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Cheung Chau General Info: |
| Cheung Chau (meaning "long island" in Cantonese) is one of the most popular of all the outlying islands. Shaped like a dumbbell, it is about a 30-55-minute ferry ride from Hong Kong's Central District. |
| Cheung Chau is a picturesque island with a waterfront that bustles with activity. There are butcher shops and vendors selling fresh fish, shellfish, fruit and vegetables. The small local restaurants and food stalls do a brisk trade on weekends.
During the week, Cheung Chau is a quiet residential island but at weekends, it's a different story. When ferries, packed with sightseers and holiday-makers arrive at the island, the population doubles. Cheung Chau is most famous for its week-long Bun Festival, held during the fourth moon in the lunar calendar (April/May). The celebration culminates in a unique and colourful street procession. |
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| - Where is It
It located in about the South of Hong Kong, and Southeast of Lantau Island. |
| - How to Go There ?
To get to Cheung Chau, take the ferry from Outlying Islands Ferry Pier No. 5 in Central. Information about ferry schedules can be obtained from Hong Kong Tourism Board Visitor Information & Services Centres (click here). When you arrive at Cheung Chau, walk north along Pak She Praya Road. |
| - Cheung Chau Bun Festival!! |
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Fourth Moon, Day 8 (April/May)
Acelebration dominated by white chinese buns is quite a spectacle, and it is one not to be missed. Every year on the tiny island of Cheung Chau, the people of Hong Kong celebrate the Bun Festival.
Enormous bamboo towers studded with white chinese bun and effigies of three gods |
| dominate the grounds near the Pak Tai Temple, where the main festivities take place. The festival that lasts for about a week climaxes with a large, colourful street procession, which features costumed children on stilts in a carnival atmosphere that winds its way through the streets.
One of the reputed origins of this popular festival, which attracts tourists by the tens of thousands each year, involves a plague on the island hundreds of years ago. Villagers disguised themselves as different deities and walked around the island to drive away the evil spirits responsible for the plague. Another story says the festival is part of an annual exorcism and fast. |
| In the past, the last event of this weeklong celebration was the climbing of the bun towers. Athletes would scamper up the bamboo bun towers and grab as many buns as possible. The buns would then be sold or distributed to those who did not join in the competition. This ritual was abandoned in 1978, but was resumed again.
Join a Bun Festival Tour to enjoy all the sights, sounds and colours of the festivities from an exclusive vantage point.
Celebrated on Cheung Chau Island, this festival is held in honour of the deity Pak Tai, who drove away evil spirits from the island. Towers of sweet buns are erected and they are a sight to behold. |
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| The Bun Festival is partly an exorcism, and culminates in wandering ghosts being banished to the underworld - untill next year. |
| - Best Time to Visit
Cheung Chau is mostly popular with Hong Kong people. They visit on daytrips, swimming and relaxing on the beach, enjoy the other lifestyle from the bustle city. Water activities are available, people can rent kayaks or play windsurf. |
| - Praya Street |
| Ferry passengers arriving on Cheung Chau are often fascinated by the sight of fishing families maintaining traditional lifestyles aboard authentic wooden junks equipped with radar and computer systems. There is no vehicular traffic on this tiny, dumbbell-shaped island, which is ideal for walking and soaking up the traditional atmosphere. Hugging the shore on reclaimed land, Praya Street uses the Portuguese name (imported via Macau) for a harbourside avenue — the “Praya”. Along the waterfront, seafood is dried in the sun and fishmongers sell fresh shellfish and seafood in shops and restaurants. In |
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| the evenings, the road becomes a colourful Mediterranean-style promenade for islanders; at weekends it is lively with day-trippers from all over Hong Kong. |
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| - Pak Tai Temple
Built more than two centuries ago, the temple is dedicated to the Taoist god of the sea, the “Supreme Emperor of the Dark Heaven”. Pak Tai’s power is symbolised by the serpent and tortoise under his feet. Before his altar are statues of two generals, “Thousand Miles Eye” and “Favourable Wind Ear”, who are said to be able to see and hear from any distance. Side halls display images of the Green Dragon and White Tiger, and the complex includes many features of traditional Chinese temple architecture, such as ceramic figurines on roof ridges and stone lions on the forecourt.
In the 18th Century, Cheung Chau was devastated by a plague and infiltrated by pirates — until local fishermen brought an |
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image of the god Pak Tai to the island. Paraded through the village lanes, the deity drove away evil spirits. Every year on the 8th day of the fourth month of the Lunar calendar, the islanders organise a week-long thanksgiving, the Cheung Chau Bun Festival (usually in April or May). The festival features huge towers covered with buns erected in front of the Pak Tai Temple and a street procession in which costumed children appear to float above the crowds, supported by hidden rods and wires. Pak Tai Temple is open daily 8am to 5pm. |
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| - Pak She Street and San Hing Street
Pak She Street and San Hing Street form Cheung Chau’s old main street. The scene is typical of island communities: three-storey balconied shop-houses flank a narrow pedestrian lane which follows the contour of the original coastline before it was |
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reclaimed.
Stroll along these streets past rebuilt blocks and modern shops and you will see people still practising traditional trades — baking lotus-seed cakes, dispensing herbal medicine or manufacturing and selling Cheung Chau’s famed, pungent, purplish-brown shrimp paste. In clan and community associations, memorial plaques and photographs line the walls. |
| - Tung Wan Beach
Cheung Chau’s “town” crowds the narrow sandbar linking the two hilly ends of the island. On the eastern side, only a few minutes’ walk across the island from the ferry pier, is Tung Wan, a popular public beach. In the waters off to the right, beyond the Warwick Hotel Cheung Chau, Hong Kong’s first Olympic Games gold medallist, Lee Lai-shan, practised windsurfing as a schoolgirl. The local Windsurfing Centre teaches the sport. |
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| - Kwan Kung Pavilion |
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Inland from Tung Wan, the colourful Kwan Kung Pavilion is a gilded, lacquered temple dedicated to Kwan Tai, the Taoist God of War and Righteousness. Leave the temple, walk down Peak Road to Police Station Path and into Tung Wan Road.
From there you can catch the ferry back to Central. Open 6:30am - 4:30pm daily. |
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| - Hung Sing Temple
Hung Sing Temple hnours the Sea God. Inside the temple there is a bell cast in 1736, the first year of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, which is the same year when the temple was built. |
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| - Kwun Yam Temple
This small temple overlooks the beach of the same name. It is typically ornate with statues, lions, incense sticks, candles, and fruit offerings. |
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