Cheung Chau may be famed for its legends of buried pirate treasure and sumptuous seafood, but it is an annual scramble for plastic buns that attracts most attention.
The midnight race attracted just over 200 applicants this year, who battled it out in a series of heats earlier this month before the final 12 competitors were selected.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, nine men and three women clambered to the top of a 14-metre cone-shaped metal tower to see how many buns they could bag in three minutes.
The competition was revived in 2005 after a 27-year hiatus triggered by the collapse of one of the bamboo towers which injured dozens of people in 1978.
It took months of negotiations to bring the decades-old tradition back to the island with the Leisure and Cultural Services Department funding the competition.
This year, the event cost HK$1.74 million to stage, up from HK$1.59m last year.