Special Festival events
Experiencing a major Chinese festival in Hong Kong is an enchanting and mesmerising adventure. Hong Kong's major traditional festivals are colourful and noisy affairs, at which thousands upon thousands of people turn out to join the celebrations. Fireworks, festive feasting, lion and dragon dancers, incense smoke, Chinese opera, mah jong, fortune-telling, carnivals and parades come together in a variety of combinations to create a uniquely festive atmosphere seen nowhere else in the world. The festivals are among the best ways to experience the unique culture of this modern East-meets-West destination. There are festivals throughout the year that you are sure to enjoy. Join a tour group to get the best seats in the house during any of the city's festivals.
Chinese New Year Celebrations
First Moon, Day 1
(January/February)
The dynamic colours and sounds of Chinese New Year make this a vibrant and exhilarating time.
Experience the non-stop excitement of Chinese New Year Celebrations in Hong Kong.
Arrival of Chinese New Year with a stunning arrays of festivities. Visitors will be awestruck by the myriad of New Year celebrations in Hong Kong that last 15 days. A carnival atmosphere prevails with flower markets, a fantastic parade, skyscrapers sparkling with special festive lighting and much more. This is the best time to visit the City of Life as it goes into overdrive to provide a feast for the senses during this holiday season. You'll soon be wishing everyone the traditional Chinese New Year greeting, Kung Hei Fat Choi (Prosperous New Year) During the year's biggest and brightest Chinese festival.
Chinese New Year Parade
During the year's biggest and brightest chinese festival. Highlighting the New Year's Festivities is the Chinese New Year Parade held on the first day of every Chinese New Year. The harbour front on Hong Kong Island is filled with colourful floats,marching bands and costumed groups from around the world. There is also street entertainers along with dragon and lion dancers. It's a scintillating fusion of international and Chinese elements that defines Hong Kong as the city where East meets West. Book your tickets early for the spectator stands or watch the parade from any vantage point along the route.This parade definitely creates never-to-be-forgotten memories.
Cheung Chau Bun Festival
Fourth Moon, Day 8
(April/May)
A celebration dominated by sweet buns is quite a spectacle, and it is one not to be missed.
Every year on the tiny island of Cheung Chau, Hong Kong's people celebrate the Bun Festival
Enormous bamboo towers studded with sweet bun and effigies of three gods dominate the grounds near the Pak Tai Temple, where the main festivities take place. The festival that lasts for about a week climaxes with a large, colourful street procession, which features costumed children on stilts in a carnival atmosphere that winds its way through the streets.
Dragon Boat Festival
Fifth Moon, Day 5
(June)
The Dragon Boat Festival combines a fast-paced sporting spectacular with a traditional festival.
The Festival, also known as 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 the corrupt rulers. Legend says that as townspeople attempted to rescue him, they beat drums to scare fish away and threw dumplings into the sea to keep the fish from eating Qu Yuan's body.
The real highlight of the festival is the fierce dragon boats racing in a lively, vibrant spectacle. Teams race the elaborately decorated dragon boats to the beat of heavy drums. The special boats, which measure more than 10 metres, have ornately carved and painted "dragon" heads and tails, and each carries a crew of 20-22 paddlers.
Participants train in earnest for the competition. Sitting two abreast, with a steersman at the back and a drummer at the front, the paddlers race to reach the finishing line, urged on by the pounding drums and the roar of the crowds. Today, festival activities recall this legendary event. People eat rice-and-meat dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves; and many look forward to swimming or even simply dipping their hands in the water
Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival
Eighth Moon, Day 15
(September/October)
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most charming and picturesque nights of the calendar.
The festival commemorates a 14th Century uprising against the Mongols. In a cunning plan, the rebels wrote the call to revolt on pieces of paper and embedded them in cakes that they smuggled to compatriots.
Today, during the festival, people eat special sweet cakes known as "Moon Cakes" made of ground lotus and sesame seed paste, egg-yolk and other ingredients. Along with the cakes, shops sell coloured Chinese paper lanterns in the shapes of animals, and more recently, in the shapes of aeroplanes and space ships. On this family occasion, parents allow children to stay up late and take them to high vantage points such as The Peak to light their lanterns and watch the huge autumn moon rise while eating their moon cakes. Public parks are ablaze with many thousands of lanterns in all colours, sizes and shapes.
Also not to be missed is one of the most spectacular celebrations you'll ever see which takes place in Causeway Bay during the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 14th - 16th day of the eighth lunar month. It's the fire dragon dance in Tai Hang - a collection of streets located in behind the Causeway Bay recreation grounds and features a dragon measuring 66 metres.
Over a century ago, Tai Hang was a village whose inhabitants lived off of farming and fishing. A few days before the Mid-Autumn Festival a typhoon and then a plague wreaked havoc on the village. While the villagers were repairing the damage, a python entered the village and ate their livestock.
According to some villagers, the python was the son of the Dragon King. The only way to stop the havoc which had beset their village was to dance a fire dance for three days and nights during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. The villagers made a big fire dragon of straw and stuck incense into the dragon. They lit firecrackers. They danced for three days and three nights and the plague disappeared.
Monkey God Festival
Eighth Moon, Day 16
(September/October)
The Monkey God Festival is celebrated in the true nature of the deity - mischievous, playful and definitely fun to be around.
This arrogant and troublesome god first appeared in Pilgrims to the West, a novel dating from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and has been brought into Western and Eastern popular culture with a television series detailing his adventures. An outcast from Taoist heaven, the Monkey God redeemed himself, and gained Buddhist immortality by escorting Tang Gan Zang on his pilgrimage to the West to obtain the teachings of Lord Buddha.
In Hong Kong, at his shanty town temple in Kowloon's Sau Mau Ping area, a possessed medium recreates the ordeals by fire and stabbing, which the Monkey God suffered during unsuccessful attempts by other gods to execute him. The medium, who remains unharmed, runs barefoot over blazing charcoal and climbs a ladder of knives.