Gongs and Drums for the Gods: Malaysia's Chinese Opera and Its God-Thanking Tradition

The gongs and drums strike up, water sleeves (水袖) flutter on stage — and the audience seats below often hold only a handful of people, sometimes not even one. This isn’t a failed show, because the performance was never meant for human eyes in the first place.

In Malaysia’s Chinese community, these traditional opera stage performances are collectively known as “Chinese opera” (大戏), and their primary reason for existing is “chou shen” (酬神) — repaying the gods’ grace and praying for their protection.

”Chinese Opera” Is Not One Art Form, But Several

In Malaysia, “Chinese opera” (大戏) does not refer to a single genre, but is a collective term for several dialect-opera traditions, each brought over by immigrants from different ancestral origins:

• Cantonese opera — brought over by Cantonese (Guangfu) immigrants, once widespread among Chinese communities on the Malay Peninsula;
• Teochew opera — brought over by Teochew immigrants, especially active in Penang;
• Hokkien opera (gezaixi) — brought over by Hokkien immigrants, a common form of performance at temple festivals in northern Malaysia;
• Budaixi (glove puppetry) and Teochew iron-rod puppetry — puppet-theatre traditions that replace live performers with puppets, with iron-rod puppetry being especially representative of Penang.

Each of these genres has retained its homeland’s vocal styles, percussion patterns and costume conventions, yet on Malaysian soil they all revolve around the same thing: temple festivals.

The Performance Is to Repay a Vow

What Malaysian Chinese call “god-thanking opera” (酬神戏) broadly refers to opera staged on occasions such as a deity’s birthday, a temple’s consecration, the Hungry Ghost Festival (Yu Lan, or the Zhongyuan Festival) or a temple’s anniversary celebration — funded by devotees or the community, who invite an opera troupe to perform as a way of repaying a vow to the deity and praying for blessings. The stage for these performances is traditionally set up directly facing the temple or the altar, so that the deity can “watch the show,” with the human audience being, if anything, a secondary one.

These performances are especially common during Penang’s Hungry Ghost Festival period: neighbourhoods in different districts pool funds to hold a “gong pu” (公普, a joint neighbourhood prayer event), inviting opera troupes to perform “pudu opera” (普度戏, opera for universal salvation) to thank the gods — often over several consecutive nights — forming, together with the festival’s other rites, an important part of the Yu Lan observances.

One Troupe, Half a Century

The Nga Sheng Hokkien Opera Troupe, still active in northern Malaysia today, is a concrete example of how this tradition has been kept alive. The late Ng Yak Sin founded the troupe in Muar, Johor in 1965, before it later relocated to develop around Butterworth in Seberang Perai; after the founder’s death his son took over, and today his nephew serves as the troupe’s bandleader, using an electronic keyboard to replace some of the traditional musicians in order to reduce the number of hands needed. The troupe’s performances range as far north as Alor Setar, Kedah and as far south as Yong Peng, Johor, serving invitations for deity-birthday and celebration performances from temples across these areas.

In George Town, the Teochew Puppet and Opera House, established in 2014, represents another way this tradition is being kept alive — it is Malaysia’s first institution dedicated to passing on the two performing arts of Teochew iron-rod puppetry and Teochew opera through teaching and performance, with workshops and regular shows on-site that let skills once staged only at temple festivals be learned and watched on ordinary days too.

The Audience Is Shrinking

Older practitioners remember that in Penang during the 1970s and 80s, a single temple-festival opera could draw an entire street’s residents to stop and watch. Today, similar performances are often left with only photography enthusiasts and a scattering of elderly viewers in the audience — most people have turned instead to watching dramas and streaming shows at home, no longer making the special effort to go out for a night-long opera performance.

This does not mean Chinese opera has disappeared. The god-thanking tradition tied to deity birthdays and the Hungry Ghost Festival continues; it is only the audience’s composition that has changed — troupes are still invited to set up the stage, the gongs and drums still sound for the gods, it’s just that the people below the stage are far fewer than before.

Common Misconceptions

Assuming “Chinese opera” means only Cantonese opera. Malaysia’s Chinese opera in fact spans multiple dialect-opera genres — Cantonese opera, Teochew opera, Hokkien opera and budaixi among them — each brought over by immigrant communities of different ancestral origin, with their own performance conventions and vocal styles.

Assuming god-thanking opera is purely an entertainment programme. At its core, god-thanking opera is about repaying vows and praying for blessings; the stage set up directly facing the temple and the schedule timed to deity birthdays or temple celebrations both reflect its religious and communal function, rather than being simply a commercial performance.

What’s Next

To learn about another traditional Malaysian theatre form centred on puppets, see Wayang Kulit: A Puppet Master, a Lamp, and an All-Night Story.

To learn about another traditional theatre form of the Malay community, see Mak Yong.

To understand the overall context of George Town, Penang as a World Heritage site, see Malaysia’s UNESCO World Heritage.