詳星拜斗 / 详星拜斗
xiáng xīng bài dǒu
to pay homage to the stars [to cast out the demons to try to cure someone’s illness]
This expression is from the famous Qing dynasty (18th century) novel 紅樓夢 / 红楼梦 / Hóng lóu mèng / Dream of the Red Chamber (aka The Story of the Stone), by 曹雪芹 Cáo Xuěqín.
祭拜星斗，以此驅妖療疾。出自清·曹雪芹《紅樓夢》第102 回。
「過了些時，果然賈珍患病。竟不請醫調治，輕則到園化紙許願，重則詳星拜斗。」
It refers to one of the characters in the novel being ill, and instead of bringing in a doctor, a Daoist exorcism was conducted.
This saying has triggered my blog Interpreting dreams: 04 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/01/interpreting-dreams-04-singapore-london.html). So, the tradition of appealing to the deities for help was alive and kicking in 20th century Singapore.
It is something I’ve noticed, and remarked upon to friends and in my teaching: overseas Chinese communities have preserved and observed the traditions that their ancestors had upheld, for much longer than the Chinese in mainland China. This is probably mainly due to the massive change in thinking in post-imperial China, where a lot of things were thrown out for being superstitions and feudalistic.
Overseas Chinese, however, have been frozen in time, although that is changing a lot now as well, especially with Western influence.
I was already noticing, growing up in the 50s and 60s, that my peers did not do the Buddhist/Daoist temple thing that much — they went along because their grandparents or parents made them, like in the case of my grandma digging us out of bed on Sundays to go for the Buddhist temple equivalent of Sunday School. They turned out to be useful sessions for a knowledge nerd, learning about Prince Gautama and his teachings.
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