The Chingay Festival starts with the Lighting-Up Ceremony, held at the Xing Gong. It was a tradition that the various Kangchu (holders of the surat sungai or river permits) would bring a pair of lanterns by boat to the jetty at Jalan Tangga Duke to be presented at the Johor Old Chinese Temple. Today, the open-air auditorium is festooned with red lanterns and at 8 pm precisely, the lights are turned on by the main temple officials and the sky is filled with fireworks and smoke from fire crackers.
After several rather long speeches, the rest of the evening was pure entertainment. You do not need to understand Chinese to enjoy events such as this, and seating is free and informal. Here are some snapshots as a record of the event in 2018.
The entertainment finished at 10 pm, and thankfully it did not rain! The audience disappeared very quickly at the end of the show, and people moved in to start preparing the grounds for the arrival of the deities in another two days.
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