Photographers Blog

The Yimin Festival – The search for the fattest pig in Taiwan from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.

When I first arrived in Taiwan I made a checklist of odd things to cover. I shot numerous mass weddings, fights in the parliament and the enchanting sky lantern festival.

Wanting to complete my list, I did my research, marked down on my calendar and made it a point this year to cover the Hakka Yimin festival in Hsinchu where worshippers breed pigs to a fattened state for sacrifice.

The Yimin Festival commemorates ancestors who fought for the Chinese imperial army during the 18th century to help put down a local rebellion. After their deaths, locals built temples in their memory and offered pigs as a sacrifice during the annual ghost month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar.

Breeding giant pigs has become a professional industry in the small town following this tradition. Families buy their super-sized pig from a special breeder, with the price for a pig weighing over 600 kilograms (1323 pounds) starting at 600,000 Taiwan Dollars (US$18,738).

When a friend told me about the “Young Imam” reality TV show, I thought it must be just another ‘preaching and nagging’ religious program.

But when another friend of mine jokingly said “the young imams are dream son-in-laws”, I decided I should take a peek into this phenomenon. While I could understand why Mawi became a heartthrob of teenage girls after he won the Malaysian version of American Idol but, a religious TV program doesn’t usually catch on in Malaysia.

After locating “Imam Muda” (“Young Imam” in Malay) on one of the our cable TV channels, I found it to be interesting.