It has been raining regularly lately implies that this is the time again for the celebration of the nine emperors gods (known as “Jiu Wang Ye 九王爷” in Singapore and Malaysia) festival. The “Jiu Wang Ye” festival is one of the renowned festivals in Malaysia that is celebrated yearly starts from the last day (28th or 29th) of the eight Chinese lunar month to the ninth day of the ninth lunar month.

The nine emperors gods actually refers to the ” Jiu Huang Da Di 九皇大帝” (The Nine Great Emperors) in the Taoist deities system (Taoist Patheon). The birth of the nine emperors happened to be on the 9th of September in the Chinese lunar calendar, and this day was often celebrated as the festival of “Jiu Huang 九皇” by the Taoist in Singapore and Malaysia.

Nan Thien Kwang Temple in Ampang

The biggest “Jiu Wang Ye” celebration in Kuala Lumpur is at Nan Thien Kwang Temple in Ampang. It’s not only a place for prayers and religious rituals, but also a place to shop and eat. It’s like a carnival, many stalls are setup along the streets surrounded the temple selling all sorts of food and interesting stuffs. Just imagine it as a wet market. In fact you can probably call it a wet market, except that you get to see a lot of religious stuffs here. The place is jam-packed like sardin almost every night starting from 7p.m. till mid night.  So if you plan to visit, be prepared of the crowd.

The festival stars with the erection of a large lamp (named gaodeng or jiuqudeng) which is placed at the left of the festival square. It is here that a consecration ritual is performed to purify the temple grounds and deploy the spirit soldiers of heaven and earth, water and fire to the five ritual sites.

The last time I visited “Jiu Wang Ye” festival at Nan Thien Kwang Temple was many years ago with my schoolmates. The only most impressive memory I have was the ‘Stinky Tofu” (chou tou fu 臭豆腐）, which is a soft tofu that has been fermented in a unique vegetable and fish brine. The blocks of tofu smell strongly of certain pungent cheeses, and are described by many as rotten and fecal. There was a stall selling smelly tofu which stank so badly that I could even smell it from a few miles away. This is the main reason that drove me to visit Nan Thien Kwang Temple again after many years to recapture the smell of tofu and, to taste it, of course.

We reached Nan Thien Kwang temple at 9p.m., even though we actually departed from my house at 7:30 p.m.. The traffic in Ampang was very conjested, the cars were almost not moving especially at the junction waiting for the traffic light. It wasn’t difficult to get a parking place there, but there were many people like ‘guarding’ the parking lots and collect money from us, which kind of pissed me. I don’t think they have authority to collect the parking fees. They might just take the advantage to make some illegal money.

Look at the long queue of the people who couldn’t wait to taste the shit.

The stinky tofu wasn’t smelled as bad as what I recalled. I had to get close to the stall in order to smell it. If you have never smelled the stinky tofu, it actually smelled like shit, in fact it smelled exactly like a shit. I was really curious how does it taste like since it’s one of the specialties in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Some said it tastes differently from how it smells like; wheareas other said it tastes exactly the same as how it smells like. To seek for the answer, I decided to have first-hand experience of its taste.

The boss of the stinky tofu.

The stinky tofu is deep fried until the rind is especially crisp to develop crispy texture. It’s then served with soy sauce, sweet sauce, and/or hot sauce.

Queuing for almost half an hour and finally got a box of shitty smelling tofu. 5 pieces for RM3, with some carbages and chili sause. I popped the whole piece into my mouth and slowly tasted it. It took me some time to recognize its taste as the fermeted taste was kind of mild. It tastes exactly the same as how it smells like, i.e. fecal. I believe if the tofu was fermented longer, I would have tasted a real shit.

My first-hand experience in tasting fecal-taste tofu. If you love crispy food with rotten taste, you should give it a try.

Along the way to the temple, there are a lot of stalls selling incense and joss sticks. Prayers will purchase the joss sticks of various sizes for praying. Due to a multitude of prayers, the joss sticks were removed no sooner than you stick them into the urn, to make room to others. It’s said that the symbolic gesture and the length of time for the incense to burn are immeterial, only the sincerity of praying counts. *hmm… so why even bother to setup the urns and to practice joss sticks praying?*

It’s jam-packed like sardin that all prayers hold their joss sticks above them to avoid burning others.

Chinese Opera or Amoy Opera are staged for the immortals every night during the festival.

The celebration officially begins with the staging of the Amoy opera on the first day of the ninth moon. On the third, sixth and ninth days, a special feast named the koujun is held in honour of the spirit soldiers and laity. On the 10th day, the festival officially ends with the taking down of the tall lamp and the rite which recalls the spirit soldiers from their posts.

Our main interest of the festival was food. You will be amazed of all sorts of long lost traditional food appeared again in the festival, like Dragon Beard Candy, 冰糖葫芦, Vietnamese Popiah, and so on.

Dragon Beard Candy, or Chinese cotton candy, is a form of spun sugar traditional in China with peanuts or cashew nuts in it. Yummy!

冰糖葫芦 ~ sugar glazed hawthorn

My favourite! Vietnamese Popiah! It’s not a normal Vietnamese popiah, it’s stuffed with shredded coconut meat, sesame and maltose.

It’s how the Vietnamese Popiah was made, with lotsa shredded coconut meat.

It looks like normal popiah from the appearance.

But it tastes awesome!

Freshly baked fruits pizza.

Tastes like normal pizza except that it contains no meat.

Auto shuffle Mahjong table.

This Mahjong table will auto shuffle and arrange the tiles.

There are too much to see and and too much to eat that you can probably spend few hours hanging around the place. For the non-local readers, it’s recommended to visit the temple during the first 9 days of the ninth Chinese lunar month to experience the festival. You might find surprises that you wouldn’t find from the common tourist attractions in Malaysia.

<Some interesting knowledge about the Nine Emperor Gods>

The nine emperor gods are very often known as “Bei Dou Jiu Xing 北斗九星” (9 north star plough Gods), since they are gods of the stars or planets. Their mother, “Dou Mu Yuan Jun 斗姆元君” (Mother north star), is also the mother of stars.

The nine emperor gods consist of the following:

1. “Gou Chen Tian Huang Da Di 勾陈天皇大帝” (Vega Star)
2. “Bei Ji Zhi Wei Da Di 北极紫微大帝” (Polaris Star)
3. The 7 Northern Constellation Stars (called “Bei Dou Qi Xing 北斗七星”):
a. “Tan Lang 贪狼”
b. “Ju Meng 巨门”
c. “Lu Chun 禄存”
d. “Wen Qu 文曲”
e. “Lian Zhen 廉贞”
f. “Wu Qu 武曲”
g. “Po Jun 破军”

How to get there from KL Sentral:

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Useful Information:

Some information in my post excerpted from -> The History of The Nine Emperor Gods Festival in Malaysia

Detailed story about The Nine Emperor Gods Festival -> http://www.pulau-pangkor.com/nine-emperor-gods.html

From The Star news article -> Fengshui – The Nine Emperor Gods