A SYDNEY JOSS HOUSE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2517, 2 June 1909, Page 2

A SYDNEY JOSS HOUSE.

A TEMPLE OF MEMORY.

QUAINT ORIENTAL CEREMONIES

(Front tho __ “Sydney Morning

Herald.”)

Lights flared in the darkness over the Chinese gardens, off Iletreat-street, Alexandria., and voices babbled. Thirty of forty men were crowded about a little shed of galvanised iron. Flares, on tho end of polos, burned dull and smoky, wavering, and the. kerosene dripped from them in long strings of blue flame. There was a rattling outburst of crackers, shouting, and a growing volume of grey smoke. Strange, shrill wind instruments began, and tin-ny-sounding gongs. The light bearers turned towards us, and the rest iell in behind them. And now the procession was taking them to their ne>v temple. - ' A thousand years ago there was a famine in China. It spread through a dozen cities, and the poor died m thousands. Two rich men., Hoong him" and Gwan Goong, gave up all they had, bought food, and broke the famine. They died, and the people worshipped their memory. They were made josses, were looked upon almost as gods. Images to represent them were enshrined in temples, and their countrymen laid gifts before the shrines, in memory of their benevolence and as tokens of lasting gratitude. So lasting that even here, away down to Australia, a temple to their memory was built to them, Not much of a temple, the first; it is used now as a kind of a storehouse—but a new and fine one has just been finished, and on a Tuesday, at midnight, it was opened, with queer Eastern ceremonies, and the two josses carried to its shrine. This was the beginning of the procession. First cam© tho men with gongs, which they beat unceasingly; then one with lighted candles and smouldering sticks, giving out a wliif of incense; then flarelights, a banner, and some large dark objects, half seen in the half darkness: more candles, and six or seven priests. These priests might almost have stepped from some explorer’s photograph of a Lamaserai in Thibet. They wore clothed in long gowns of thin, shiny cloth, one blue, and others of a dull red-brown. On their heads were fiat, conical hats, such as you see in pictures of mandarins. They were.) made of some stiff, white substance, and from the point at the ton; of each hung numberless red strings, that spread over the white surface, making the hats look red. These men had not the faces of the ordinary vegetable John; they seemed od to be of higher caste. The wooden drums went tap, tap, tap; the queer tin trumpets blared out, shrill and thin; over them all jarred out tho deafening banging of the gongs. The smoky flar-.-s dipped every way, shining on Mongol laces and European clothes. In the middle of the irregular procession the priests walked solemnly. _ It was a queer sight, with noise enough to wake half Alexardria. As we left the jumble of Chinese quarters about the old joss house there was another burst of crackers, and tho procession reached the street. A late tram stopped to watch; one or two white people gathered in the roadway; from a verandah just above a little girl leaned over in her nightgown. It was a black night, very cold. In a few minutes, still banging at the gongs, the procession had reached the tempo. There was a loud burst of crackers, and it entered. . It is a one-roomed red bnck bunding, about the size and shape of aj Jny country church, aud there is curious scrollwork, and the faces of fantastic monsters look down on you from the roof. It stands in a yard, with sheds at the back, and by the side, in a twostory building, is a meeting-room for the Chinese societies that have contributed to the building. This room was s°t for supper, Chinese supper, with plates aud bowls and chopsticks. Lpon th i mantleshelf stood a great, brown wooden image, apparently of some old Chinese holy man, with arm upraised, as if blessing those who were to sit beneath. There was a faint, elusive odour of sandlewood. . The procession entered the temple, and the noise of the crackers stopped. All Europeans (bar one) were asked to step outside, and at least a bundled Chinese crowded towards the centre of the room. The ceremony that followed was most earnest and exceedingly impressive,- if now 1 and then grotesque. The place itself, the whole atmosphere of the thing, with its sidelights on queer customs, hints on ancestor worship, gleams or gold and glaring colors, odours' of eastern spices, although barbaric, had a solemn fascination of its own. And it was certaimly a glance into another world. The temple, in as out, was of red brick. At the far end stood a huge o-old altar, a mass of involved scroll work, built up round a central space, the so far empty shrine. Nearly everything within the place had been brought from China, and the gold work was not painted, but covered with goM leaf. In tho scroll work were heads aud forms of gods and devils and dragons, the whole an inextricable medley of queer curves and figures and faces. Upon a lodge in front stood gold-cover-ed metal images of Chinese warriors, sword in hand. Down the sides of the altar ran perpendicular lines of Chinese characters, exalting the memories o the dead; and on the middle or the lcdo-c stood queer-carved copper bowls of smouldering sandlewood, with a faint haze just above them, spreading the sweet odour. . . From roof to floor on each side of the room ran down four bands of varying colors On both sides of the room were horizontal framed inscriptions, everything in pairs—so much so that opposite a- doorway on one side a marble tablet had been let into the wall' to correspond with the door. In front of the altar stood three narrow' parallel tables, bearing candlesticks, a dull brass urn, flat-sided pewter vases filled with artificial flowers; and on the cas gold-covered bowls, embossed with monsters. In front of these, in about the middle of the temple, stood a great spray of artificial flowers, and still nearer to the doorway a plant in a pot- Devon d this again was a table, laid with plate.s of rice,, and rice* covered with coins, all typifying the benevolence of the dead, and the offerings that would be made to them were they alive. At a little distance from this table the priest in the blue gown (Baoo,thev call, these vestments) had set a stand, o . which he placed- one of the josses borne in the procession,, a sort ox name in •rolden scroll work, about the size of a dressing table mirror, surmounted with a monster’s bead. This represent©!, Hoorn' Sing. Behind and over it he placed a large banging banner, painted with three, pictures. Jlus represented Gwan Goong, and the pictures woic o< him and his -private secretaries And then, with the Chinese crowded about reverently, but curiously on hot 1 Jo. —l--

sounds of the strange instruments, exactly at midnight the ceremony began. , . The first priest knelt upon a cushion, with his back to the direction of the altar, facing the two josses, and he chanted something, which the others seemed for a moment to take up like a response. He rose again and faced the altar, and again ho chanted, his voice mingling with tho Cliineso low-tonecl conversation all about him, and diowned nearly by tho sound of the gongs. Ping, ping,“ping, bang; ping, ping, ping. bang. A length of dai'K-colored cloth was laid from one table the other in the direction of the altar. That was to typify the road the josses would take to reach the shrine. A fowl was brought to tho priest, who, grasping it, began another incantation. Little red candles were lit before the josses; the priest flung handfuls of rice along the second table. The droning ceased, and the josses were carried along to the shrine. Within it they were set, JloOng Sing in front, the banner .of Gwan 3 Goong behind, and-over him. The initial part of the ceremony was finished, and, what was more, the last tram was gone. It should be added that it was explained more than once the ceremonies wore not religious, though for lack of a better name Europeans call tlio attendants priests. The wholo proceedings, the temple itself,' are merely in reverential memory of the dead.