Cheung Chau Bun Festival

Tai Ping Ching Chiu is the jiao, the great offering, that the people of Cheung Chau hold to thank Pak Tai, the Northern Emperor, and to release the souls of those lost at sea. Its origins reach back to the late Qing, and it falls around the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, kept together with the Buddha's birthday.

In 2011 Cheung Chau Tai Ping Ching Chiu was inscribed, as an extension of the 'folk belief and custom' category (Ⅹ-85, serial 992), on the third national list of intangible cultural heritage, nominated by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China. It is one of the most representative traditional festivals of Hong Kong, China.

The core rites follow in order: receiving the gods, opening the eyes of the images, the noon audience, the water offering, the boat dispatch, the parade of floats, the feeding of hungry ghosts, the bun scramble, the distribution of ghost buns and the sending off of the gods. The whole island keeps a three-day vegetarian fast: restaurants stop serving meat, residents eat plain, and even the island's fast-food outlets fall in with custom and sell vegetarian food — a sight unique to Hong Kong, China.

On parade day each street association sends out a piu sik team: children stand on concealed frames dressed as gods, historical figures or personalities in the news, so that from a distance they seem to stand in mid-air. On the last night comes the bun scramble. Three towers more than ten metres high are raised before Pak Tai Temple, each hung with some sixteen thousand lotus-paste buns stamped with a red 'long life' character, and the climbers race up to snatch them: the more peace buns you carry down, the greater your blessing.

Tai Ping Ching Chiu carries the prayer of an outlying island fishing community for good weather and safety for all within the parish, and the custom of handing out blessing in the form of buns makes belief sweet and approachable.

Today the festival draws tens of thousands of visitors across the water each year, and the queues at the peace-bun bakeries run down the street: a small island has become, through one offering, the signature of folk tourism in Hong Kong, China.