The colours, the animals, the deities and the gods, the humans and the beasts, the fish and the dragons and the phoenixes, the fire and smoke, the candles and the wax, the spirits and the legends, the myths and the stories… The prayers. The devout. The hopeful.
All come together now. Walk slowly. Be careful. Enter the temple. Let good things come to you, open your heart. A kaleidoscope, a vision.
The characters, the calligraphy. It says ‘Tua Pek Kong’ in Chinese. What does this mean to you?
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The Dragon
Her lips open wide, hungry. Jaws. Fangs. Desire.
She tells you, “I am beastly, I am fearsome. I am the fire and I am the water. I give you Heaven when I smile and a hundred promises seem to beckon. I give you Hell when I turn and leave, and all you see is the end of my tail, my pretty, dangerous tail. Do you dare follow? I know you want to. But do you dare?”
She smiles some more.
“Are you man or are you mouse? Either may I devour, but one may make a better meal and more satisfying.”
You tremble. You want. You follow.
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The Other Dragons
There are other dragons, of course. Safer beasts, though maybe not safer bets, not necessarily.
Here comes one now. He says he will be faithful. He says he will be good. He is innocence but maybe far too innocent for you.
Here comes another. She says she can’t be sure. She says she enjoys being loved, and maybe to love, too. She tells you there are no promises but suggests eating and drinking and feasting while we could.
Dragons are dangerous, yes, but so beautiful, so many and so good. How can you refuse, how may one abstain? How may one sustain on just one?
There are so many dragons, and maybe you are one too.
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Candles & Wax
Light these candles. Let them gasp for air, for a gulp of oxygen, then burn, baby, burn. See the flame rise. See the glow bloom. This is silent, fluid prayer. This is the fire between me and you.
Let these candles drip. Let the wax fall and blossom on skin, on flesh. Let it harden, let the pain flow. Let the pleasure come after the pain, after the surprise and the anticipation. This is the fire you give to me, you my Prometheus and I your bane.
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The Rider of the Phoenix
The phoenix is male, did you know that? For all his plumes and his flamboyant colours, his rainbow feathers and catty claws, this bird, this beast, is no lady. Not unless you want him to be, no.
But you may ride the phoenix if you wish, you may grab him between your thighs and rustle up some wrath, some mad flight. Ride, my friend, ride. Take to the skies while you may. Don’t be a dragon that is caged. Don’t let desire be masked by troubles and tirades. Ride, my friend, ride.
Take to the skies. May your desires never die.
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The Fish in the Waves
The storm has been coming and coming. The ocean thunders in dismay. The stones, the rocks, the bays. All lie in disarray. There has been so much trouble, so much distilled, dark hours. But from the storm, must come the calm.
There is a fish in the waves. A golden beast of the seas, if you may. A prize, a dream, a memory. This is what we were after, what we have always been after. Some days happiness comes to us in waves, and we may catch it, have it, but never hold, before it is washed away.
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Tua Pek Kong Temple • Kuching, Sarawak
Note: Tua Pek Kong (大伯公; Tuā-peh-kong) is one of the pantheon of Malaysian Chinese Gods. Tua Pek Kong was a man named Zhang Li (张理) from the Hakka clan. His Sumatra-bound boat was struck by wind and accidentally landed on Penang island of Malaysia, which at that time had only 50 inhabitants. After his death, the local people began worshipping him and built the Tua Pek Kong temple there. Today Tua Pek Kong is worshipped by Malaysian Chinese throughout the country, including in the city of Kuching. (Source: Wikipedia)
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Copyright © 2010 Kenny Mah Ying Fye.
~ BORNEO: Tales, Trails and Travels in Sabah & Sarawak ~
Part 1 • Sabah I: Merman
Part 2 • Sabah II: From Dusk Till Dawn
Part 3 • Sabah III: Kinabalu
Part 4 • Sarawak I: Kuching
Part 5 • Sarawak II: Tua Pek Kong
Part 6 • Sabah IV: Mamutik Island
Part 7 • Sabah V: A Town Called Tuaran
Kenny Mah believes in the good in people. He has been blogging for over ten years. No, his hands aren't tired. Yet.
that temple is directly infront of the hotel im staying last trip to Kuching.. they have lots of temple there. XD
@bosscat: Oh yes, what I love about Kuching is that you can walk in any direction in this city and stumble onto a temple within minutes! It’s great!
eh, i don’t understand. why did people start worshipping tua pek kong as a god if he was actually just a man?
“There are so many dragons, and maybe you are one too.” <— i'm almost one (but i'm glad i'm not). most of the people born in my year (1988, ahem) are dragons, but since i was born in january, before chinese new year, i'm a rabbit, and proud of it. we're so much cuddlier and more lovable than big, showoff-ish dragons. and we actually exist in real life :D
@Sean: Well, human beings are very versatile creatures – they have, over the ages, worshipped animals, even rocks as gods. Anything goes, I guess.
