The living care for ancestors and wandering spirits at Malaysia's Hungry Ghost Festival

BUKIT MERTAJAM, Malaysia (AP) — For 15 days, devotees pray and make offerings before a towering paper-and-bamboo effigy of Da Shi Ye. The celebration culminates in the ceremonial burning of the effigy, symbolically sending the deity back to the spirit world.

Maria Teresa Hernandez and Vincent Thian

September 3, 2026 

BUKIT MERTAJAM, Malaysia (AP) — It’s that time of year when the living make room for the dead. Malaysia’s Hungry Ghost Festival is held during the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which this year began in mid-August.

“It is centered around the worship of Da Shi Ye, also known as the Guardian God of Ghosts, and has become one of the major traditional Chinese religious celebrations in Bukit Mertajam,” said Lee Kim Fong, general affairs coordinator for the event.

The city is in Malaysia’s northern state of Penang, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur.

“It dates back to 1888, when there was a serious plague in Bukit Mertajam,” Lee said. “After that, our ancestors began worshipping Da Shi Ye.”

For 15 days, devotees pray and make offerings before a towering paper-and-bamboo effigy of Da Shi Ye. The celebration culminates in the ceremonial burning of the effigy, symbolically sending the deity back to the spirit world.

Lee estimated that more than 10,000 people attended the burning ceremony this year, with crowds sometimes reaching 20,000.

“The main purpose is to look after wandering spirits, especially spirits who have no one to worship or make offerings to them,” Lee said. “Some may have died in accidents or may have no family members to pray for them.”

Similar celebrations are held in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Devotees travel to Bukit Mertajam from across Malaysia as well as Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.

A towering effigy stands at the center of the celebration

The Da Shi Ye effigy in Bukit Mertajam is traditionally made about five centimeters (two inches) taller each year. In 2026, it reached 8.9 meters (about 29 feet).

Ng Chi Wong, 69, has spent more than four decades crafting the figures. He said completing the towering effigy takes about a month and a half, with a team of seven or eight people working on it.

“We have the measurements and a general idea of the structure, but there are no formal drawings,” Ng said. “Most of the design and construction details are already in our minds.”

The artisans begin with the head, the part that requires the most work, before building the main frame and shaping the body. The outer layers are then added and painted.

Ng said that the process has undergone some small improvements over time. Yet the craft requires more than technical skill.

“You also need to understand the tradition and the beliefs behind it,” he said.

The festival honors spirits with no one to remember them

Lim Han Cong, a University of Malaya master’s graduate in Chinese studies, described the Hungry Ghost Festival as a counterpart to another traditional Chinese observance: Qingming, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, when families honor their ancestors at their graves.

While Qingming focuses primarily on one’s own ancestors, the Hungry Ghost Festival extends offerings to wandering spirits and the unclaimed dead. “This tradition reflects a synthesis of Buddhist, Taoist and Chinese folk religious beliefs,” Lim said.

In Taoist ceremonies during the festival, priests recite sacred scriptures and perform rites to help the deceased find peace and salvation. Such practices are intended to provide comfort, nourishment and liberation to those who have no descendants to care for them.

“At its core, the Ghost Festival expresses the belief that the living and the dead remain connected through enduring moral and emotional bonds,” Lim said. “The living, therefore, have a responsibility to honor, support and help the deceased attain peace.”

An old tradition finds new roles in Malaysia

Offerings and rituals like those held in Bukit Mertajam eventually took on a broader community role. Starting in the 1970s, Malaysian Chinese celebrations incorporated charitable activities such as auctions of blessed offerings and fundraising campaigns for schools.

“As a result, the Ghost Festival in Malaysia has evolved beyond a festival devoted solely to honoring the dead,” Lim said. “It has also become an important platform for strengthening community solidarity.”

That broader role is also evident in Bukit Mertajam. Money raised through fundraising efforts helps the organizing committee provide assistance to people with medical needs and support Chinese-language education.

Alongside that community work, organizers are looking for new ways to broaden access to the tradition. Participation is no longer limited to those who can make it to Bukit Mertajam.

“We introduced online worship for devotees who are overseas or unable to return,” Lee said. “So they can still take part in the prayers and make offerings.”

A professional team documented the celebration from Aug. 14 through Aug. 29. Organizers plan to upload the footage to Facebook so people around the world can see the Da Shi Ye festival in Penang.

“This is a Chinese tradition that has been passed down for more than a hundred years,” Lee said. “As descendants of the Chinese community, we have a responsibility to preserve it.”

