Man Yuk-shan tucked quietly into roast duck while around him old friends, family and strangers welcomed each other at full volume. Above the noisy announcements in the busy Tai Po eatery, the 20-odd guests hurled greetings around the table in Hakka, Cantonese and, occasionally, English spoken with a British accent.
That gathering and others like it have been taking place in the past couple of weeks to bring together former residents of Tap Mun, a drowsy island one hour by boat from Ma Liu Shiu pier in Sha Tin. Many have left their homes abroad and journeyed back to Hong Kong both to remember the past and to pay their respects to the 200 or so mostly elderly inhabitants who remain on Tap Mun.
The occasion: the Tai Ping Ching Chiu festival of renewal, celebrated annually in some parts of Hong Kong but only once a decade on Tap Mun. A Taoist festival during which believers pray for safety and to dispel pesky spirits, it is being celebrated extravagantly this year to mark the 200th anniversary of the event on Tap Mun (also known as Grass Island). Overlapping the 'birthday' of the Taoist sea deity, Tin Hau, the islanders have combined the two in a celebration that started on Tuesday and continues until tomorrow.
Village representative Lee Kim-ping expects 10,000 people will visit Tap Mun during the festival, about 50 times the island's usual population. He estimates 1,000 will be overseas Chinese.
'I've come back for the reunion of people I went to school with,' said Mr Man's 35-year-old son, Wai Man, who emigrated to Britain at seven. His father moved to Tap Mun as a child during the Japanese occupation and remained there until the early 1960s.
Joseph Bosco, an associate professor of anthropology at Chinese University, said: 'People become nostalgic about the old days and festivals bring back memories. They come back for family and nostalgia.' Keen to see the celebrations, Professor Bosco visited the island yesterday with his colleague Ho Puay-peng, an associate professor of architecture. The once-a-decade festival is held to 'cleanse' the land, Professor Ho said. These and other beliefs that constitute Chinese folk religion are the focus of a book, Temples Of The Empress Of Heaven (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, $85), written by the two professors and launched yesterday to coincide with the Tin Hau festival.
Part of the Images Of Asia series, it is an introduction to the temples dedicated to the worship of Tin Hau, 'one of the most popular deities in the southern Chinese cultural sphere', according to the authors.
