Kongsi - the Clan Houses of Penang

The Khoo Kongsi - the largest ancestral shrine in George Town and one of the largest outside of China. 

Among the Confucian virtues none is so important as filial piety, a religious sense of duty and loyalty to one’s family. It is conspicuous that exactly this virtue has declined in the modern West under the corrosive influence of liberalism where the “individual” – the rogue – is glorified and “freedom” – selfishness – comes before duty. Indeed, filial piety is one of the main things that separate societies that still retain a sense of tradition from those that have fallen into anarchic modernity. It has been very noticeable to this present author throughout his travels, first through India and Hindoostan, and now more recently through the Sino-Asiatic world. To the Indians, and to the Chinese, family is first. In Benares, for example, the author encountered a young man whose mother had become ill; he had to abandon his university studies to assist with the family business. He did so without hesitation and with no complaint. He knew that his first duty was not to pursue his own dream but to help the family, no question. Such a strong sense of family has almost disappeared from the modern West. In India, and among the Chinese, and among the Malays, the Japanese, and others too, even where modernity is fully embraced the traditional hold of family is not so eroded as it is in the West. These peoples pursue a modernity without anarchic liberalism, different models of modernity than that which has ravaged social cohesion in the West.

The centrality of family is especially underlined to the present author during his current sojourn in the old Chinese enclave of George Town, for George Town is the home to numerous clan associations or Kongsi. Upon arriving in George Town the taxi driver related that the great majority of tourists to the town nowadays are from southern China. They come here to visit the Kongsi of their ancestors. Clan, which is to say extended family grouped under one surname, remains an important feature of traditional social cohesion for the southern Chinese, even after several generations of state communist rule. In fact, there is now a strong movement among the southern Chinese to “search for roots” in order to repair the damage down by the Cultural Revolution. They travel to places such as George Town – Chinese settlements that avoided the Cultural Revolution and where traditional family organizations were strong - in order to renew their links with their past. It is called the Xungen movement - the movement to repair family lineages. There is a strong religious element involved. Family progenitors are revered and accorded sacred status. A Kongsi is not only a clan association but a religious organization. Families have their own preferred deities, along with so-called 'ancestor worship'. The Kongsi clan house acts not only as a meeting place for clan members but, most importantly, as a temple and as a place of worship. 

George Town features numerous outstanding  and illustrious traditional Kongsi. The Chinese clans have played an important role in the history of the city. There was a time when then tended to operate as secret societies, underworld fraternities, and there were several episodes of clan warfare. The British, very wisely, outlawed secret societies in the mid XIXth century and helped the clans become open, cooperative societies that made a positive contribution to the social good. In this, the clans operated as social welfare agencies, loci for trades, places of education, employment agencies, immigration offices and often as adjuncts to the judiciary and law enforcement. Clans acted to keep their members within the law and to settle disputes. On the whole, their contribution to George Town society was and continues to be extremely productive. 

In organizational terms, a Kongsi is like a cooperative or a corporation. The extended family is ruled by the elder males - the bearers of the surname (a clan is patrilineal)- and they hold property in common. They invest in worthy projects and they distribute dividends to clan members. At times of economic downturn or fraying political life members can fall back upon the clan for common support. It is, in effect, what we might call a “distributist” system that combines the best features of a de-centralised capitalism with non-state collectivism, based at every point upon blood ties and the enduring reality of family. It is an impressive and time-honoured model of social organization and remains one of the foundations of traditional Chinese life.

The pictures on this page illustrate aspects of some of the major Kongsi found in George Town.

THE CLAN ELDERS

A clan is patrilineal and its organisation patriarchal. Clans are organised under surnames. In the photograph above we see the current elders of the Khoo Kongsi in George Town (with the gentlemen dressed in traditional Changshan rather than Western business suites.) 

ANCESTRAL ALTAR

In each Kongsi there is an ancestral altar. The names of ancestors are recorded on bamboo slips which are displayed on the altar. Worshippers pray to and revere the ancestors with the main devotional device being the lighting and offering of joss (incense). 

In this picture, ancestors are recorded on tokens arranged in large conical pillars. 

THE CLAN GODS

As well as the altar to the ancestors there is usually a main altar devoted to the preferred deity or deities of the clan. The deities are usually from so-called 'Chinese folk religion' (Confucianism), from Taoism or from Boodhism. Worship is syncretic.

THE ZUPU

The Zupu - the genealogical book. Each clan keeps detailed geneological records in a tome called a Zupu. Tracing and recording the lineage of the clan is an important duty of the Kongsi. 

