hong kong festivals

the next day, 10 may, was a big day…it was the only day we spent mostly together in hong kong…this year, 10 may was buddha’s birthday…when we first got to hong kong, I wasn’t sure whether it would be as big a holiday as it is in japan and Korea, but it is…it was also the day of the cheung chau bun festival, which takes place on one of the smaller islands of hong kong…I’d never heard of this festival, and wouldn’t have known about it if not for the brochure we were given at the airport…when we first got the brochure, this one the thing hana immediately knew she wanted to see...

we left the hotel just after 0800…as that was earlier than we’d gotten going previous days, I don’t remember hana and I being quite with it, but oh well…we headed to the ferry pier, and after figuring out which boat to take (the fast one or the slow one…we just wanted the next boat to leave, we didn’t care whether it was fast or slow…but there didn’t seem to be a list anywhere of when boats were scheduled to leave) we were good to go…an hour later, the ferry pulled into the dock at cheung chau…according to the guidebook, it’s a small, crescent shaped island…pretty quiet most of the time, this festival is the busiest day of the year on cheung chau…

everyone poured off the boat, and the three of us found each other and set up a meeting point and time…as many people as were already there, and as small as the lanes and alleys were, we knew there was a good chance we’d get separated…so off we walked…and we did get separated…hana and I walked past lots of little shops and stands, many of them selling bun festival souvenirs…you can buy just about anything…keychains, pillows, t-shirts, etc…we walked until we saw four bun towers…one in the middle of a basketball/soccer/rugby/play pitch, and three others right next to each other in front of a temple…I don’t know what the support is for the towers, but the outsides are covered in buns…you know, the white, fluffy ones you can eat all over china…usually the buns are stuffed with meat, veg, red bean paste, or just about anything…most of the buns for this festival are stuffed with red bean paste, or something else, I can’t remember what it is…

the highlight of the festival is the bun scramble…when the starting sound goes, contestants climb up the tower and collect as many buns as they can…the buns at the top of the tower are worth more…the person who collects the most buns, wins…there were supposed to be practice sessions, but we didn’t get to see those…hana wanted to try climbing, but that didn’t seem to be possible…the official bun scramble takes place at midnight, so we didn’t get to see that either…it would’ve been awesome, I’m sure…I don’t know how many people participate…

there was a temple close to the bun towers, and when we got there it was jam packed with incense and people…it wasn’t any different from any other temple I’ve seen, but the incense was pretty intense…huge sticks of it, small sticks of it, and every size in between…the inside of the area was cloudy from all the smoke…add that to the heat and humidity and I wasn’t feeling so steady…WHOA…as we were leaving the temple area, we were stopped when a couple dragons entered…and by dragons, I mean two people working together covered in a costume…a very colourful costume with a huge headpiece…there was some dancing around, and it probably meant something…and a whole lot of people trying to get the perfect picture…

from there we walked down another lane, which seemed to get smaller and smaller as we kept walking…or maybe it was just the increasing number of people who seemed to be around…or maybe it was the heat and humidity continuing to get to me…I don’t know…

as we walked down the lane, we ended up watching as two dragons “fought”…one of them ended up bowing down to the other…I’d love to know the story behind what happened…that probably happens all day long…further along we found a couple of the bakeries that make the buns…apparently this year not as many were made, because some law was passed requiring that the stamp on the outside of the bun be put on on the premises of the bakeries…in the past I guess they’ve done it elsewhere…having to do it at the bakery somehow meant that not so many buns would be made this year…I’m not exactly sure how it all works…anywho, from the time we got off the boat hana and I knew we wanted to buy one of the buns, just to see what all the fuss was about…we watched as they put the buns in the steaming ovens, and as they took them out…HOT HOT HOT…then one lady got to work stamping…it’s not difficult, but it must be hot as all get out…as soon as she stamped all the buns in a tray, it was moved over to a table, and the buns sold…for less than a dollar each…hana and I each got one, then moved out of the way…as we kept walking, we realized there was a long queue…did we jump the queue when we walked up to the bakery from the other side? We never did figure that out…apparently mom did jump queue, and was told to go back about 300m at some point while she was wandering around…

another purchase along that lane was some sort of juice for me…it was red…other than that, I know it came from a tree…I’m assuming there was a fruit on that tree, but the picture they showed me had no fruit…anywho, it was good, and liquid, which I very much needed…from there we found our way back to the path along the water, which was marginally less crowded…there is a parade with this festival, scheduled to start at 1230…so barriers were being set up for that…at one of the souvenir shops hana ended up buying a festival t-shirt, the same shirt many of the guys involved with the dragons were wearing…we figured that made it “official”…I’m pretty sure the shirt was big enough to hold three of hana, but that’s beside the point…mom bought a pillow with the festival logo on it…I bought a small tote bag…

