Yesterday was Lord Buddha's Birthday, a public holiday here when most people get the day off. It also was the main parade day for the Bun Festival on Cheung Chau, a tiny island to the southwest of Hong Kong island. The Bun Festival is actually a Taoist festival that just happened to coincide with the holiday -- we could've visited a Buddhist temple and watched them bathe Buddha instead, but this seemed much cooler, so we caught a ferry and went to check it out.
It turns out most of Hong Kong had the same idea, so when we arrived we had trouble getting through the crowds clogging the main street. Very few people had masks on. It seems SARS fears have receded significantly, with only single-digit increases in new cases for the last few days, and only 7 new cases yesterday (compared to 40+/day in March/April). The WHO wants this below 5/day before they'll consider lifting the travel ban, but one of the headlines today was that a WHO doctor has said he doesn't think HKers need to wear masks anymore. No one's contracted SARS from just walking around town without one on, they say, and the new cases being reported now all are colleagues/family of other infected people, not mystery subway sneeze victims. So things are looking up.
Back to the bun festival. The parade wasn't an organized singular affair, but rather a collection of little troupes of teenage lion dance teams led by elders waving flags, winding through the little back alleys past old local grandmas mumbling in Hakka, butcher shops, and photo-crazy Chinese yuppies with expensive cameras. Some of the competing processions were also wheeling card-table-sized floats featuring infant girls dressed in imperial costume, literally lashed to a stand to give the appearance of an amazing balancing feat as one appeared to be holding the other in the air.
All the lions and floating babies convened near a temple where three enormous towers had been constructed, each covered with tasty-looking buns. Plus Chinese opera (in Cantonese), scary-looking Taoist effigies (I'm guessing some kind of fishing/sea god, as it always is here) and lotsa burning incense. We retreated to the waterfront for fresh shrimp and crab at the sidewalk seafood restaurants, the main draw for people visiting the islands. Yum. All in all, a good Buddha's birthday.
Posted by cce at May 9, 2003 10:30 AM | TrackBackhow'd they get the babies to, like, not flip out?
Posted by: ben at May 10, 2003 03:07 AMi dunno! they looked to be about 5 years old to me and kept a strangely calm expression the whole time, even though they were held in place to the push-float by a wooden stand 4 feet above the ground and had to have men run in front with sticks to hold up low-hanging electric wires and stuff so they wouldn't hit their heads.
Posted by: chris at May 10, 2003 03:41 AMWow, Buddha has a birthday. Nice. I bet he was really into birthdays back in his day. I bet he loved the cake. I mean, you can tell the dude must have enjoyed decadent foods.
Posted by: Dan at May 10, 2003 07:49 AMBuddha is realizing that birthday is no birthday and no birthday is birthday and all that crap is the same as the sound of one hand clapping.
Posted by: manning at May 11, 2003 02:16 AM