On Praying to the Jade Emperor... 天公诞

The 9th day of lunar new year is an important date for the hokkien ethnic... In order to explain in more detail to readers that don't know what is this day about ... I wikipedia and found this

The ninth day of the New Year is a day for Chinese to offer prayers to the Jade Emperor of Heaven (天公) in the Taoist Pantheon. The ninth day is traditionally the birthday of the Jade Emperor.
This day is especially important to Hokkiens and Teochews (Min Nan speakers). Come midnight of the eighth day of the new year, Hokkiens will offer thanks giving prayers to the Emperor of Heaven. Offerings will include sugarcane as it was the sugarcane that had protected the Hokkiens from certain extermination generations ago. Tea is served as a customary protocol for paying respect to an honored person.

I went to my grand uncle's house to celebrate the important day together with my parents, sis and brother in law... we reached uncle place at about 10 something. We greet each other and proceed to help out my grand aunty on preparing to lay all the necessary offering items on the table ... :) As KhengSiong was asking "No sugarcane? How about "angku kuih" etc?" hey dude, here you go the Sugarcane and Angku Cake... 

Offering table 

Completed setting up the offering table, we proceed to settle the paper money / gold that would burn to offer the Jade Emperor in his bank of heaven in return of health and prosperity to the whole family members in 2009.

Preparing in progress... did you see the any gold?

Zoom in version of the paper money / gold :p

Since we had completed all the preparation in ahead of time, we were waiting for the clock to strike 12am... As the time struck 12am, the prayer started... Grand uncle and uncle was lighting up the joss stick... uncle has the biggest joss stick and grand uncle was lighting up the smaller version compare to uncle's. I like the smaller joss stick since it has the nice dragon... 

Lighting up the joss stick

Joss Stick from our prayer / offering

After completed the prayer, it's time to burn and deposit all the paper money / gold to the bank of heaven ... kakaka :p

Once everything ceremony and prayer were completed, it's our time to attack the food served on the table :p Yummy! ... I know I know... it's very fattening to eat after midnight... kakaka... just only one year once, so can't be bother ... Blek!

Left my grand uncle place at about 2am...