Interesting, Mr. Almost-Dragon-But-Really-A-Rabbit. I’m a Horse-Nearly-A-Ram myself, so I get where you are coming from. Having said that, I’m not into the cuddly, fuzzy sheepiness and am happy to be a steed, a stallion, a mane man… Heh.
The fearless and the fulsome dragons that waltz in and out surely keep things interesting. I’ve been really heartened by a slew of characters met recently, who have in one way or another, a deep quiet and unexpected strength. Not all dragons breathe gnarly fire and have multi-coloured cloaks, it seems!
@minchow: “Not all dragons breathe gnarly fire and have multi-coloured cloaks…”
Agreed. Some are more subdued but have deep strength beneath their old eyes and shadow wings.
P.S. If dragons are fearsome and fearless, then shall we abandon our fearfulness and follow them?
“Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.” ~Alexandre Dumas Père~
Many nations have legends of dragons and phoenix birds where these two animals are viewed as companions,
signifying balanced harmony of male–female and even–odd qualities in nature.
Great post, Kenny. STB will be very proud – if they bother to read your posts on Kuching. :)
Have a great weekend. :)
@jemima: I always thought of the phoenix as a female entity, partner to the male dragon – until Devil told me that in Chinese mythology, both mystical animals were actually male.
Nonetheless it was fun to toss up the male/female equation here. Symbols are whatever we want them to be.
Have a fab weekend too, dear! *hugs*
Love the he-phoenix, and the fact that I can “grab him between your thighs and rustle up some wrath, some mad flight”. But then again, I’m into she-phoenixes. Ahem.
=)
@Michele: Well, whether it’s a he-phoenix or a she-phoenix we’re after, it’s all good, no? Equal opportunity and all.
*winks*
i suppose since i too worship a human being as a deity, i shouldn’t be questioning others. my personal god is still alive and he sings like an angel. all must bow down at the altar of david archuleta :D
hmmmm, but when you think about it, horses and rams are kinda like cousins after all in the great big animal family. rams could even be more powerful than horses. we call it a ‘battering ram,’ not a ‘battering horse.’ and there are some wimpy horses out there (look at the ‘my little pony’ franchise). and evil, deceptive horses too (the trojan one) :P
@Sean: David Archuleta? The Archuleta Altar? *sniggers*
They call it a ‘battering ram’ cos those darn sheep are so headstrong and stubborn. Us horses are more noble and dignified. Ponies aren’t horses anyway; they are like a dwarf version of something far more gallant and impressive.
The Trojan Horse? You gotta admit, it was a cool idea. And it worked.
This post really reminds me to take things slower n stop to see the details… I have walked past that temple so many times when visiting friends in Kuching yet never stopped to really look at it properly.
(think of all the majestic dragons n gorgeous phoenixes I have missed!)
@J the chocoholic: Actually this is only the second time I’ve passed by this temple. The first time was at night and there was some kind of prayers/celebration – lots of light and colours. Totally beautiful, only I hadn’t a camera with me then!
*total epic fail*
The second time (this recent trip) I managed to visit it just a few minutes before I had to grab a taxi to the airport! I so need to take things slower too and smell the incense, er, roses…
lol i always thought tua pek kong was hokkien… gosh, why u so talented one can wax lyrical on almost everything under the sun. sigh. can i have ur right hemisphere?
@Jun: Actually, me too! Let’s hope that wiki-entry is accurate. I ought check with my Hakka pal Edmus just to be doubly sure…
I’m not certain my right hemisphere is waxy or lyrical, but I think I’d hold on to it for now…
Ah my pretties! Always have a dragon around in my house as well. But that’s also because it’s my name!
not sure if u ever caught david on ‘american idol,’ but i think i’ve watched his performance of john lennon’s ‘imagine’ on youtube a hundred times. and it always, always gives me chills. (there’s also a snippet of him singing bryan adams’ ‘heaven’ at an early audition, and it’s amazing too!). there … archuleta for beginners. maybe u’ll join the loyal ranks of david’s arch-angels soon too :D
but horses aren’t always gallant. they gallop away at the sight of mice. or so i’ve been told. neigh? :P
and the modern-day trojan horse computer program attacks are so not cool :D
@Paul: Ah, a clue to the real identity of Dr. Paul! Would your Chinese Zodiac happen to be the Dragon too?
@Sean: “Arch-angels?” Oh my stars and garters. And all this while I thought my puns were bad. Now I have witnessed the height of lame punnery…
Horses and mice? Neigh, I tell you, neigh. Total hearsay. It’s oliphaunts and mice, actually.
