Italian Man Ordained As Taoist Priest In S’pore, He Can Even Perform Rites In Cantonese

We've seen Labubu dolls dressed up as devotees at a Taoist festival and a water dispenser containing holy water in a temple, but a Caucasian man being ordained as a Taoist priest?
A 12-second TikTok video posted by 25-year-old part-time Taoist priest Li Zhitong shows an Italian man named Alessandro Mattioli presented with a certificate of ordination.
According to the cert, his confirmation happened last Wednesday (Jan 15) and we think it is great how race doesn't matter here.
“Can catch vampire, already,” joked (we think?) Zhitong in the video's caption.
We can't help but wonder: Do his 'powers' work only on ang moh ghosts and will Alessandro use a Mandarin name when he's at work?
When we reached out to Zhitong to find out more about Alessandro, he told us that the latter has since returned to Italy.
There is no word on how he plans to continue his role as a Taoist priest there.
Some netizens were seen making jokes at the sight of a non-Chinese man becoming a Taoist priest.
“Not very convincing leh,” said one such netizen, while another wrote, “Does he communicate with ang moh gui (Caucasian ghost)?”
Another comment read: “If I hire him to do prayers for my grandpa, I think he will be very confused." Zhitong then replied: “He chants in Cantonese one hor, don’t play play.”
Photos: quanzhentaoist/TikTok