Bun-believable: Hong Kong festival on Cheung Chau to downsize bamboo towers by two-thirds amid post-Covid labour woes
- Hong Kong Cheung Chau Bun Festival Committee says bamboo towers will be 30 feet shorter this year
- Contractor turned down tower-building job due to labour shortages, WhatsApp records on committee’s social media show
Three 45-foot-tall (13-metre) bamboo towers featured in Hong Kong’s bun festival on Cheung Chau will be downsized by two-thirds this year, with organisers blaming the decision on labour shortages following a three-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Hong Kong Cheung Chau Bun Festival Committee on Monday said the height of the three towers would be reduced from 45 feet to about 15 feet this year as its original contractor had turned down the job of building them due to labour shortages.
“The skilled contractor has been our sole partner for generations, nobody except them does such work in Hong Kong. Now that they have quit, we cannot do anything about it,” committee chairman Yung Chi-ming said.
Instead, three banners illustrating the actual size of the towers will be shown at the Bun Carnival, with the finale to be held at the scenic outlying island on the night of May 26.
The bamboo structures stacked with real buns are featured in rituals during the event. The buns, which symbolise peace and health, are removed from the towers and given to the attendees on the festival’s last day.
A 46-foot iron tower decorated with white plastic buns scaled by a dozen climbers at the stroke of midnight during the finale of the carnival will not be affected.
According to WhatsApp records shown on the committee’s social media page, its contractor turned down the tower-building job because of a worker shortage and not being able to find a venue to make the structures.
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Yung said they could not find a new contractor to build the three bamboo towers on such short notice, adding that the smaller ones and new banners were the best they could offer.
He said the pandemic had affected the contractor as materials such as bamboo were no longer in good shape and the company was unable to build the structures from scratch.
Yung said they have been in partnership with the family-run contractor for generations and the worker shortage was out of their control. The committee found a new contractor who built the smaller towers.
“We were willing to pay at all costs, even when the price spiked from HK$80,000 (US$10,233) to HK$130,000,” he said, adding he was still uncertain about next year’s arrangement.
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Pak She Street Association president Li Chi-wai, said the bamboo tower master was a man surnamed Chan, around 50 years old, who inherited the century-old family business as a side job.
Li, a native of the island, said building the towers was a months-long process that include sanding down the materials for use. He added that Chan had struggled to recruit people to help with the preparations.
Meanwhile, the reduced size of the bamboo towers meant that one of the bakeries that usually made buns to hang on the structures had pulled out of this year’s event.
Kwok Kam-chuen, founder of store Kwok Kam Kee, which previously partnered with fellow bakery Hong Lan to prepare more than 20,000 buns each year, had passed this year’s reduced order of 10,000 to the other outlet.
The store owner said he believed Hong Lan could handle the order by itself, while his own bakery of more than 40 years would focus on selling buns to visitors and residents
The tower used for bun scrambling is an iron-made structure. While the buns on the bamboo towers are real, those on the one made from metal are plastic.
Both are inscribed with the Chinese character Ping An, meaning peace. Those who manage to obtain the buns are believed to be blessed in traditional Chinese culture.
The festival was officially inscribed onto the third national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2011.
The iconic bun scrambling spectacle is one of the highlights of the festival, which also features a “floating colour” parade, dubbed “Piu Sik”, in which children dress up as famous city figures and are carried down the island’s main street on stools.
