Ninth day

The ninth day of the New Year is a day for Chinese to offer prayers to the Jade Emperor of Heaven in the Daoist Pantheon.The ninth day is traditionally the birthday of the Jade Emperor. This day, called Ti Kong Dan, Ti Kong Si or Pai Ti Kong , is especially important to Hokkiens, even more important than the first day of the Chinese New Year.Come midnight of the eighth day of the new year, Hokkiens will offer thanks to the Emperor of Heaven. A prominent requisite offering is sugarcane.Legend holds that the Hokkien were spared from a massacre by Japanese pirates by hiding in a sugarcane plantation during the eighth and ninth days of the Chinese New Year, coinciding with the Jade Emperors birthday.Since sugarcaneis a near homonym to thank you in the Hokkien dialect, Hokkiens offer sugarcane on the eve of his birthday, symbolic of their gratitude.In the morning of this birthday, Taiwanese households set up an altar table with 3 layers one top (containing offertories of six vegetables , noodles, fruits, cakes, tangyuan, vegetable bowls, and unripe betel, all decorated with paper lanterns) and two lower levels (containing the five sacrifices and wines) to honor the deities below the Jade Emperor.The household then kneels three times and kowtows nine times to pay obeisance and wish him a long life.Incense, tea, fruit, vegetarian food or roast pig, and gold paper is served as a customary protocol for paying respect to an honored person.