Rebuilding the shrine
And yes, I'm writing a book
A barricade of food, around six metres long, confronts me. All around, my friends have taken their seats at a long, makeshift banquet table laid with banana leaves. A river of rice winds its way down the centre of the table. Parapets of curries and stews, roast meats and salads, noodles and pickles fortify the structure, while rich sauces form tributaries that pool at the bed of the rice. The whole table is awash with an edible rainbow.
This is the Great Wall Of Rice: an annual banana leaf rice feast, a new collaborative tradition for my potluck group.
Dabbling in tradition
For a long time I’ve thought about what it means to have ‘traditions’, as someone whose family has none to speak of. Both my parents left their respective homes at eighteen to study in Europe, and my dad was in his mid-forties by the time he, my mum, my brother and I (a newborn) moved back to his home country. Uprooted from such a young age, my parents never inherited fixed beliefs about religion, ritual, identity or even food from their parents, and thus neither did I.
Being nomadic in creed is liberating. Throughout my life I have happily donned other people’s worldviews, moving chameleon-like through major religions — Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism — while building my own pick ‘n’ mix bag of spiritual philosophy. I felt entitled to pick my own beliefs, and therefore my own traditions.
Then there were situations when traditions were imposed by dominant groups. Wherever you find yourself, observing local customs is synonymous with being respectful, no matter how much you personally disagree with them. When I lived in Sweden that looked like dancing round the maypole like a frog (ludicrous but bearable), stripping naked at the bath house (uncomfortable but bearable) or downing snaps (deliciously unbearable).
Being a dabbler can have its pros and cons, though. In recent years I’ve come to recognise how ‘traditional’ cultural customs can all too easily be reduced into the gross, or surface, rather than what is deep, or subtle. To understand more, look at Weaver & Hall’s Cultural Iceberg which is somehow the most visited page on my website.
Perhaps that’s why, whenever I am wearing my ESEA organisational hat, what is always front of mind is how to foster genuine and lasting connections between a disparate group of people who are:
… held together by genetics; a taxonomical label of ‘ESEA’, East and South East Asian. One that is relatively new, having been claimed in the last few years as an alternative to the nebulous and homogenising ‘Asian’, outmoded ‘Oriental’ or downright inaccurate ‘Chinese’. ESEA encompasses almost 30 national backgrounds, all the major religions and a multitude of languages. Aside from how we are labelled, there is nothing that binds this ‘community’.1
This time of year, how many East and Southeast Asians have been wished Happy Lunar New Year! by well-meaning though presumptuous bystanders? Yet I’ve always been acute to the nuance that just because we share the same skin colour, no two of us observe the same traditions. And if traditions are beliefs and behaviours passed down from one generation to the next, what does this unprecedented first generation believe in?
It dawned on me that not having a cohesive identity should not stop us from co-creating new traditions. Anyway, all traditions were at some point invented, and many ‘traditional’ markers of heritage are fairly modern.2 In this first generation with its new ‘ESEA’ label, creative imagination is a vital part of identity making.
Every year, after I lay down the washed banana leaves, a few minutes elapse before the food starts arriving. I look on these empty leaves as carte blanche for what is possible.
Everlasting youth
My annual feast was partly inspired by the Grand Shrine of Ise, located in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. Every twenty years this Shinto shrine is demolished and entirely rebuilt from scratch in a nearby site, using the same architectural specifications and skill sets that have been passed down for at least 1,300 years. Most of the period is spent on the reconstruction itself.
This twenty-year renewal process, known as Shikinen Sengū, is an expression of the Shinto belief of 常若 / tokowaka, or ‘everlasting youth’.3 Is that an oxymoron? Not if you believe that ‘repeated rebuilding renders sanctuaries eternal’.4 And since power tools are not allowed and only specific local trees are felled, it means that every generation must train up a new team of artisans, in order to keep the shrine’s existence going.
“I saw one elderly person who probably has experienced these events three or four times saying to young people who perhaps participated in the event as children last time, ‘I will leave these duties to you next time,’”… “The Sengu ceremony also plays a role as a ‘device’ to preserve the foundations of traditions that contribute to happiness in people’s lives.”5
In an age when preservationists spend most of their energy lamenting the dying of traditional craft, it doesn’t seem so crazy to tear down a shrine and start again. It is for you to decide what is sacred: Is it the building itself, or is it the journey to complete it?
Small offerings in a high street window
Like a cumbersome, protracted and painfully heavy version of a sand mandala, the ritualistic rebuild of the Ise shrine reminds us that material life is transitory.
What’s the point of doing nice things, if everything is impermanent?
You’ve got a point. But the Ise shrine also gives its local community a reason to come together. It gives them something to believe in.
I choose to look at every intentional act, no matter how small or large, as a re-affirmation of faith. Even mundane ritualistic loops, like making your bed; if you think about it, it’s almost arrogant to assume that you will live through the day to crawl into it tonight — or washing your plate, taking for granted that you’ll have enough food to eat at your next meal. Then there are grander rituals; renewing your wedding vows is an extraordinary act of trust in reciprocal love.
Implicit in each act of faith is also a contract with impermanence. Meaning, everything is impermanent, even faith itself.
Every time I travel in Asia, I love glimpsing the shrines set up in family homes and small businesses, whether these are ancestral altars or spirit houses. Here in the UK, you might spot them in Vietnamese restaurants and nail bars or Thai spas. I admire the way both the afterlife and celestial realms collide in mundane reality, often in a high street shop window. Asians do this well; the meta/physical gap between life and death is generally closer than in the West. Small offerings are made daily — incense, fruit, a can of Coke — while more luxurious gifts are offered during auspicious occasions.
In some ways, tending a household shrine is more challenging than the Ise shrine renovation. It requires getting up everyday and making a conscious commitment, in solitude, to replay tradition — regardless of whether you had a shitty night’s sleep or your beloved pet has just died. Each stick of incense burned is a line item in that daily contract with faith and impermanence.
I believe that is where big, spectacular communal traditions can give us the occasional much needed ‘glow up’. I see nothing wrong with the spectacle-isation(?!) of our banquet building; powerful images can be harnessed to titillate and inspire in equal measure. The community of Ise are well aware of how their event is consumed (and indeed, how it benefits their local economy). It’s just that they have chosen a pretty damn cool tradition to commit too, and long may it last for at least 1,300 more years.
In creating a new tradition for ourselves, my community and I consciously acknowledge not just where we came from, but who we would like to become. I hope that in those quiet daily moments when my peers are reflecting on their place in their world, they will be carried by memories of a river of rice and a fort of curry. Then, when we rebuild and demolish our steamed shrine of rice next year, we once again re-affirm our faith in our strength as a community.
Bits and bobs
The rumours are true:
Join my plant based Chinese ingredient workshops and congee sessions:
I did a lot last year, no surprise:
I made some memes and t’internet loved them. Why do I even bother writing?:
Read my short piece for Eating Better for more on this dichotomy.
See: engagement rings, Scottish tartan, 魚生 / yee sang
Ibid.
You inspire me!