Hong Kong Fire Dragon Dance Celebrates Mid-Autumn Festival

On the evening of the 5th, Hong Kong’s ‘Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance’ once again took place in the streets and alleys of Tai Hang, Causeway Bay. The ‘Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance’ was inscribed on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage Representative Projects of China in 2011 and is an important festive event for celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong.

According to legend, in the sixth year of Emperor Guangxu’s reign (1880), Tai Hang Village suffered an outbreak of plague. The villagers paraded a fire dragon and set off firecrackers to drive away the epidemic, thus creating the custom of the fire dragon dance. Every year, villagers of Tai Hang handcraft a new ‘fire dragon’. On the night of the fourteenth of the eighth lunar month, a consecration ceremony for the ‘fire dragon’ is held in the Lin Fa Kung temple, which is dedicated to Guanyin. Afterwards, for three consecutive nights, the fire dragon parades all the streets of Tai Hang. For more than a hundred years, this tradition has been passed down from generation to generation.

Every year, Tai Hang residents make a new fire dragon for the event. The entire dragon is made up of a dragon head, dragon tail, and 32 segments of the body. The head and tail frameworks are made from flexible rattan, and the backbone of the body is a 67-meter long, 2-centimeter thick rope. Dried grass known locally as ‘rice grass’ or ‘pearl grass’ is laid over the rattan and rope, used as the base for inserting burning incense sticks—‘longevity incense’—each 45 centimeters long. After the parade concludes, the organizers hand out the remaining burning incense sticks from the dragon's body, known as ‘dragon incense’, to the public, symbolizing good fortune and blessings.