GOT HEAD, GOT TAIL

My foreign visitors might be wondering what the blazers I am talking about, right? Well, if you are Malaysian or Singaporean, you'd know what "Got head, got tail" means. For the benefit of those who are in the dark, Oo Tau Oo Boi (Hokkien dialect) or Yau Tau Yau Mei (Cantonese dialect) is a Chinese saying which means completeness from start to finish.

Now that I have gotten the explanation of the saying done, let me fill you in on the practice. Actually, my mum told me to go and buy some sugar cane to put on top of the piece of auspicious paper that she had bought from the prayer shop. The paper was to be put on top of the tombstone and should be weighed down by the sugar cane. The sugar cane would symbolise sweetness and the meaning would mean that the descendants become so rich that they have more than enough gold to lend to others as well.

Well, when I told my cousin brother Thim Fook to stop by at the Gopeng market for me to buy the sugar canes, he told me that in the Northern states like Kedah and Perlis, they use pineapples instead of sugar canes. He had observed his relatives using it and suggested it as an alternative. He said that the pineapple would be offered to the ancestors first and then after the veneration ceremony, the leafy part of the pineapple would be placed on top of the tombstone and the edible part would then be taken home. When cutting the pineapple, the words Oo Tau Oo Boi or Got Head, Got Tail will be uttered. The edibile part will be taken home and eaten for good luck. By the way, my cousin brother is a Christian and I believe he does not really believe in the potency of the Ong Lai or the pineapple. Me neither! Both of us did it as we felt it was a fun thing to do. Besides our main objective was to clear and tidy the graves of our ancestors and to pay respect to them. He as a Christian brought along flowers and prayed according to his beliefs and I as a Taoist carried out the ceremonial ritual that my mother had taught me to do.