On Friday, I went to "India Town" to buy a present for Karen. I ate food at various restaurants. Penang is a fairly clean place and it is even safe to eat from street food venders. In the evening, I went with a fellow professor and his wife to the Snake Temple – another Taoist temple honoring Kuan Yin. This temple is known for its ability to provide healing and its capacity to attract snakes. On arrival, we found that, in recent years, the temple's snake population has declined because the land surrounding the temple has been developed. Penang is filled with high-rise condos and apartments – it is experiencing an economic boom, which has been good for the people but not so good for the snakes. People must feed the temple snakes to keep them alive.
Afterward we went to the night market and ate Roti Canai – a bread of the type also made in Chenai, India. It is made like pizza in that the maker must toss the dough so that it acquires its
flatness – then the bread is fried while clarified butter and herbs are applied to the top – after frying, it is folded for serving.
3/22
The next day, I led a Semester at Sea trip to see a presentation by a Qi Gong master. Taoism is the original religion of ancient China – and many Chinese people in Penang have adapted a combination of Taoism and Buddhism. According to Taoist tradition, Qi is the energy that pervades the universe. Qi Gong is the skill that allows a person to direct this energy. The Qi Gong master taught us meditation exercises so that we could develop our own skills in this area and gave a healing demonstration using one of our students. The student said afterward that,
during the demonstration, she felt a powerful energy flowing through her legs. She reported that the feeling continued even an hour after the demonstration ended. The Qi Gong master suggested that the student's ankle problem would be alleviated and that any other problems that anyone in the room might have would also be cured. I found the Qi Gong master to be an extremely positive person – quite a pleasant individual -- and I am not surprised that people seek his services all over the world. I had a student take my photograph with the master.
3/23
On my last day in Penang, I went back to the local Quan Yin temple (the one without snakes) and learned how to do the rituals. People purchase two candles, a large bundle of incense, and a kind of spiritual paper money. They light their candles and place one on each side of a main altar. After performing this action, one must distribute the incense sticks, three at a time, to sandboxes in front of the many altars throughout the temple. Each altar requires some praying. Prayer involves doing a kind of bowing motion three times and then placing three sticks of incense in front of the altar. There are enough altars so that all the sticks in the bundle are used up. Then the paper money is placed in a kind of furnace where it is burnt – sent to the spirit world where it can pay for the requested spiritual services. Maybe the ancestors need some pocket money for living in the heavenly realm – or perhaps Quan Yin needs cash for doing good deeds.
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