Burning rage: Hong Kong performance artists light up the night

It was Tuesday evening outside Prince Edward MTR station. The earlier thunderstorm had eased into light rain and pedestrians had resurfaced, much to the relief of the Fa Yuen Street market stallholders and the determined ice cream van parked in Nullah Road. Most walked purposefully, probably on their way to dinner, stealing quick glances at the cheap bric-a-brac on offer along the way. Others found tolerably dry seats in a small sitting-out area, hoping to spot someone they knew. It was a perfectly ordinary evening in this sleepy corner of Kowloon.

At 7pm, a local artistic duo called C&G Artpartment arrived on the scene and lit a fire in a tin can, and suddenly it wasn’t so ordinary any more. As Clara Cheung Ka-lei and Gum Cheng Yee-man explained, Tuesday was Yu Laan, or Chinese ghost festival, and they were staging a special ritual at the junction of Nullah Road and Prince Edward Road West.

This location was the meeting point of three evil fung shui forces (Saam Saat), they said, so there ought to be plenty of ghosts floating around as the gates of hell opened, hungry for burnt offerings. Cheung prepared a paper model of a man with, it seemed, a gaping hole in his bottom. Summoned by the blaze, a giant, pink fish appeared, as well as a man in a suit wearing a large woman’s hat that Cecil Beaton would have approved of.

These were some of the combustible offerings prepared by C&G’s artist friends in a street performance called Burning Your Account Book.The Cantonese title is Siu Nei So Bo, just two consonants shy of a common profanity. The “account” part came from the popular demand for Leung Chun-ying, the Chief Executive, to account for his 2012 election promises.

“We want to pay respect to the ritualistic tradition of Yu Laan. We also see the burning of offerings as a way to vent our frustrations and to make our wishes known. Let’s see if we can burn away some of Hong Kong’s anger,” said Cheung, who with Cheng has produced a number of public performances that are critiques of public policies and society.

Burning Your Account Book is part two of a series of protests against what they call the “West Kowloonisation” of Hong Kong’s artistic environment – a reference to the future cultural centre – and also, the gentrification of old neighbourhoods such as Prince Edward.

The first artist to set something alight was Jessica Chan Wai-tung, whose act of burning two life-sized models of babies was more chilling than cathartic. It was a reflection of how Hong Kong failed to provide spiritual or cultural nutrients for babies to grow up whole, she explained.