DISPLAYS OF ANCESTORS

Within each Kongsi there is usually a visual or a written display of deceased members of the clan. In some cases there are very extensive displays where visitoprs can come and search for photographs of their direct ancestors. 

The ancestral hall of the Kongsi will often include memorabilia where the clan boasts of the achievements of its members. Higher education and positions of political power are especially noted. 

VIEWS OF KONGSI

The Kongsi clan houses of George Town are beautiful examples of traditional Chinese architecture. Many of them are masterpieces of Chinese aesthetics. 

As well as places of worship, the Kongsi are also places of recreation, with kitchens and meeting halls (and in the past - up until the Second World War - opium dens.) 

THE CLAN JETTIES

In George Town several clans have settled along the waterfront, constructing their own jetties. There now remains numerous 'clan jetties' where members of the clan live in housing constructed on the jetties themselves. Much of their income now comes from tourism, but in the past it came from sea-trade and fishing. 

* * * 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Lapis Lazuli

In a recent post on these pages – see here – we felt moved to defend the colour blue from those reckless deconstructionists who propagate the bogus assertion that people of earlier eras could not distinguish such a colour. The argument, we explained, is in large measure a linguistic one. One of the languages often cited in this regard is Chinese where the word qing refers to either blue or to green, which is to say that Chinese has no distinct word for blue (or for green). Instead, blue is usually regarded as a shade of green – or is it that green is regarded as a shade of blue? In any case, quite reasonably, the Chinese see blue and green on the same scale. We might also say that yellow and brown are on the same scale, or that red and orange are on the same scale. There is no justification for supposing that people could not see such colours, only that their mode of differentiating them, the words they use, is different to our own. 

In another recent post – see here – these pages also took occasion to celebrate the extensive use of the colour vermillion – or cinnabar – in the Chinese tradition, and especially in sacred contexts such as Taoist temples. Chinese red (vermillion) is not merely lucky to the Chinese, we explained, but actually sacred, and has attained this status from the strongly alchemical themes of the Chinese tradition.

In this current post we celebrate a special application of a shade of blue in the same tradition – the Chinese love of and extensive use of that rich shade of blue usually referred to as ultramarine but which is more accurately described as lapis lazuli, since it is from that semi-precious stone that the colour was traditionally derived. The stone has been mined in eastern Afghanistan for thousands of years and its use spread to China eastwards and to the Levant and ancient Egypt westwards along the great east/west trade routes. In this case, however, it is mainly associated with the Boodhist tradition in China, rather than Taoism, and so also features in Tibetan colour schemes. 

As the present author has remarked in recent posts, entering the Sino-Asiatic world brings one into contact with a flood of vermillion. But it also means encounters with lapis lazuli in the iconography and colourings of temples under Boodhist influence. It is not a colour that features in the temples of the Hindoos. We encounter it instead among the Tibetan Boodhists and then by extension throughout China. The Chinese, we must say, developed a particular love for it. It is a distinctly Chinese blue. 

The Boodha of healing is often shown in lapis lazuli, as above. 

Simplistic accounts will tell you that blue is the ‘colour of death’ in the Chinese tradition, and that it is counted as ‘unlucky’. This is clearly not the case for lapis lazuli (ultramarine) which is, rather, counted as celestial in its significance. It is a heavenly colour. Moreover, just as vermillion (cinnabar) is associated with gold mining, raw lapis lazuli is flecked with gold – like stars – which further underlines its celestial symbolism. In Christian iconography, the outer garment of the Virgin Mary where she is ‘Queen of Heaven’ is thus cast in ultramarine as well.

The pictures on this page are from the great Chinese Boodhist temple at Air Itam south of George Town on the Prince of Wales island. This is by far the largest and most opulent temple complex on Pe Nang. It is situated at a location at the foot of Pe Nang Hill that the Chinese have long regarded as having especially potent feng sui. 

Much of the temple – officially called Kek Lok Si – was initially funded by the illustrious XIXth century Chinese tycoon Cheong Fatt Tze, one of the most famous residents of George Town. His old estate is still extant and is now unofficially known locally as the ‘Blue Mansion’ since Mr Cheong had a particular love of lapis lazuli and painted his mansion accordingly. He had a deep and very Chinese love of this particular blue (even if it was referred to using the same word as green.) The traditional Chinese world features lapis lazuli. Ultramarine - symbolic of heaven - features in traditional Chinese colour symbolism. Readers can find pictures of the ‘Blue Mansion’ in George Town below. 

