Halloween has been rapidly adopted and turned into a month-long festival in Hong Kong but don't expect to see too many children trick-or-treating, says Joseph Bosco, associate professor in anthropology at Chinese University.
Halloween has become a big event in Hong Kong in a very short space of time. When we first came to the city in 1992, it was difficult to buy items for Halloween and we had to get things for our children from the US. Look around this year and you'll see so much Halloween stuff in the shops.
I think it is primarily commercially driven, but the public is more than willing to go along with this - they are not being fooled into it. Also there is this concept of the 'carnivalisation' of shopping. The shopping mall has become a kind of carnival. They are always having shows and events.
If you were to take the Mid-Autumn Festival and drag it out and make it a month-long festival, people would feel it was too commercial. But by using something that is clearly foreign and that they consider cosmopolitan and fun it doesn't bother anybody's sensibilities, and it seems perfectly appropriate.
Hong Kong people view the Mid-Autumn Festival as a one-day thing. It isn't something you can promote for the whole month. There's a lot more that they can bring in with the ghosts, the pumpkins, the popcorn and the candy that comes with Halloween. It is something new and extra. I don't think customers' views are as crassly commercial as they would be if they did it with the Mid-Autumn Festival.
I don't think Halloween and the Mid-Autumn Festival are really competing with each other. You are doing it with different groups of people. It is rather like Christmas and New Year where Christmas is a family holiday and New Year's Eve is spent with friends.
Part of modern consumerism is consuming experiences, and I just view this as another experience that people consume. That's why it is even appropriate to bring your children to Lan Kwai Fong to look at the gweilos dressed up in their costumes. You see a large number of families with children just there to have a look. My students at Chinese University say western ghosts are not frightening. They find the characters we use for Halloween, in particular the witch, as fun. They don't have an evil association with the witch. They know they are bad, but bad in a playful way.