The people of Cheung Chau feel obliged to say a kind word for all the animals and fish who were executed to feed mankind during the past year, and this debt is squared by the four-day Bun Festival on their dumbbell-shaped island. Its date is set by lot, and usually falls in the last few days of the Third Moon or the first ten days of the Fourth Moon. No animals are killed and no fish are caught during the festival. Troupes of actors are imported to perform in an enormous temporary theater, with its roof of coarse matting supported on a bamboo framework tied together with rattan strips. Daily and nightly presentations of Cantonese Opera are put on with the performers in elaborate costumes, shrilling their lines above the tireless clamor of cymbals.
The festival centerpiece consists of a triple-peaked bun mountain, or conical framework covered with varicolored buns from its base to its 60-foot summit. As soon as it is completed, it is covered with a tarpaulin to protect the buns until the climactic ceremony on the final day of the festival.
The various guilds on the islands compete in a long procession which passes under floral arches on the village streets. The perennial feature of the procession is a series of tableaux enacted by children on platforms borne on the shoulders of several men. The subjects are mythological, and by the ingenious use of a well-concealed steel framework, make a mere toddler appear to be dancing nimbly on the tip of a fiddle held by a child standing beneath the dancer. It’s all an amiable fake, understood as such by the crowd, but executed with such aplomb by the children that it never fails to delight the spectators. Images of Gods and Goddesses are also carried in the line of march, with lion dancers and clowns to add further excitement. A mass for the recently departed fish and animals is celebrated on the final night, and their hungry souls are permitted to take a few ghostly nips at the bun mountain. An officiating priest decides when they’ve had enough, takes a careful look around to see that no latecomers from the Great Beyond have been neglected, and signals the slavering bystanders to pitch in. The young men of the island scramble up the bunny slopes in a mad dash for the topmost bun, but there are thousands of edibles at all levels, so no climber need go hungry.