Cap Go Meh in Singkawang

Spiritual possession and lion dances in Borneo

I recently spent several days in the small city of Singkawang, in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), witnessing the local celebrations for Cap Go Meh.

This festivity, known as the Lantern Festival in English, is a traditional Chinese celebration that takes place on the 15th day of the first month of the year in the Chinese calendar, during the full moon. By custom it marks the end of the celebrations for the Chinese New Year. Cap Go Meh, the name by which the occasion is known in Indonesia, derives from the Hokkien pronunciation of 十五暝, or “fifteenth evening”.

Singkawang’s festivities for Cap Go Meh are famous throughout Indonesia. Not surprisingly, the city is one of the most “Chinese” in the country. It was founded as an outpost of Chinese gold miners, mainly Hakka from Guangdong, and it still has the highest proportion of ethnic Chinese of any city in Indonesia (around 40%). Even the town’s name derives from the Hakka name San Khew Jong (山口洋).

A view of the outskirts of Singkawang

Singkawang’s main square, with the Chinese Tri Dharma Bumi Raya temple and the city’s main mosque in the background.

Singkawang has no airport, so I first flew to Kuching, on the Malaysian side of Borneo, spent two nights there, and then took a 6 hour bus-ride across the border to Singkawang. Kuching is probably Borneo’s most sophisticated city. Its cosmopolitanism and large shopping malls made for quite a contrast with Singkawang.

I had already spent several weeks in Singkawang during my previous meanderings through Borneo, and I have a few local friends there. The city is not particularly big or prosperous, but the large Chinese community gives it an unusual feel for provincial Indonesia. In the centre the buildings are in the old Peranakan (strait Chinese) style prevalent in Malaysia and Singapore, with covered walkways lined with entrances to shops and restaurants, some of them with signs in Chinese.

Singkawang was voted the most tolerant city in Indonesia for three years running, as local people (and government billboards) will inform you with pride. The population is a mix of Chinese, Malay and Dayak, alongside smaller groups of Madurese and Javanese. The streets are dotted with colourful Chinese temples, mosques and churches, and the different ethnic and religious groups seem to coexist quite amiably.

Many of the local Chinese still speak their ancestral languages (mainly Hakka) with each other, something which has become unusual in Jakarta and other cities in Java, where most Chinese-Indonesians only speak in Indonesian at home. Teaching and publishing in Chinese was suppressed everywhere in Indonesia under Suharto’s regime, but in this far-flung area the language clearly survived in spoken form.

A street in the old centre of Singkawang

The entrance to Pasar Hongkong, the city’s biggest market

Singkawang’s Cap Go Meh celebrations are in many ways a good representation of the city’s tolerance and diversity. The festivities, not quite like anything in China, are the result of the interaction between Chinese customs and the culture of the Dayak people, an umbrella term for the tribes who traditionally live in Borneo’s interior. The locals call this process of cultural fusion akulturasi (acculturation).

The most striking feature of the festivities is the parade of the tatung. Tatung is a term from Hakka Chinese indicating a person who is possessed by spirits, gods, ancestors or other supernatural powers. During Cap Go Meh the tatung parade around the city while in a trance-like state, performing feats like sticking metal rods through their cheeks without producing any blood, and sitting or standing on thrones made of sharp blades.

According to local lore, this tradition began 250 years ago, when a sickness befell Singkawang. Taoist priests then invited gods and spirits to come and drive out the evil by possessing the local people. The local Dayak tribes have long taken part in this ritual, and many of the tatung who parade around town are Dayak, not Chinese, as are their costumes.

I watched the Cap Go Meh celebrations with my local friends, who are themselves Dayak. I got to know them on my previous trip back in November, while walking alone on an almost deserted beach south of the city. They were on a day trip to the area, and were keen to chat. In spite of the language barrier (conversing in Indonesian is still a struggle for me, and they know little English), we made friends.

Although my new friends live and work in Singkawang, they originally come from towns and villages in the interior of Borneo, and speak various Dayak languages that are different enough from each other that they use Indonesian when they are together. The Dayak people used to be animist, but they have now almost entirely converted to Christianity. My local friends in Singkawang must be some of the most devoutly Christian people I have met. They go to church every Sunday, pray before every meal, and the Catholic ones will even cross themselves before turning on the engines of their scooters.

Apart from the Chinese and Dayak, the other main group in the city are the Malays, who are generally Muslim. Although they are less involved, they also come out en masse to watch the celebrations for Cap Go Meh. At noon, when the call to prayer rises from the minarets of the town’s mosques, the parades cease for an hour out of respect for Muslim sensitivities.

I was told that the main parade through the city was cancelled this year due to its proximity with Indonesia’s general elections. I don’t know what the celebrations are normally like, but there certainly seemed to be plenty of parades and festivities to me.