Finally, in yet another recent post - see here - these pages celebrated the work of Mr William Butler Yeats, describing him as one of the finest poets of the English language in the modern era. The subject of this present page gives us cause to recall one of his very finest poems, Lapis Lazuli, in which the poet contemplates a Chinese statue made of the stone, and which poem is reproduced for the edification of readers as follows:

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out,
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or on shipboard,
Camel-back, horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in Lapis Lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instrument.

Every discolouration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

* * * 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Views of a Chinese Graveyard

In the hilly region towards the centre of the Prince of Wales Island – or Pe Nang as it is called – is the old town of Bilak Pulau. Stranded there an entire afternoon awaiting return buses to George Town the present author wandered into the surrounding jungle and about three miles out of town encountered an old traditional Chinese cemetery. The photographs on this page are views of the cemetery, the graves and the funerary art from that site, along with a few rudimentary notes on the symbolism of Chinese graves. 

The Chinese constitute an ethnic majority in modern Pe Nang – the only area of the Malay peninsula or the Malacca Straits where they do so – and have been an established community for many centuries. Although there are a few graves from recent times, this cemetery is from an older era and is the burial place of many of the progenitors and ancestors of the illustrious Chinese clans who still populate the island. These were Chinese – mainly from southern China – who ventured to the Straits in search of fortune, or at least a better life. 

Although remote and buried in forest, the cemetery is still tended. In the photos shown on this page readers will notice the profusion of slips of paper strewn all about; this is from a recent festival in which graves are decorated with messages to the dead, as in this instance:

The remarkable thing about traditional Chinese graves is their shape. In contrast to the boxed rectilinear graves of Europeans, they are almost always semi-circular in shape, or what is often described as 'horseshoe' shaped, or else the shape of the Greek letter omega. The deceased is buried with the head at the top of this curved shape and so the "head stone" is actually where the feet are. Burial is usually quite shallow - compared to the mandatory six feet of the european grave - and so a tumulus or mound is usually shaped over the area inside the omega/horseshoe. The grave therefore is elevated above ground level.

There is much discussion about the significance and meaning of the curved burial plot, although very little of it is informative or sensible. As with nearly all things Chinese, readers will find an abundance of reports stating that the shape is regarded as "lucky" and is designed to bring "good luck" to the deceased in the afterlife. This tells us nothing. 

More useful are accounts that tell us that the shape is developed from the theories and practices of feng sui - Chinese geomancy - where it is considered beneficial for the dead to be buried in a valley or a concave formation of hills; where this is lacking then the grave itself is mounded up and shaped accordingly. This is evident in the graveyard depicted here. It is, as it happens, on a western-facing hillside that conforms in part to the feng sui requirements, and clearly individual graves have been shaped into small hills to accentuate the natural lay of the earth in an appropriate way. 

Other accounts of the omega/horseshoe grave remark upon the fact that sometimes the tumulus is decorated like a tortoise shell, and so the entire construction seems to allude to the shape of a tortoise. Why? Because, we are again told, "tortoises are good luck." Certainly, but why? The key idea is that the tortoise shell is cosmological. This is a very common symbolism found throughout Chinese cosmology (and the Chinese tradition is strongly cosmological.) The symbolism concerns an over-arching shell such as the sky is supposed to be in traditional cosmological understandings. The grave then becomes a microcosm of the world. There is, however, also the fact that tortoises, according to legend, are supposed to seek out a suitable (re: "lucky") place to die. By making the grave tortoise-like it becomes - by extension - a good place for the dead to be buried. It is, in any case, all about a suitable location. For the traditional Chinese the location of the grave is paramount. 

What most accounts of Chinese burial practices neglect to mention, though, is that - very obviously - the shape of the traditional grave is uterine. The earth is a womb. The grave is the uterus. The dead await rebirth (either by resurrection or in the Pureland - Chinese accounts of the afterlife are diverse.) The shapes and curves of the Chinese grave are, in any case, distinctly feminine. This is the deepest, most primordial and most important symbolism. Compared to the utilitarian Western burial box (coffin) the Chinese grave is distinctly anatomical and the curved shapes emphasise the idea of the earth as womb, the living earth, which is the key underlying metaphor of geomancy. Chinese burial practices are above all geomantic. This fact is on display everywhere in a traditional Chinese cemetery. We will hopefully have occasion to explore this further at a later date. 

Note the semi-circular "forecourt" in front of the grave marker and the lines of salt that families draw at various points around grounds along with offerings to the dead. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black