the dead gets a chance at wedded bliss. Tan
Shzr Ee says welcome to the ritual of the ghost marriage
You could call it, literally, the SDU of Hell. For 96 years, a
shack squatting in a Tanjong Pagar plot the size of two tennis
courts has been playing marriage bureau to the Single, Dead and
Unsettled.
Hugging the leafy curve of Peck Seah Street behind the buzz of
International Plaza, it is the Seng Wong Beo Temple, home of the
City God Cheng Huang, the patron of departed souls.
Could the spirits of dead men and women be joined in eternal bliss
under its gritty gables?
A cheerful matron dressed in the Ah Soh gear of a flowery viscose
blouse thinks so.
Looking a decade younger than her 60 years, "Madam Tham", as she is
known, is the fourth-generation custodian of the religious
site.
"Some people call it superstition. Some people call it culture and
heritage," she says in Mandarin with a happy shrug. "But we just do
what we do."
The temple, one of the older ones in Singapore, was founded in 1904
by a Reverend Swee Oi from Quanzhou, China. He performed religious
rites for early Chinese coolies living in Tanjong Pagar.
Upon the monk's death in 1953, the grounds were passed on to his
disciples. Madam Tham took over the building from her husband's
family eight years ago. They, in turn, had received the site from
one of Reverend Swee Oi's men.
Over the years, Seng Wong Beo has become famous for its rituals for
the dead - in particular, weddings.
