Halloween in Hong Kong

Hail to the headless horsemen, hobgoblins and vampires, all! It's the time of year for witches, and ghouls made of pumpkins which burn bright with manic grins.

Considering that zombies, werewolves, and one or two walking dead are likely to be filling her school playground in a couple of days, nine-year-old Tanya Mahtani remains unfazed." I'm going to be a vampire," she says, referring to costume plans for her school's Halloween celebrations.

Tanya and her friends in Class 4B of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong are big fans of the festival, and so are the teachers. Last year, senior staff at the CIS wandered about as Smurfs - not exactly a Halloween theme but part of a general dressing-up day.

Spurred on by theme parks, horror films and heavy marketing, Halloween has taken off in Hong Kong over the past two decades, While it is most widely, and wildly, celebrated in the United States, Halloween or All Hallow's Eve goes back hundreds of years to at least the 16th century, when it was marked in Scotland and Ireland on the eve of All Hallows, a Christian feast.

It was a time when the ghosts of the recently dead could revenge themselves on those who had wronged them. All Hallow's Eve was also a time of celebration, where communities would come together to play games, including "apple bobbing", where apples are put in a basin of water and participants try to lift them out with their teeth.

Belief in witches, elves and pagan gods still held sway, so Halloween became a mix of community festivals with some Christian elements thrown in. When the Scots and Irish immigrated to North America, they took Halloween culture with them.