Chinese Festivals
1. Chinese New Year
3. Spring Lantern Festival
4. Ching Ming Festival
5. Cheung Chau Bun Festival
6. Dragon Boat Festival
7. Mid-Autumn Festival
1. Chinese New Year
Undoubtedly the most popular and important festival in Hong Kong is Chinese New Year. This is a holiday festival incorporates ancient traditions, rituals and culture and the focus is on spending time with the family.
The frenetic pace of life in Hong Kong slows down at this time of year, but that isn't to say there is nothing to do. Main events and spectacles include the fragrant flower markets—the biggest one being at Victoria Park—as well as night parades and spectacular firework displays that draw large crowds to Victoria Habour.
2. Spring Lantern Festival
The Spring Lantern festival, which is also known as Chinese Valentine's Day, marks the end of Chinese New Year celebrations. This festival is renowned for its bright lanterns in traditional designs that can be seen around town hanging from shop fronts, restaurants, homes and in parks.
3. Ching Ming Festival
The Ching Ming festival is popularly referred to as Grave-Sweeping Day or Spring Remembrance. This festival is traditionally a time of year for families to pay respects to their ancestors by visiting their graves. On the down side, the celebrations can be plighted by reports of hill fires owing to the large number of incense sticks that are burned when making offerings of typically oranges to the dead.
4. Cheung Chau Bun Festival
The outlying island of Cheung Chau has become popular for its annual Bun Festival, which draws thousands of people from all over Hong Kong each year. The festival is distinctive for the enormous bamboo towers studded with white-Chinese buns and effigies of three gods that are erected in the grounds near the temple. The festivities last for about a week and end with a large, colourful street procession, featuring children in brightly coloured costume.
The festival originates from a legend that hundreds of years ago on the island, villagers disguised themselves as different deities and walked around the island to banish evil spirits blamed for causing a devastating plague.
5. Dragon Boat Festival
The Dragon Boat Festival or Tuen Ng Festival commemorates the death of a popular Chinese national hero, Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in the Mi Lo River over 2,000 years ago to protest against corrupt rulers. Legend says that as the people tried to save Qu Yuan, they beat drums to scare the fish away and threw dumplings into the sea to keep them from devouring his flesh.
The event is celebrated nowadays with dragon boat races. Each year, teams of 20-22 rowers compete in beautifully decorated dragon boats to the sound of heavy drum beats. The boats are generally more than 10 metres in length and have ornately carved and painted "dragon" heads and tails.
6. Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival commemorates a 14th Century uprising against the Mongols. It is said that the rebels hid hand-written messages urging the public to revolt inside cakes that they smuggled to their supporters.
Nowadays, Hong Kongers give each other mooncakes, traditionally made from ground lotus and sesame seed paste with a whole egg-yolk inside to celebrate this festival. Aside from cakes, shops sell colourful Chinese paper lanterns, and children can be seen walking with their lit lanterns in public parks throughout Hong Kong.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 14th to 16th day of the eighth lunar month and is marked by a fire dragon dance in Tai Hang when 67-metre-long dragon is paraded through the streets behind the Causeway Bay recreation grounds.
