Fire Dragon Dance in Mid-Autumn Festival 大坑舞火龍
Every year in Mid Autumn Festival, some people not only enjoy their time with their families and taste some delicious mooncakes, some would choose to watch the famous Fire Dragon Dance.
The famous Fire Dragon Dance is a unique Chinese tradition in Hong Kong. It was started in Tai Hang Village near Causeway Bay.
It was told that in the Mid Autumn Festival of 1880, a strong typhoon hit Hong Kong and Tai Hang village was damaged badly. Then a huge snake appeared and luckily it was killed by the villagers. However, the next day a plague was spread across the village and some people were dead. The villagers believed that it was a run of bad luck afflicting the village. A soothsayer said exploding firecrackers and performing fire dance for three days and nights could blow away the bad luck. The villagers then followed and it worked - the plague disappeared. Since then people of Tai Hang Village performed this Fire Dragon Dance every year and became a tradition until now.
Even though nowadays Tai Hang is not a village anymore, its locals still continue the ritual with a whopping dragon. On the day before the Mid Autumn Festival, dragon dance participants would perform a series of rituals in the Hakka dialect at Lin Fa Temple. The commemorative performance will take three days.
At the end of the ritual, in the past the villagers would throw the dragon into the sea "to send the dragon back to the sea". Due to pollution concerns, they now "send the dragon to the sky" by burning it.
Above: Fire Dragon Dance in Tai Hang.
Photo taken by Artemiiz
Address: Wan Sha Street, Tai Hang