Chinese vegetarian festival starts in Thailand

[webfact]

Chinese vegetarian festival starts in Thailand



BANGKOK: -- Thailand yesterday began celebrating the over a week long vegetarian festival in colourful events in its Chinese communities throughout the kingdom aimed at promoting tourism under the advice of Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha who encouraged all Thais to eat vegetarian food during the period.

This year’s celebration was more active with several provinces with Chinese communities in the South, the North, the Northeast, the East, the Central Plains and Bangkok taking part so as to attract more tourists to the country to experience the events.

Although highlights of the Chinese celebration of the festival will be in Phuket, Hat Yai, Trang, Nakhon Sawan, and Bangkok, but other northern and northeastern provinces also are actively promoting the event to be on their list of tourist attractions.

In Phuket, the celebrations is held from October 12-22 .

Last night, all Chinese shrines in this beach resort province were thronged by large numbers of faithful.

These include both Thai and Thai-Chinese residents that can be seen robed in white as a sign of devotion to ancient Chinese gods and goddesses.

Most of these shrines have prepared vegetarian food to be distributed for free during the entire 10 days of the festival.

Meanwhile the atmosphere at the ‘Kew Ong-Eah’ shrine in Trang province also saw similar scenes with large groups of Thai-Chinese arriving very early in the morning hours.

Devotees arrived early so that they could avoid the long queues later in the day to register for cheap 400 baht vegan food for the entire 9 days of the festival.

In Pattani, the famous ‘Mae Lim Kor-Neaw’ Chinese shrine has also made similar preparations with large amounts of vegetarian food and fruits laid out to receive the devout and faithful that arrive here throughout the day.

It is estimated that for this year, the shrine will receive no less than 3,000 devotees per day.

In Hat Yai, residents and tourists were very fortunate this year as they were treated to extremely cheap 5-star vegan food prepared by well known chefs from local luxury hotels.

More than 40 dishes were prepared and they were sold along the main thoroughfares for only 40 – 60 baht per serving.

In the northern part of the country, the celebrations were held at the Chiang Mai municipality almshouse.

Two massive frying pans 2 meters in diameter were made available so that vegan food could be prepared and given out free-of-charge to the public.

In Bangkok, the festival kicked off yesterday with colourful activities organised in Yaowaraj or Chinatown.

The Yaowarat vegetarian festival showcases the traditional observation of vegetarian diet for the purposes of spiritual cleansing and merit-making for local residents with Chinese ancestry.

Adorned with yellow flags along the road, the celebration was commence with a Chinese lion dance, a flower float carrying deity statutes, and a ceremony to select a virgin lady to represent Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy.

Source: http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/chinese-vegetarian-festival-starts-in-thailand


-- Thai PBS 2015-10-14

[Skeptic7]

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

[Thian]

My bakery even sold pizza-bread without cheese because of this....

The take-away also don't sell any meat

[DrTuner]

Wabbit food.

[robertthebruce]

Nice change to have so much choice, but i will say even though its ''Vegetarian'' its not that healthy as its either Too Salty or Too Sugary ...., or Deep Fried..

which as we know is not good for us...

[h90]

My bakery even sold pizza-bread without cheese because of this....

The take-away also don't sell any meat

boycott them

[trogers]

Seems some of the 'pious' cannot do away with meat completely. There are imitation meat dishes to satisfy their mental craving for meat...

[Thian]

My bakery even sold pizza-bread without cheese because of this....

The take-away also don't sell any meat

boycott them

No way, i like this bakery because i can park there 2 metres from the entrance

Also they aren't too expensive like Breadtalk or the other ones.

But in Thailand they call anything pizza, without cheese, without tomatosauce, they even add ketchup .

I do boycot restaurants who won't let me choose myself to eat vegetarian or not. I don't care if it's vegetariantime now but i want to eat meat.

We live in Thailand, not in China.

And have you ever bought a salad in Thailand at the market or so? They give so much mayonais based dressing with it that it's more fat then french fry's i guess. My wife loves to eat that and thinks it's healthy because it's salad.

[robertthebruce]

It is difficult to get a decent Salad in ''Thailand'',they can be found but they are few and far between..

as for the ''Mayonais'' revolting stuff, hate it.....

[Gonsalviz]

Gimme meat.