(Speaking of oliphaunts, reading The Lord of the Rings as an adult truly is a different experience from reading it as a kid and a teen. Oh the years…)
And Trojan Horse programs are pale mockeries of the original item lah. It’s like how the Buddhist swastika (“The Seal on Buddha’s Heart”) got reversed and corrupted by the Nazis for their own nefarious purposes.
I need happiness from the golden beast of the sea. Why there is no hawk? I need a hawk too.
@Edmus: The golden beast of the sea may yet offer joy to both you and me. And beware! Wish for a hawk, and it may wish for – to dine upon – a sweet lil piggy…
Hehe, no worry. The hawk already has a big big Chinese Kangaroo, it can feed the hawk forever since it is so big.
@Edmus: Ah, but hawks cannot feed on kangaroos alone, be it big or Chinese or what not. Forever tastes a lot better with a side dish of bacon, some ham, and oh, there’s that babi guling everyone’s been talking about.
I guess the hawk needs to catch this lil piggy after all. Lil piggies make for good eatin’, they do.
hahaha…. ooo… the lil piggy can’t escape from the hawky bloody big mouth!!! Amitabha…
@Edmus: Oh most definitely there’s no escape from the hawk’s maw… but it ain’t big nor is it bloody. No, it’s merely sweet for it is dripping with honey… A sweet, sinful seduction… who could ask for more?
well, in case u have a change of heart and feel a stirring in your loins for david, he will be performing in singapore this nov. 14!!! it’ll be at a special showcase, and all u need to do to get passes is buy the new nokia n8 from singtel. you heard it here first! :P
yikes, why are u re-reading it anyway? actually, i never read it as a kid/teen, cos it never seemed to be available at the school library or bookshops. i eventually snapped up a copy at the usm bookstore. i found it overly dense and laborious. but like everyone else, i loved the film adaptation, and that’s the definitive version of the story for me now :D
@Sean: Why does it read like someone’s doing an advertorial (in a blog comment no less) for Singtel? Heh heh. But nay, I’ll give the Nokia N8 a miss, thanks. I’ve caved in and gotten a BlackBerry…
Re-reading The Lord of the Rings is fun in the way always having something to do is fun. It’s like a literary version of comfort food. You don’t need it but it’s… nice.
Having said that, I admire Peter Jackson’s creative decisions with his films even more now, having compared the original and the celluloid adaptation. Definitely faster-paced and a whole lot less Elvish songs & Hobbit paeans to food and five or more meals per day.
the blackberry’s for work, while the nokia could be for fun! and what fun it’d be to watch david in his element.
he’s only 19 though, so banish any of the usual warped ideas that fill your mind (even though he recently confessed that he’s still waiting for his first kiss) :D
hmmmm, so u’re suggesting that the LOTR books are indeed over-rated, partly because they get bogged down with fluff? :D
i’m currently reading the (unauthorized) biography of coco chanel. it’s extremely thick too, and i’m wondering if i’ll live to ever finish it…
@Sean: And if I needed an extra mobile phone for fun, something tells me I’d go for an iPhone since nearly all my friends have one. What can I say, I am very, very slow to convert or adopt new things.
My ideas are never warped, simply wrapped nicely in cellophane or latex or some other suitably tight & slick material. Ahem.
And nein, I am not suggesting The Lord of the Rings is over-rated or fluffy, simply not as fast-paced as modern thrillers. Perhaps this is a good thing.
Coco Chanel who? (I jest, I jest. Good luck with your mission.)
considering i’m still using a dial-up jaring connection at home instead of broadband, i guess we’re both late adopters. :D
hmmmm, i think i can appreciate a slow-paced classic movie, but books written before the 1980s kill me. i believe the golden age of literature began in this new millennium :P
alas, the coco chanel biography was written decades ago (the only reason i even have it is because someone gave it to me). maybe it would help if chanel had been a nice person. but despite her peerless talent, she appears to have been somewhat mean and vindictive. not much fun to root for :D
fish in the waves…nice!!! :)
@Sean: Is there still dial-up available, even? I thought broadband was the standard these days. I guess this explains your significant investment in DVDs, ahem.
(Oh dear, that reminds me – I have yet to watch the ‘In the Mood for Love’ Criterion Edition DVD. Gotta do that and return it to you before the end of the year. How embarrassing.)
I am sure there are some good books, some even great, written before the 80′s but it’s Sunday morning – I doubt I’d want to bend my mind towards figuring which ones. Maybe later.
Suffice to say, the modern output is definitely to my preference too.
And Ms. Coco Chanel as an anti-hero – how fashionable!
