MELAKA: The table laden with prayer offerings – fruits and snacks – is even longer this year in order to accommodate more prayer items, but all these offerings are grabbed up by devotees in just two minutes after the Hungry Ghost prayers.

It is alright for devotees to grab as many offerings as possible in this temple at Pokok Mangga which has inherited the practice of letting devotees bring home the prayer offerings.

It has since become a tradition where devotees are in a race to grab prayer items home, a move interpreted as bringing peace and prosperity home.

As the temple, registered as Persatuan Penganut Dewa Ching San Hou Wang, is gaining popularity with its unique activity of grabbing prayer offerings home during Hungry Ghost Festival, more offerings are contributed for the festival with the table serving prayer items getting longer this year.

From a 48-foot long table, it is 56 feet long this year to place more offerings such as coconuts, rambutans, mangosteens, honeydews, bananas, oranges, pears, papayas, snacks, biscuits, breads and others.

Members of the public and devotees brought along plastic bags, shopping bags, boxes or pails to the temple to participate in the tradition of grabbing prayer offerings after the prayer session was completed.

Prayer items which fell on the floor were not spared, too.

There is no limit to the number of items devotees can bring home, and the temple will not have to worry about leftover prayer items as the entire table will be emptied in a few minutes.

Pang Jong Toon, chairman of Persatuan Penganut Dewa Ching San Hou Wang, said instead of wasting food, the practice of bringing prayer offerings home was a gesture to bring home fortune, health and peace.

“Devotees can share these offerings with their neighbours and relatives so that they, too, will be blessed,” he said.

Pang said when his late father set up the temple back in 1917, the practice of bringing prayer offerings home originating from Hainan Island in China was preserved at the Melaka temple.