Abstract

In multicultural Malaysia, public festivals provide opportunities through which cultural traditions become visible in shared public spaces. This article examines how cultural visibility is produced through the rituals, performances, and community practices of the Hungry Ghost Festival among Malaysian Chinese communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2025 at the Joint Hungry Ghost Festival of the Eight Streets in George Town, Penang, the study combines participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and audiovisual documentation. The findings show that cultural visibility is created through the combined effects of spatial transformation, ritual practices, visual symbols, soundscapes, and collective participation. Through the temporary transformation of urban streets into ritual spaces and the performance of rituals and cultural activities, the festival makes Chinese cultural traditions publicly perceptible within a shared urban environment. These practices also create opportunities for public recognition, intercultural encounter, community participation, cultural continuity, and a sense of collective belonging. The article argues that the Hungry Ghost Festival in Malaysia is not only a religious observance but also a public cultural practice through which cultural visibility is actively produced and negotiated. Rather than treating visibility as a natural condition of multicultural society, the study demonstrates that visibility depends upon sustained collective participation and the continuing reproduction of cultural practices. More broadly, cultural visibility is not simply an outcome of cultural continuity, but one of the conditions through which continuity is maintained in multicultural societies.

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