|
||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
Cheung Chau Bun FestivalFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cheung Chau Bun Festival or Cheung Chau Da Jiu Festival (Traditional
Chinese: 長洲太平清醮)
is a traditional Chinese
festival
on the island of Cheung
Chau in Hong
Kong. It is by far the most famous of several such Da Jiu Festivals
(Traditional
Chinese: 包山節
or 長洲太平清醮, Jiu (醮)
being a Taoist
sacrificial ceremony) held by several (mostly rural) communities in Hong
Kong, either annually or once every few years.
Cheung Chau's Bun Festival, which draws tens of thousands of local and overseas tourists every year, is staged to mark the Eighth day of the Fourth Moon, in the Chinese calendar (usually in early May). It thus coincides with the local celebration of Buddha's Birthday. The Cheung Chau Bun Festival began as a fun and exciting ritual for fishing communities to pray for safety from pirates. Today this religious origin has largely been forgotten, and the festival has become a showcase of traditional Chinese culture above all else.
|
 |
Steamed buns for the "Bun Mountain", being stamped the crimson characters of the respective district (北社, "Northern Society" shown in a combined way) on the island. |
The centrepiece of the festival is at Pak Tai Temple where are the "Bun Mountains" or "Bun Towers"(包山), three giant 60-feet bamboo towers covered with buns. It is those bun-covered towers that give the festival its name. Historically, young men would race up the tower to get hold of the buns; the higher the bun, the better fortune it was supposed to bring to the holder's family; the race was known as "Bun-snatching" (搶包山). However, during a race in 1978 one of the towers collapsed, injuring more than 100 people. In subsequent years, three designated climbers (one climber to each tower) raced up their respective towers and having cleared the top buns proceeded to strip the towers of their buns as they descended.
The three "Bun Mountains" are still placed in the area in front of Pak Tai Temple, and are constructed using the traditional fixation method -- bamboo scaffolding.
In 2005, a single tower climbing event in the adjacent sports gound was revived as a race -- with extra safety precautions including proper mountain-climbing tools as well as tutorials for participants (which now include women). A teamwork version of the event was added in 2006.The revised version of "Bun-snatching" as well as the traditional three "Bun Mountains" still have their buns removed from the towers at midnight of the Festival.
In February 2007, it was further announced that the buns on the single-tower construct will henceforth be made of plastic. [Hong Kong Government press release http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200702/16/P200702160249.htm]
During the festival, Chinese operas, lion dances, and religious services also take place on the island.
Burning of paper effigies
At a quarter to midnight a paper effigy of the King of the Ghosts is set ablaze, enormous incense sticks are lit and the buns are harvested and distributed to the villagers, who, pleased to be sharing in this propitious good fortune, rejoice late into the night.
Return of bun-snatching
As aforementioned, the bun-snatching ritual was abandoned by the government due to the 1978 tragedy. Still, a large portion of Cheung Chau villagers regard this as part and parcel of their daily life, and the precious culture of Hong Kong to boot. In addition to the villagers' immense urge to resume the ritual, a local cartoon movie My life as McDull recalled the forlorn ceremony, giving a tinge of nostalgia to its audience. As such, the long-awaited ritual was reintroduced on May 15, 2005. Safety measures were greatly improved: only 12 well-trained athletes selected from preliminary competitions were permitted to climb on one single "Bun Mountain"; instead of bamboo, the framework of the "Bun Mountains" was made up of steel.
My life as McDull was a sizable hit in Christmas 2001. This Hong Kong animated feature was primarily targeted at children. Aside from the cute character designs, however, My Life as McDull had also shown many renowned qualities of Hong Kong people — hard-working, carefree, and never giving up. The "Hong Kong dream" depicted in the film has charmed much of its audience. The animation is aided by computer-generated backgrounds, but it retains a delightful hand-drawn look that is pleasing to the movie-goers. In a part of the film, McDull decides to train to be an Olympic-level athlete like Hong Kong Olympian Lee Lai-shan. However, the trade he learns is Cheung Chau bun-snatching. Realising that bun-snatching is not a formal sporting event in the Olympic games, McDull’s mother writes a letter to the chairman of International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ask him/her to sanctify the so-called sports event with her limited proficiency of English.
Some people think that the Hong Kong Tourism Board began to promote the forlorn ritual thanks to the unanticipated box-office success. It spawned a laughing stock, though, when the Secretary for Home Affair, Patrick Ho Chi-ping, said he might contact IOC later on in order to formalise the "sports". He even told to the public that the bun-snatching ceremony can be varied into many other events, like cake-snatching ceremony, doll-snatching ceremony, etc..
External links
|
<<USA
