Singapore’s fascinating mix of religions, cultures and rituals

Singapore is a multi cultural city.


77% is Chinese, 14% Malayan, 8% Indian en 1% Eurasian. Talking about the locals aka residents here.

There are also long term non-residents: 19%.


Partly those are expats: often high educated, high income caucasians, like Frits.
The rest of them are migrant workers. Cheap labourers, either for construction work (men) or as nanny’s and cleaning ladies (women). The men often come from Bangladesh or India, the women from the Philippines or Indonesia.

Due to all those ethnicities, there are also that many religions, churches, temples and rituals in the city. Very interesting.

Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism, Shiks, Catholics, Jews, you name it, Singapore has it;-).

Last week I walked through Geylang for five hours.

At night a sort of red light district, during the day a very authentic neighborhood with a chinese-malay character. Streets dotted with beautiful old houses and lots of temples. A very interesting combination.

With temples everywhere:

In this neighborhood you also find lots of shops, specialized in ceremonial funeral items. Josspaper, items to be burned at ancestor rituals.

For the Chinese, the afterlife is as important as the here and now.
That’s why funerals and remembrance days are surrounded with rituals and ceremonies.
In the hereafter the deceased needs to be able to have the same quality of life as when he or she was still alive. So the living take care that their deceased relative has everything he/she needs. Golfclubs, clothes, food, something to drink, a Gucci bag, a cellphone and lots of money. Mayve even a car, a house and servants!

All of this can be bought in these shops. Only…made out of paper…often on scale. Although the items are ‘just’ paper objects, still a serious paper purchase could be over a thousand dollars!

Traditional chinese attire from paper.

“And I would like some sexy underwear and slippers for my deceased wife”.

At these ceremonies there is a lot of food, next to the paper items. The paper stuff is burned, while the food is eaten, at the end.

Visiting a chinese temple, you will find people praying and burning incense.

Monks chanting, in long meditative sessions.

Indian temple priests, always well fed due to their high status, several times a day perform ritual sessions with music, singing and worshiping some of the many gods.

Chinese believers use wooden sticks, that they shake, throw, pick and bring to a fortune teller.

It works like this: at the temple you take a wooden box filled with wooden, numbered sticks. The case is open on one side. You kneel, pray and bend forward, while meanwhile the tube shakes up and down, rattles, again and again untill finally one of them falls out.

You write down the number on the stick, and go to one of many fortune-tellers who work in minsicule kiosks in or near the church. These fortune tellers have a thick book in front of him. You give them the number of the stick that fell out and your question or problem. For example: “I’m sick and one doctor says I have to have an operation, but the other me says I should just not do that, etc. The number on my stick was 43” The fortune teller goes through the book with that information. And eventually comes with his advice or answer.
Reminds me of Tarot card reading.

Feng Shui is highly valued in Singapore, and taken into account, for example in the construction and decoration of buildings.

The other day, Frits was strolling through Singapore and passed by a march of Indian people with meat hooks in their body and pierced tongues and cheeks, walking for miles through town like this in the burning heat. Amazing!

This ceremony turned out to be Thaipusam.
Bizarre, yes, but also great.

All these beliefs and rituals are just wonderful, surprising, new, interesting, colorful … for me, at least, as a self-declared western amateur urban anthropologist;-)

I feel very fortunate that I can see and experience all this (well, as a spectator that is … ;-))