The organisers of Hong Kong’s annual bun festival on Cheung Chau are expecting about 60,000 visitors for Wednesday’s event, hoping to beat last year’s figure with help of the city’s recent promotion efforts targeting mainland Chinese tourists.
But a local bun maker has said he is less optimistic since the festival, which takes place on Buddha’s Birthday, will not fall on a Friday unlike the year before, meaning most people will need to work the next day.
Hong Kong Cheung Chau Bun Festival Committee chairman Yung Chi-ming, however, remained upbeat and said he believed attendance for this year’s event would surpass the 40,000 visitors recorded last year.
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“I believe there will be more visitors this year, hopefully about 60,000,” he said. “There has been much more promotion this year, including a drone show by the Tourism Board featuring bun towers over the past weekend, which could draw crowds.”
Fanny Yeung Shuk-fan, executive director of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, also expected a surge in visitor numbers compared with last year, fuelled by the sharing of travel tips on the Instagram-like Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu.
“I think there will be more people this year as last year’s festival wasn’t that long after the reopening of borders.”
But Martin Kwok, who runs Kwok Kam Kee Cake Shop on Cheung Chau, a bakery known for its ping an, the festival’s signature peace buns, expected a drop in visitors based on his own observations over the past few days.
“We’ve lowered our expectations this year, about 20 to 30 per cent less than last year,” he said. “But our observation has been better than our lowered expectations for the last two days, because the public holiday is midweek this year.”
The year’s event also saw the return of the three traditional real bun towers, after the previous event opted for banners and smaller towers due to a shortage of labourers.
The 45-foot-tall banners with life-size illustrations of bun towers from last year attracted criticism from residents and visitors despite being accompanied by 15-foot-tall bun towers.
Yung said island residents were happy to see the return of the taller bun towers, which measure about 20 feet in height.
He added that authorities gave the committee about HK$200,000 in funding, with organisers also spending nearly HK$2 million on bun towers, a bamboo theatre for Cantonese opera shows and towering paper-craft representations of deities, among other items.
The Cheung Chau Bun Festival, also known as Cheung Chau Da Jiu Festival, is believed to have originated in the 18th or 19th century to celebrate the end of a plague.
Villagers apparently made offerings to deities and marched through the streets with an image of “God of the North” Pak Tai to ward off evil spirits, while people dressed as various other deities followed along.
Others claim the island was attacked by pirates, and the rituals were conducted to appease the spirits of the people who had died.
Highlights of the annual tradition include the Piu Sik, or “floating colour” parade, and the bun scrambling competition at midnight.
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