Men carrying table(?) on pole

Hi David,

Remember we have another photo of two men carrying a big roasted pig?  This is something similar to the carrier they used.  The think wooden block looked like a traditional cutting board with the name of the shop (均源) hand written on it in the Traditional Right-Left way.  On top of the "Cutting Board" there is a wooden tray for presenting goods.  Trays like these are still being used by Traditional Guangdong BBQ store\restaurent to deliver roasted pigs.

On top of the wooden tray there seem to be two covers of sort, probably metal, with fainted Chinese characters. I tried flipping the photos but still unable to read most of them.  The rest of the items looked like some feathers and bones..... maybe,

My 2 cents.

T

The livestock (usually a hen) on the tray was most likely used as a sacrifice for a religious ceremony. Before the 1970s, it was not uncommon to see a living hen used as a sacrifice in a worship where the throat of the hen was cut open and its blood dropped into one or more small cup(s) of wine for subsequent use. However, this only happened in a Taoist temple or in the ancestral hall of a village. Never was this done in a Buddhist ceremony where only vegetables are served.

In the photo, as the metallic containers on the tray seems to be empty, these two men were delivering/bringing back the kitchen utensils and the poor hen to somewhere for making a sumptuous dinner that evening. As I was told by my wife who was living in a fishing boat at Tai O in the western part of Lantau Island in the 1950s, a hen was a very luxurious food item and they could only have it once a year.

Hi There,

Concerning Taoist offerings, I tend to differ.  Generally speaking Taoists, like Buddists, do not take lives and are usually vegetarians.  Thus if they are making offerings, it would likely be of fruits.  If the sacrifice of a hen or goat or whatever it is that one has to kill, it would be unlokely to be taoists.

T

Hi tngan,

The big piece with the name 均源 on it seems to be a hollow box rather than a solid piece of wood to me for the following reasons:

1) A solid wood cutting board of that size would be far too heavy to carry around.

2) The bottom part of the lower rectangular tray was inside the box.

3) dovetail joints can be seen around its corners.