Cheung Chau Bun

Cheung Chau Bun Festival – Fourth Moon, Day 8

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This is one of those unique festivals that will leave you spellbound and provide lifelong memories – and it all happens on the tiny island of Cheung Chau, once home to some of the most notorious pirates in the South China Sea.

The weeklong festival climaxes with a large, carnival-like street procession featuring costumed children on stilts held aloft above the crowd, lion dances and other colourful participants. The parade winds its way through the narrow streets to the grounds near the Pak Tai Temple, which are dominated by enormous bamboo towers studded with sweet white buns, and where the main festivities take place. At midnight, athletes scramble up one of the towers in a contest to grab the top-most 'luckiest' ones.

One of the reputed origins of this popular festival, which attracts tourists by the tens of thousands each year, involves a plague on the island hundreds of years ago. Villagers disguised themselves as different deities and walked around the island to drive away the evil spirits responsible for the plague. Another story says the festival is part of an annual exorcism and fast.