Hotelier Chris Ong preserves George Town's fading cultural rituals in new book

Chris Ong returned to Penang in 2007 after thirty years away, and what he found unsettled him. The inner city of George Town, where he had grown up, felt hollowed out. Residents had scattered. Businesses had moved in. The place was still standing, still breathing, but something vital had drained away—a sense of collective life, of shared meaning, of the rituals that had once bound people together across generations.

Ong is a hotelier now, the founder of George Town Heritage Hotels, a collection of restored properties including Seven Terraces, Jawi Peranakan Mansion, and Muntri Mews. Before that, he spent twenty years in banking. Before that, he was a young man who left the island in 1977 to study in Melbourne. But what struck him most acutely upon his return was not the physical decay of buildings—those could be restored, reimagined, brought back to life. It was the disappearance of something intangible: the rituals, the ceremonies, the observances that had given structure and meaning to daily life. These, he understood, could vanish entirely, leaving no trace.

The fear was urgent. Ong watched people around him struggle with memory loss and dementia. He saw how quickly oral history evaporated when the generation that carried it moved on or passed away. His own grandmother had maintained her rituals even as his parents embraced post-war modernity and rejected much of their traditional cultural inheritance. When she died in the 1980s, while he was living overseas, Ong felt the weight of an era ending. He decided then that he would document what he could remember, what he could learn, what was still alive in the community around him.

The result is Heritage Rituals, a 108-page hardcover book published by George Town Heritage Hotels, priced at sixty ringgit. It is organized around specific ceremonies and observances—the sending-off of Chao Kun, the Kitchen God, on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month; Cheng Beng, the annual grave-tending ritual that falls 105 days after the Winter Solstice; Pai Ti Kong, the prayers to the Jade Emperor celebrated on the eve of the ninth day of Lunar New Year. Ong writes in the first person, weaving personal anecdotes and childhood recollections throughout. Each chapter is detailed and informative, but also evocative and nostalgic—a record of practices he learned by word of mouth from his grandmother and has since deepened through study of Taoist and Buddhist principles.

Of all the rituals he documents, Cheng Beng moves him most. This is the day when families visit the graves of their ancestors to clean and maintain them, to remember those who came before, to reflect on the sacrifices they made and the legacy one will leave behind. It is also, he acknowledges, the most emotionally confronting—a ritual that forces you to face your own mortality. Ong's immediate ancestors are buried in Penang, so the observance does not require great effort. His siblings gather in George Town each year, and together they tend the graves of their parents, both sets of grandparents, and several great-grandparents. They were conditioned to this duty as children, but Ong considers it a privilege. There is also, he notes with a slight smile, the matter of feng shui: the condition of ancestral graves is said to affect the well-being of descendants. His family has always taken pride in maintaining them, just as they take pride in the condition of their homes.

Pai Ti Kong is a different kind of ritual—one that showcases Ong's reputation as an aesthete and collector. He has amassed a world-renowned collection of antiques and porcelain, and each year, on the eve of the ninth day of Lunar New Year, he ceremoniously unpacks the paraphernalia for the altar table. His staff and helpers watch in quiet amazement as he removes lotus offering plates of varying sizes, elaborate lacquer boxes for sweetmeat offerings, antique gilded stands, precious candlesticks. He inherited no physical objects except oral history and an appreciation for Straits Chinese artifacts, so everything in his collection has been acquired deliberately, chosen for its beauty and significance. Among his treasures is a rectangular carved stand for ngor siew—five celestial symbols made of pink sugar. There is an intricately carved gilded chien hup for displaying sweetmeat skewers. There is a pair of Nyonya torches, acquired from Tan Sri Lim Phaik Gan, Malaysia's first woman ambassador and one of the first female lawyers to practice in the country, in her final years. The torches had belonged to Lim's grandmother. Ong believes there is something divine in the art of Pai Ti Kong offerings, and this belief drives him to continually improve—to be more creative, to source better oblations, to elevate the aesthetics. Last year, he created a two-tier altar table using antique elements he had collected over decades.

For those without access to a private Pai Ti Kong celebration, the most lively alternative is Chew Jetty at Weld Quay in Penang, where the prayer altar stretches at least twenty meters in length, laden with roast meats, fruit, traditional kuih, and stalks of sugarcane. The sugarcane commemorates how the Jade Emperor saved the Hokkiens from death—whether at the hands of Sung Dynasty soldiers or marauding pirates depends on which version of the story you hear—by hiding them in dense cane fields. Their safe emergence on the ninth day of Lunar New Year is celebrated with feasting, cultural performances, and fireworks that begin at midnight, much to the frustration of families with small children and pets.

George Town has become a destination during Chinese New Year, and especially during Pai Ti Kong. Ong's friends from Hong Kong, China, and across Asia come to witness it. The city swells with visitors. It is a double-edged sword: excellent for business, a nightmare for residents. Locals cannot get tables at their favorite restaurants. Prices inflate further. People feel pushed out of their own city. Yet Ong maintains there is nowhere else he would rather be during this season. When he lived in Australia, where Chinese New Year was just another day, he undertook the rituals as a way of reconnecting with his cultural heritage. The importance of Pai Ti Kong, he says, is embedded in the Hokkien diaspora of Nanyang and in his own DNA. He would feel uneasy if he did not observe it.

Contrary to popular belief, Chinese New Year is the most stressful time for Ong. The preparations are endless: making offerings to ancestors, serving the family reunion dinner, ushering in the New Year at midnight, preparing ang pao to distribute to family and staff. As a child, it was different. He would greet the elders in his home on the first morning of the year—his parents were modern and did not require kneeling or prostration, just a hug and handshake before they gave him his ang pao. The Ong family marked the occasion grandly: the children received fifteen brand new outfits for all fifteen days of the New Year period. More than a month before the celebration, the shops would be packed. Clothes were bought only once a year, so this was it—everything from pyjamas to shoes to underwear. Ong, who was clever with his hands, made red paper cuttings for sale to neighbors and relatives, earning pocket money and later creating unique designs with floral motifs and Chinese characters. He has recently begun recreating some of these decorations for his own use.

As the Year of the Horse moves toward its end and the Year of the Ram approaches, Ong reflects on the resilience of migrant Chinese communities. The rituals are proof of that resilience. They evolved and improved as wealth was created. What began as modest offerings by impoverished newcomers to Nanyang became more elaborate and sumptuous, commensurate with rising socioeconomic standing. The migrants also learned about class distinction from the prevailing British colonial structure. Overlay these social aspirations with Mahayana Buddhist principles of always elevating your offerings each season, and everything becomes, as Ong says with a conspiratorial whisper, a competitive sport.