@fufu: Might be nicer if the fish ended up steamed with some julienned ginger on our plates, no?
dial-up is indeed alive (it’s how i’m commenting at this very minute). but it remains a slow way of surfing. now don’t u feel guilty about posting so many photo-intensive entries?
i remember loving ‘wuthering heights’ back when i read it in school. but i don’t dare pick it up now, cos i suspect i’d find it dreadfully melodramatic and stilted. in my impressionable youth, i also liked thomas hardy’s ‘tess of the d’ubervilles,’ gabriel garcia marquez’s ‘love in the time of cholera,’ and, ermm, ‘a tale of two cities.’ :D
not sure if u ever judge a book by its opening lines, but here’s how chanel’s biography begins: “In the south of France, there lies a never-conquered land. Only surface-scratched.”
@Sean: Don’t you like the photographs? Aren’t they worth waiting for? Or better yet, worth upgrading to broadband?
I could come up with a text-only version of my blog but oh how much less interesting would it be!
Marquez’s ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ is probably the only book of the lot I’d read again. It doesn’t fall under your definition of classic literature though as it was published in Spanish in 1985.
As for that opening line, hmm. Maybe the translation was a tad awkward. Otherwise, how very tiresome of the biographer.
gorgeous!!! I am so jealous.. u write so beautifully PLUS ur photos are so fantastic! I love the fish in water! the movement of the waves are magnificent..!
@ciki: You liked the waves? Oops, now may not be a good time to mention I collaged all the waves together from several different photographs I took. Not very good collaging but then again, it wasn’t meant to be so seamless lah.
well, perhaps u could rescale the photos to, say, 1/8 of their current size? heheheh :D
ooh, i always thought ‘love in the time of cholera’ was written in the 1960s or something. but ahhh, bless the spanish, they are truly the masters of melodramatic romance…
the same person who recently gave me the chanel biography also bequeathed me with similar books on audrey hepburn, napoleon and a host of other long-dead people. i’m gonna be craving lots of light-hearted fiction after i finish all those books…
@Sean: One-eight of their original size? That’s sacrilege, I tell you! As it is, I find that they are too small for some of my less visually-empowered readers.
(I remember a Japanese reader once asking me to increase the font size, and so I did with this current blog design. I aim to please.)
Gabriel García Márquez is actually a Colombian, but I guess he’s considered Spanish too since that is his tongue of choice. It’s like how we are Malaysian and Chinese/Indian/Malay/Others too.
(That always bothered me, though, how minority races are grouped under a very generic-sounding “Dan Lain-Lain” (or its creepier English equivalent, “The Others”. A more complete list would be more respectful, no?)
I might want to pass you Katherine Hepburn’s autobiography to add to your collection of long-dead people. Uhm, of their biographies, I mean.
eh, u the one who always claims that size doesn’t matter (though your insistence on that does arouse much suspicion) :P
on the other hand, a complete list of ethnicities might be too long and impractical, considering there are 16 distinct tribes within the peninsula’s orang asli people alone. and when u add the folks of borneo…
i like katherine hepburn, and i think she led a very interesting, semi-scandalous life. so yeah, i’d be happy to read that :D
@Sean: Heh, I can always make that claim cos I have witnesses that may allay any suspicions. Ahem.
A complete list could be fun rather than cumbersome. Anyway, I’m OCD enough to enjoy all sorts of lists from our great country’s many ethnicities to movie trivia and what not.
Consider the book the next thing I’m passing you! Yay!
i liked it because it looked seamless. different. unpredictable. turbulent. just like waves should be.
@ciki: That’s sorta like life too, no? Sometimes turbulent, always unpredictable. We are all different, but we all seamlessly fit together into one very human, very special race called Mankind.
there u’ve gone n dunnit… now u’ve garbled my whole phoenix/dragon customary beliefs… (or shud i be blaming the Devil instead?) as always in the days of old, the elders called the one son, one daughter in a family “loong foong thoi”… n the traditional chinese bridal wear always must hv the sacred symbol of the dragon n d phoenix to union of man n wife… now i’m jz confused… @_@
goes to her happy place… >.<
ahahah… kidding… a wonderful piece nonetheless… ;)
@asstha: Oops. Devil is so gonna kill me for this! He had asked me to leave a comment correcting my mis-interpretation of what he shared with me ages ago.
Okay, let’s see: The word for dragon (loong) is definitely male. The word for phoenix in Chinese tends to come in a pair (foong huang) which means male+female phoenixes.
What Devil meant was that they usually took the “male” character of phoenix (i.e. foong) to pair with the dragon character, hence the characters for “foong loong” are both male.
Which basically means… what? I think now I’m confused too! Hahaha…
hmmm… but i always tot Foong was female n Huang was male… as the norm chinese names given to kids… @_@
oh goodie… another trivia to google up during my free time… last trivia was why is dim sum called dim sum…ahahaha.. :P
@asstha: Life is like a google search for trivia? Hehe.