we got back to the ferry with good timing, and ended up near the front of the line for the next boat…I ended up standing where a fan was blowing, which felt great…the ferry was an hour back, and pretty calm…I don’t mind those kinds of ferries…back at the ferry dock we were hungry/thirsty, and mom and hana wanted caffeine…of course we went to starbucks…just like in seoul, there are starbucks every two blocks in hong kong…(if only coffee beans were that common!)…

from there we went to the subway station, and started making our way to lantau chau…the biggest island of hong kong…it’s the island on which the airport is located, but not an island that is heavily visited by tourists…there are plenty of good hiking trails all over lantau, and a mate from high school tells me a good group of expats live there as well…the train seemed to take foreva to get there, but we did have to ride to the end of the line, and it definitely wasn’t express…oh well…from the subway station, we walked toward the cable car…at first, our plan was to take the cable car up to a temple, and then take the bus down…in the end we decided it would be easier just to take the cable car both ways, and bought round trip tickets…we bought tickets for the regular cable car, not feeling the need to spend an extra $50HKD per person for the crystal cabin…the only difference (that we could figure) was that a crystal cabin has glass on the bottom so you can look straight down …when I’m in cable cars I don’t spend any time looking down, and we were able to see everything anywho…hana amused everyone in our cabin by reading about the views we’d have from different places during the ride…one view was fantastic, another beautiful, etc…I think there were five specific views in all, and they all had adjectives to go with them…I guess you had to be there…is the view of high rise apartment buildings ever that exciting? Or an airport?

At the top of the cable car we got out of our cabin, and headed straight for the loo…I was keen to get to the temple to see a performance listed in the booklet we’d been given at the airport, but bodily functions have to be taken care of, eh? When you first get out of the cable car, you walk through a village that is entirely made up of souvenir shops and places to eat…there is nothing about real life there…I think there was a theatre of some kind, but it didn’t sound interesting to any of us so I doubt hana or mom remembers either…after walking through the village we finally got to a big plaza area…on one side was a set of steps leading up to a huge Buddha…on the other side was a path leading to a temple…I wanted to find the “hall of heros” to see the performance…when we got there, I was a bit disappointed to see a clown on stage…really? For buddha’s birthday you have a clown performing? I think there was some kung fu later, but it wasn’t as interesting as I had hoped…oh well…we walked through the temple (which was quite small, there were donation boxes everywhere – they are collecting money to pay for a big expansion to the temple) and bathed Buddha…there were several places where a bird bath type of fountain had water running, and you could take a little bucket and pour water over a little Buddha…I’m not sure what this is supposed to signify, but everyone was doing it so we did as well…some people seemed to think Buddha was really dirty, as they poured quite a bit of water over him…others stuck with only one or two scoops of water…

We met up with mom in between the temple and the big Buddha…right before meeting up with her hana noticed a cow wandering around, so she went to take photos…we also shopped a bit in one of the souvenir places…they were selling little bookmarks with people’s names written on them in Chinese…my name was easily found…hana’s and mom’s names, not so much…though we found dagmar and other not so common names…I had fun teasing hana about that…

it turned out that mom had already gone up the stairs to the Buddha, so she waited while hana and I did the same…the views from up there are great…it’s the largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha, or something like that…I don’t remember…what i do know is that there are a lot of big buddhas all over asia, and many of them claim to be the biggest in one way or another…

the line for the cable car on the way back down was pretty long…when we got our tickets to come up, the lady said that the last cable car going down would be at 1830…thankfully, because it was a holiday and there were so many more people than usual, they kept running the cable cars after the normal closing time…I guess normally they tell people that you have to walk down if you’re late, but not on this night…seeing the footwear some of the people in line had on, it would’ve been really amusing (for me, anywho) if they’d had to walk down…there is a path that basically runs under the cable car, and it would be beautiful, but not so much after dark, and it definitely wouldn’t have been a quick walk…for whateva reason, the guy in line who sticks out in my mind would’ve had an easy time walking down…he was simply head and shoulders above everyone else…I wonder how tall he was…he actually stuck out from the crowd, due to his height…I don’t know why I’ve mentioned him at all…anywho, after the 25 minute cable car ride, we got back on the subway and went back to our hotel…a long day, and I think all of us were exhausted…