The story
Singkawang Cap Go Meh in Singkawang
Singkawang Cap Go Meh centers on the Tatung parade, a trance-based spirit-medium tradition brought by Hakka Chinese gold-mining immigrants and originally used to ward off epidemics. Falling on the fifteenth day of Chinese New Year, its date shifts yearly with the lunar calendar, typically January through March. Government promotion after 1998 and 2002 turned this private ritual into one of the world's largest public Tatung processions.
Hakka Chinese immigrants who came to work the gold mines around Monterado, near Singkawang, brought the Tatung spirit-medium tradition with them centuries ago, originally as a ritual meant to ward off epidemics and misfortune among the settler community rather than as a public spectacle.