Tradition or tourist spectacle? Safeguarding Hong Kong's culture comes at a price

For more than 100 years, during the fourth month of the lunar calendar, residents of Cheung Chau have honoured the god Pak Tai to appease the wandering spirits of plague victims who died during the Qing dynasty.

The island's residents ate vegetarian food and lit incense at the intricate Pak Tai Temple. Local men built three towers of steamed buns for a climbing competition while children, dressed as legendary heroes, were suspended on steel frames and appeared to float above the crowd's heads.

Fixing the Cheung Chau bun festival in May on Buddha's birthdate and resuming the bun competition in 2005 after it had been halted for safety reasons have helped lure 40,000 visitors annually to the island. That's made the Cheung Chau bun festival one of Hong Kong's great cultural treasures that the city hopes to preserve.

But the popularity of the three-day carnival, which nearly doubles the population of the 2.46 sq km island each year, has also turned off natives such as Lai Tai-sing and his wife, Chan Kam-mui. During the festivities, they stay locked inside their public housing apartment, finding the event irrelevant.

"It's true that tourists make the island more vibrant and bring business to local shops," said the 49-year-old Lai. "The festival has little to do with us now."

In 2011, the annual event joined China's national list of intangible cultural heritage - artefacts that include performing arts, skills, rituals, crafts and festivals, and that differ from physical heritage items such as buildings and possessions. Inclusion on the list wins national and possibly worldwide recognition.

Safeguarding such traditions has become a global fashion, thanks to the advocacy of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). Hong Kong got swept up in the trend, embarking in 2009 on a four-year survey of the city's cultural traditions. The result was the city's first inventory of intangible cultural heritage published in June, cataloguing 480 entries in hopes of keeping traditions alive, said Liu Tik-sang, director of the University of Science and Technology's South China Research Centre, which conducted the survey.