Indonesia caps Lunar New Year with bloody tongues, lion dances

Eyes rolled back in his head, a heavily tattooed Indonesian man sliced his tongue with a dagger in a bid to communicate with other-worldly spirits. The gory spectacle at a Jakarta temple marked the 15th and last day of Lunar New Year, known as Cap Go Meh in the Southeast Asian nation. With a significant ethnic Chinese minority, Muslim-majority Indonesia on Tuesday celebrated the end of two-week festivities welcoming the Year of the Pig with traditional lion dances, colorful parades and temples decked out in red lanterns.

In Indonesia’s section of Borneo island, Chinese shamans shocked onlookers with chains and swords embedded in their faces. At the Jakarta temple, the man in a trance-like state wrote messages with the blood from his sliced tongue to the spirits in an effort to ward off evil. With a long needle still embedded in his cheeks, he finished off the ceremony with a chug of booze. Just outside the capital in Bogor city, residents dressed in white shirts and turbans sang Arabic songs accompanied by tambourine music.

The Muslim take on the Lunar New Year is a show of solidarity in a country where nearly 90 percent of its 260 million citizens follow Islam. “We’re all different, but it’s clear that our intention here is one: together, we want to defend the unity of our beloved Indonesia,” Bogor’s mayor Bima Arya Sugiarto said. — AFP

— AFP This photo shows people visiting a lantern show to celebrate the Lantern Festival, which marks the end of Lunar New Year celebrations, in Nanjing in China’s eastern Jiangsu province.

AFP photos A Chinese-Indonesian woman prays at a temple in Jakarta.—

An Indonesian man (front right) believed to be in a trance leads a prayer at a temple in Jakarta to mark the Cap Go Meh Festival.

An Indonesian man holds burning incense at a temple in Jakarta.

Indonesians gather for prayer at a temple in Jakarta.

Chinese-Indonesians make offerings with incense at a temple in Jakarta.

An Indonesian man believed to be in a trance cuts his own tongue with a daggar while his cheek is pierced with a needle, at a temple in Jakarta to mark the Cap Go Meh Festival.