The bulk of the celebrations lasted for two days, Cap Go Meh itself and the preceding day. On the first day the centre of the action was in the middle of the old town, in front of the central Tri Dharma Bumi Raya temple, the oldest Chinese temple in the area.

I arrived early in the morning, and saw some tatung dancing in front of the temple. Some wore costumes with Chinese motives, others wore local costumes that made them look somewhat more like Native Americans to my eyes. While some of them looked genuinely entranced, others seemed to be able to stop and speak quite rationally to those around them. Around 8 in the morning the square started to fill up with onlookers. Most were locals, but there were also quite a few outsiders, probably visitors from other parts of Indonesia. There were even a few Western sightseers, including a group of elderly French tourists with a guide.

As the day progressed, the tatung started performing their feats. Some stuck long metal rods through their cheeks, lips and the front of their necks, seemingly without there being any blood or pain. Others were paraded around while sitting on thrones made of sharp blades. I touched one of the blades, and it didn’t seem blunt. While most tatung are men, there are also women among them. At one point a woman in a yellow costume with a yin-yang symbol on its back balanced herself on a blade with one bare foot, and performed what looked like a yoga pose.

Apart from the tatung performing their feats, I saw a lot of other stuff going on around the temple. There was a big tent nearby, and underneath it there was a row of pig carcasses painted in red, ready to be cut up and eaten. In front of the tent there was an altar, where I saw a priest lead a large group of people to chant and get down on their knees while holding incense sticks.

That afternoon I walked around the city centre, and I saw some rather more classical parades of the kind you see all over the world for Chinese New Year, with lion dances performed by groups of youths in the coloured shirts of various local Chinese associations.

The following day was Cap Go Meh itself, and the main parade took place in the Vihara Chikung, a huge new Taoist temple built in the hills outside the city with Singaporean funding. The event was attended by Indonesia’s Minister of Tourism as well as the most important local officials. In the morning I saw a long line of governmental black cars with tinted windows, protected by policemen on motorbikes, heading towards the temple.

When I got to the temple with my local friends, it was chaos. We had to park our scooters quite far from the entrance and walk the last bit, trying to find a way through the gridlocked traffic and the throngs of people. When we arrived there were so many people that even entering the temple’s grounds was impossible. For a while we were stuck near the entrance in the middle of a huge crowd, while the tropical sun blazed down upon us.

Luckily we soon managed to move and find a spot outside the walls of the temple, near a stream and under the shade of some trees. The parade of the tatung was passing by on its way to the temple, and we were wedged in between the stream and the parade, but that gave us a close view of the action. I saw the same flow of people in outlandish costumes, doing outlandish things to themselves, that I had seen the previous day. While some appeared to be perfectly sober, others looked like their minds had flown somewhere far away.

At one point a group stopped in front us. A bare-chested young man and a young woman were dancing with entranced expressions on their faces, while drums were beaten rhythmically around them. A “medium” waved a basket wrapped in silk over their heads. The basket is supposed to contain the spirit which takes possession of the tatung. At some point the young man started beating himself with a bushel of grain, and then trying to eat it. Another man waved a sword above his head.

The local friend who I was watching the show with very much believed that the people we were seeing were possessed by spirits (she used the Indonesian word hantu, often translated as “ghost”). After the dancing ended, someone placed the basket wrapped in silk right next to us. I asked if she wasn’t scared of the spirit, but she said “no, why? It has already left the basket”, as if this were an obvious fact.

Apparently the position of tatung is hereditary. They are reportedly meant to fast for three days before Cap Go Meh, and also only eat vegetarian food on certain days beforehand (reports vary on this). I do wonder if their ability to stick multiple metal rods through their faces might not be explained by them already having small holes in their cheeks where the rod passes, although my local friend insisted that afterwards they present no scars or holes. The widespread belief in the supernatural that you encounter in Indonesia is no longer a surprise to me.

After a while we saw that an impressive dragon dance was taking place inside the temple’s grounds, and we wanted to get in. There was a side entrance, but a policeman in uniform was guarding it and turning people away. My friend waited until no one else was around, and then asked if we could enter, because I was a foreigner who had come “from far away”. The policeman refused, then hesitated, and finally smiled and let us in.

By the time we reached the main square in front of the temple, the dragon dance had ended. The minister and the other high officials sat under a large tent to protect them from the sun, with tables full of fruit and snacks laid out in front of them. The tatung who we had already seen outside were now parading for them, while the officials’ wives, their heads covered in hijabs, were busy taking photos with their phones.

We left around noon, although the celebrations were showing no sign of ending. It struck me that during all my years in China, the most I had ever done for Lantern Festival (which is not a public holiday there) was eat tāngyuán (glutinous rice balls) with local friends. I had to come to this corner of Southeast Asia to really get a feel for this Chinese festival.

I spent my last day in the city relaxing and eating in night markets. The next morning I took a shared taxi for the 5 hour-ride to Pontianak, the provincial capital and the closest city with an airport. From there I flew back to Java with a few new stories to tell.