Hungry Ghosts

My parents on their wedding day, 1st April 1953

I am ethnically Chinese, for the most part (there’s supposedly Malay and Murut on my mother’s side of the family), and I imagine that, going far enough back, all my Chinese ancestors were Daiost or Buddhist, or a combination of the two.

My father’s parents were definitely Daoist, but my mother’s maternal great-grandparents were Christians — I’m not sure what religion the family was before that.

When my father, Lee Cheng Hong, married my mother, he became a Roman Catholic and was baptised Francis Philip. My mother, Esther Hong, was also baptised in the Roman Catholic church, but I never saw her attend mass and I believe she was raised Methodist by her mother and grandmother.