Hong Kong’s bun festival on Cheung Chau may attract 60,000 visitors amid ramped-up promotion drive: organisers
- Chairman of festival’s organising committee upbeat attendance levels for Wednesday’s event will exceed 40,000 visitors recorded last year
- But Cheung Chau bun maker says he is less optimistic as people will need to work next day, unlike last year’s event, which fell on a Friday
But a local bun maker has said he is less optimistic since the festival, which takes place on Buddha’s Birthday, will not fall on a Friday unlike the year before, meaning most people will need to work the next day.
Hong Kong Cheung Chau Bun Festival Committee chairman Yung Chi-ming, however, remained upbeat and said he believed attendance for this year’s event would surpass the 40,000 visitors recorded last year.
“I believe there will be more visitors this year, hopefully about 60,000,” he said. “There has been much more promotion this year, including a drone show by the Tourism Board featuring bun towers over the past weekend, which could draw crowds.”
Fanny Yeung Shuk-fan, executive director of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, also expected a surge in visitor numbers compared with last year, fuelled by the sharing of travel tips on the Instagram-like Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu.
“I think there will be more people this year as last year’s festival wasn’t that long after the reopening of borders,” Yeung said.
But Martin Kwok, who runs Kwok Kam Kee Cake Shop on Cheung Chau, a bakery known for its ping an, the festival’s signature “peace” buns, expected a drop in visitors based on his own observations over the past few days.
“We’ve lowered our expectations this year, about 20 to 30 per cent less than last year,” he said. “But our observation has been better than our lowered expectations for the last two days, because the public holiday is midweek this year.”
The year’s event also saw the return of taller bun towers, after the previous event had smaller ones due to a shortage of labourers.
Yung said island residents were happy to see the return of the taller structures, which measure about six metres (20 feet) in height.
He added that authorities gave the committee about HK$200,000 (US$25,600) in funding, with organisers also spending nearly HK$2 million on bun towers, a bamboo theatre for Cantonese opera shows and towering paper-craft representations of deities, among other items.
The Cheung Chau Bun Festival, also known as Cheung Chau Da Jiu Festival, is believed to have originated in the 18th or 19th century to celebrate the end of a plague.
Villagers were said to have made offerings to deities and marched through the streets with an image of “God of the North” Pak Tai to ward off evil spirits, while people dressed as various other deities followed along.
Others claim the island was attacked by pirates, and the rituals were conducted to appease the spirits of the people who had died.
Highlights of the annual tradition include the Piu Sik, or “floating colour” parade, and the bun scrambling competition at midnight.
