Help Bring the Hungry Ghost Festival to Life

Hi, we’re Wendi YuLing and Bea Yeh, two Asian artists in Portland, OR who, every August, bring the Hungry Ghost Festival to a park near you.

Hungry ghosts are a concept in Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan belief systems. These ghosts are entities who exist in a limbo between here and the afterlife, dissatisfied, always hungry for more, but never full. Traditionally, the Hungry Ghost Festival creates a space for us to appease the ghosts with food and entertainment, so that we do not bring bad luck upon ourselves.

Wendi and Bea’s Hungry Ghost Festival is a contemporary adaptation of the traditional festival, open to all, and includes The Ghost Archive and Ritual Feast.

Hungry ghosts symbolize spiritual hunger, things that do not nourish us: regrets, resentments, and addictions. These “ghosts” steal our energy and disrupt our harmony. Wendi YuLing’s Ghost Archive includes an altar for honoring loved ones, guidance in identifying our own “ghosts,” space to leave ghosts within the Archive, and a closing ritual. The Archive is a calm space for reflection, offering opportunities to witness, reflect, grieve, and release together.

Bea Yeh’s Ritual Feast is an immersive, interactive, ritual experience including group mandala creation, poetry, and space for reverential grief. Guests sit at the feast table, mindfully consume a slice of fruit, add to the group mandala, honor a

Spirit, and receive a message about interconnectedness. The Ritual Feast is an opportunity to sit with the Ancestors and tenderly express sorrow, so that guests may find emotional release and grounding.

We’ve been working to hone our vision over the last year, and we’re excited to share what we’ve come up with. However, in order to bring our ideas to life, it’s going to cost us a bit of money. Previously Wendi (2022) and then Wendi and Bea (2023) paid for the festival out of pocket, but this year we have a grant from RACC this year to help us with some of the costs! We’re asking you, our community, to help us get the rest of the way there.