The Phuket Vegetarian Festival
is a colourful event held
over a nine-day period in October,
celebrating the Chinese community’s belief
that abstinence from meat
Various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar
will help them obtain good health and peace of mind.
Though the origins of the festival are unclear,
it is commonly thought that the festival was bought to Phuket
by a wandering Chinese opera group who fell ill with malaria while performing on the island.
They decided to adhere to a strict vegetarian diet and pray to the Nine Emperor Gods
to ensure purification of the mind and body.
To everyone’s amazement the opera group made a complete recovery.
The people celebrated by holding a festival that was meant to honour the gods
as well as express the people’s happiness at surviving what was,
in the 19th century, a fatal illness.
Subsequently the festival has grown and developed into a spectacular yearly
event that is attended by thousands with participants flying
in from China and other Asian destinations.
One of the most exciting aspects of the festival are the various,
(and sometimes gruesome) ceremonies which are held to invoke the gods.
Fire walking, body piercing and other acts of self mortification undertaken
by participants acting as mediums of the gods, have become more spectacula.
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