Cheung Chau Bun Festival (長洲太平清醮): The Cantonese Island Festival Where People Climb Mountains of Buns

Once a year, a small dumbbell-shaped island off the southwest coast of Hong Kong stops eating meat, builds three 60-foot bamboo towers, sticks tens of thousands of pink-stamped steamed buns onto them, and lets athletes race up the towers in the middle of the night to grab as many buns as they can. This is the 長洲太平清醮 — the Cheung Chau Bun Festival — and it is one of the most spectacular, most specifically Cantonese things that still happens in modern Hong Kong.

Every May, tens of thousands of visitors ferry over from Central Pier to watch a fishing island turn itself, for a week, into a stage for parades, dragon dances, floating children, and vegetarian roast pork that isn't actually pork. Here's how a plague, a sea god, and a stack of buns built one of Hong Kong's most beloved festivals.

It started with a plague and a statue

The most-told origin story goes like this. In 1777, Cheung Chau was hit by a devastating plague. The islanders, desperate, brought an image of Pak Tai (北帝) — the God of Water, Spirit of the North — through the streets in procession, hoping to drive out the sickness. The plague broke. In gratitude, the islanders built the Pak Tai Temple (also called Yuk Hui Temple, 玉虛宮) in 1783, and they promised to hold a purification ritual every year to keep the spirits of the drowned and the diseased at peace.

That ritual — 太平清醮, taai3 ping4 cing1 jiu3, literally "great peace-purification ritual" — has been kept up for over two centuries. The dates shift with the lunar calendar, but the festival always centres on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month, which coincides with the Buddha's birthday. During the festival, the whole island goes vegetarian. Even McDonald's on Cheung Chau serves veggie burgers instead of Big Macs for the week.

The bun mountains — and the 1978 collapse that changed everything

The centrepiece of the festival is at Pak Tai Temple, where three enormous bamboo scaffolding towers — the "bun mountains" or 包山 (baau1 saan1) — are erected each year, roughly 60 feet tall and covered with thousands of pink-stamped lotus-paste buns (平安包, ping4 on1 baau1 — "peace buns"). Historically, at midnight, young men from the island would swarm up the towers and grab as many buns as they could carry. The higher the bun, the more luck it was believed to bring to the grabber's family. The event even had a name: 搶包山, coeng2 baau1 saan1, "bun-snatching."

Then in 1978, one of the towers collapsed mid-race and injured more than 100 people. The bun-snatching was banned. For almost thirty years, the towers were built, but nobody climbed them.

In 2005 the government and the island's committee revived the race — but as a modern, safety-approved climbing competition. It moved from the temple courtyard to the adjacent sports ground. There is now a single steel-reinforced tower, proper mountain-climbing harnesses, safety mats, and — crucially — women are now allowed to compete alongside men. The buns are plastic (real buns are handed out separately as blessings). The bun-snatchers train for months. It's genuinely thrilling to watch.

The floating children (飘色)

The other unmissable moment is the 飘色 (piu1 sik1) parade — the "floating colours." Small children, dressed as historical figures or gods, are strapped onto hidden metal frames that make them look as if they're floating in mid-air above the crowd, held up by nothing. The frames are engineered so ingeniously that from the street the kids appear to balance on a fingertip or the tip of a sword. Parents fight for the honour — being chosen to "float" is one of the biggest blessings a Cheung Chau family can receive for their child.

The parade winds through the island's narrow lanes accompanied by lion dances — the Cantonese Southern Lion tradition is out in full force — alongside drummers, Taoist priests in yellow robes, and Pak Tai's statue at the front, still being paraded through the streets 250 years after his image saved the island.

A word for the festival

Why it still matters

The Cheung Chau Bun Festival was inscribed on China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2011, and it's protected under Hong Kong's own heritage inventory. In an era where old rituals across the Pearl River Delta have been quietly dying, Cheung Chau has kept its festival alive by adapting: safer towers, women climbers, plastic display buns, government funding, tourism. The core is untouched — the island still stops eating meat for a week, Pak Tai still leads the procession, kids still float above the crowd.

If you can time a visit around late April or early May, take the ferry from Central. Eat a peace bun before you board back — Kwok Kam Kee (郭錦記) is the most famous stall, and their ping on baau have been feeding festival crowds for decades. The bun is sweet, chewy, and stamped with the pink character 安 (on1) for peace. It tastes like a piece of Cantonese island memory in your palm.

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