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Hernández reported from Beijing. AP video journalist Syawalludin Zain contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Vampire Planet: Of Ecocide and Empire

Joshua Frank

 August 28, 2026

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Fire at the Shahran Oil Depot in northwestern Tehran following an Israeli airstrike on March 7th, one of several facilities struck in the vicinity while around thirty oil storage and processing sites were attacked across the country. Source: @sentdefender

When we talk about war, it’s usually in numbers. Innocents and soldiers killed. Bombs dropped. Money spent. We hear figures like 7.6 million and 37.5 billion. There are so many like this that they often feel meaningless, even with context. In this case, 7.6 million is the tonnage of bombs the US has dropped on Iran, and 37.5 billion, the cost of this illegal war. 

Intentionally or not, large numbers like these obscure the reality of war’s toll. 

The number of victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, for instance, doesn’t do justice to the violence Palestinians have been forced to endure. 

Likewise, the number of bombs dropped and dollars spent in an attempt to destroy Iran’s government says nothing about the true human and environmental costs of US/Israel aggression. It reduces these crimes to statistics that don’t accurately convey the horror on the ground, and so much of the ground in the Middle East is soaked with the pollution and blood of empire.

The US has a long history of waging war on ecologies in the Middle East, dating back to at least Operation Desert Storm in 1991. 

The aftermath of the US’s massive bombing campaigns in Iraq was tangible. Poisoned aquifers. Widespread contamination of soil with depleted uranium and other toxic metals. Air pollution from scorched oil infrastructure. Irreparable damage to marine ecosystems.

Saddam, too, was guilty of committing ecocidal acts. He deliberately drained the ecologically significant Mesopotamian marshlands in southern Iraq, and Iraqi soldiers set fire to oil fields as they fled Kuwait.

Yes, wars are inherently environmentally disastrous, and, on a global scale, the US is far more culpable than most – from carpet bombings to nuclear detonations to Agent Orange. The US/Israeli bombardment of Iran today is a continuation of this belligerence.

We know, from Pete Hegseth’s admission to Congress, how many targets have been hit and how much money has been spent. But what we don’t truly know, and perhaps won’t for many years to come, is what these bombs and munitions have inflicted on the people and land of Iran.

What we already can gather from the US bombing of Iran: The US and Israel have targeted oil infrastructure, releasing millions of tons of greenhouse gases, which in turn have created toxic, acidic rain clouds. Bombing near coastal regions has caused oil spills, and slicks are drifting into biologically important island ecosystems. 

And, if Iraq serves as a guide, there’s sure to be severe soil and groundwater contamination that will plague Iranians for decades to come. It’s difficult to grasp the toll the US war machine continues to inflict, not only on people but also on the ecosystems we depend on for survival.

In their must-see film, Earth’s Greatest Enemy, Abby Martin and Mike Prsyner explore this toll beyond mere numbers. In an emotional and gripping narrative, they explain the scale of the US military machine and its ongoing destructiveness to our burning planet. Ed Rampell wrote a (well-deserved) glowing review for us last spring.

This week, they released a deleted scene from the film, which is now available to stream on the ecocidal history of the US military.

If you want to begin to understand just how devastating the US empire was and remains, I implore you to watch the film and share it with everyone who still believes in the version of America that Donald Trump wants taught in our schools.

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A startling study released in July reveals that the carbon footprint of metal production is 10 times higher than previously thought, largely because acid-laden runoff reacts with oxygen-rich surface waters and releases a large amount of carbon. This is sour news for those hoping we can mine our way out of this climate crisis.

As images of a horrific, deadly flood fill our news feeds, it’s becoming clear that our warming climate played a role in dislodging an enormous glacier, triggering a massive mudslide on the Nepal-Tibet border this week that killed hundreds. The deluge of rock and water registered as a 5.2 geological event, equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT.

The Himalayas contain 15,000 large glaciers, and nearly all of them are receding fast, creating conditions in which huge amounts of ice can break off, essentially slicing off the sides of entire mountains. They are expected to lose 70% of their ice by 2100. Nepal emits less than 0.1% of global emissions but is one of the most vulnerable countries to the wrath of climate chaos as glaciers melt.

It’s almost certain that many natural disasters (if you can call them that) will occur in the Himalayas, crushing more communities as our climate continues to warm.

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In more upbeat news, rumor has it that Bad Energy is shipping ahead of its September release date, so grab yours, and it’s not too late to bundle with a cool “Data Centers are Disasters” t-shirt designed by Roger Peet. If your town is on this list, I’d love to see you.

JOSHUA FRANK is co-editor of CounterPunch and co-host of CounterPunch Radio. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, and the forthcoming, Bad Energy: The AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who are Selling Off Our Future, both with Haymarket Books. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll him on Bluesky @joshuafrank.bsky.social