Happy Birthday, Buddha--Bun Festival

  Cheung Chau, Hong Kong
Thursday, May 24, 2007

Happy Birthday, Buddha. Today is Buddha's birthday, and, so, it's a public holiday in Hong Kong. To celebrate, like most everyone else, I headed to Cheung Chau, an island outside the city of Hong Kong within the Hong Kong administrative zone.

Chueng Chau Beach

What Buddha wants for his birthday are hot, white, steamy buns filled with paste, stamped with red script, a parade of kids on sticks, and a showcase of camera technology. Well, he got it. And, thanks to the hospitable people of the usually sleepy and idyllic pedestrian-only island community of Cheung Chau, he gets it. Every year.

Towers of real buns

First I mention that, and even locals are saying this, it was overly hot and muggy today. Imagine your bathroom right after you step out of a long, hot shower and the wallpaper's about to disintegrate. That's what the humidity was like here today. Now, take that, about 20,000(?) people, cram them all into an alleyway about 15 feet wide for about 6 hours. Run a parade up and down the alley a few times. That's the Bun Festival. I loved it. Though, I didn't last until the grand finale event, which is tonight, at midnight. The scrambling up the bamboo tower of buns.

Tower with plastic buns for climbing

Every woman's dream. Except I'm talking about bread buns. Yes, a tower of bread buns. Luckily, they don't let participants climb up the tower of real bread buns anymore--they have a separate tower with plastic ones--because the towers made of real bread were rancid. And melting. And rancid. And pungent. Back in the day, real men climbed up a tower of rancid buns. I can't even begin to imagine. I'd vomit. Serious hard men.

rancid buns on towers

All in all, despite constantly being poked in the eye by sun umbrellas (umbrellas are becoming my nemesis. When most people are about 5' 2", and they hold an umbrella, like say in a skinny, crowded alley at a festival, and even if they are trying to hold it up extra high, the nice sharp pointy spines hover right around 5' 10"...right into my eyeballs), all in all, the festival rocked.

dragons

Everywhere I looked I saw wildly colored, dancing dragons, kids on a stick (more on this in a moment), brightly matching groups in costume, hot buns, and cameras. Let me tell you, Hong Kong...ehh...Hong Kongolians? Hong Kong-gonners?...love cameras. Everyone had a camera. It seemed most had cameras that easily would set you back 4000 to $5000 in the US. And they were using them. Not a moment passed at the Bun Festival that was not documented. So I joined in. When in Rome... Check out the pics above.

lots of cameras. Typical attendee

So about this kids-on-a-stick. As far as I can guess, a nice way to show respect to Buddha is to strap a seven year old to a pole, create an optical illusion that another seven year old is holding them up, with say, a tennis racket, and then parade your kid-on-a-stick through the streets of Chueng Chau with a percussion section following. The crowd loves it. As soon as a kid-on-a-stick comes by, the crowd goes wild, vying for the seven-year-old's attention in hopes that the kid will look at you and wave, and, if you're real lucky, smile.

kids-on-a-stick 5

Remember, it was like 95 degrees and so humid that my shirt was always drenched, and these kids-on-a-stick can't exactly get down and go into the shade plus most of 'em were wearing multiple layers of traditional garments. And they're probably 7. So, if you're lucky, the kid would smile at you. Most of 'em had this frightened, I-want-to-get-down-off-this-painful-god-awful-contraption-da d-made-in-the-garage-and-eat-an-ice-cream-cone-now-look. So, when they waved and actually made a happy face in your general direction, you go wild. And take a picture. Good times.

Yum

Post Script

A couple local woman told me that they thought that the Bun Festival was for Buddha's birthday. I went onto Wikipedia to verify and Wikipedia--in its wisdom--says it has something to do with warding off pirates. Then, three days later, at the Hong Kong History Museum, I read that it's actually a celebration of conquering the plague in the 18th Century. Glad I cleared up that confusion.