The day after China’s National Day, I went to my old neighbourhood to check out the Tai Hang Fire Dragon. I stayed in the area for three months with Angelia before I found my current pad. When the festival was happening, I was still too clueless to know what was happening. I guess I was in that transitional period where I was still a little resistant to local discoveries!
Anyhow, Lye and I met for a yummy dinner at Ziti’s, a hole-in-wall restaurant that makes really good Italian food. I miss the place so much! I used to get takeaways or deliveries all the time and I attempted that after moving to Mid-Levels but they claimed they don’t deliver beyond Wan Chai. My devastation!!!
(FIY, on the MTR route it’s Tin Hau (my old neighbourhood) to Causeway Bay to Wan Chai to Admiralty to Central (where I stay now). In case you’re getting lost with my citations of the different Hong Kong districts.)
After dinner, Lita joined us and we continued to wait around (standing!!) for a good 90 minutes (or did I exaggerate here??) before the long-awaited fire dragon made its rounds.
The fire dragon is made up of joss sticks so it’ll go around the neighbourhood till the joss sticks burn out. This is the info I found on the festival:
“The Tai Hang Fire Dragon has its origin in 1880. At that time, Tai Hang was only a small Hakka village and the villagers, most of them fishermen and farmers, led a simple and peaceful life. The tale started when the villagers once killed a serpent in a stormy night, but the next morning, the dead body of the serpent disappeared.
A few days later, a plague spread out in Tai Hang and many people died of infection. Meanwhile, a village elder saw Buddha one night in his dream and was told to perform a Fire Dragon Dance and to burn fire crackers in the Mid-Autumn Festival. The sulphur in the fire crackers drove away the disease and the villagers were saved.
Since then, every year the Tai Hang residents would perform the Fire Dragon dance for three nights during the Mid-Autumn Festival in memory of the incident. The Fire Dragon is altogether 220 feet long with its body divided into 32 segments, all of which are stuffed with straw and stuck full of incense sticks. So it is known as the “Fire Dragon”.”
The crowd.
I love traditional Chinese banners like this.
The next time I update will be from Taipei! I’ll be there for a week before heading to Shanghai for another week. Please let me go through October in one piece! So much to cover in this busy month for work… Wish me luck! XOXO
