VOICED: Extreme piercing for purity in Thai vegetarian festival

The video explores the Puckette Vegetarian Festival, a ritual involving extreme piercings and firewalking to honor the nine Chinese emperor gods. The festival, with a history of nearly 200 years, began when a Chinese opera group adopted a vegetarian diet to cure malaria. Devotees perform acts of self-mortification, believed to cleanse the community of bad luck. The festival includes parades with firecrackers, symbolizing purification.

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