5 Fun facts about Hong Kong’s Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance that you should know

In our interview with the current troupe commander of the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance, we learned that this festival dates back over 140 years. As the legend goes, in 1880, a plague swept through the traditionally Hakka village of Tai Hang. Luckily, Buddha appeared in the village elders’ dreams with instructions to craft a dragon out of straw before the Mid-Autumn Festival, decorate it with incense sticks all over, and parade it through the village while setting off firecrackers. The plague abated after the villagers did as instructed, and the Fire Dragon Dance has remained a tradition ever since.

Each year, the Tai Hang Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) is in charge of handcrafting a brand-new fire dragon and its accompanying dragon pearls for the celebrations, a process which takes between one to two months to complete. The frame of its head and tail sections is shaped using rattan, while the body is mainly made using thick ropes, then the entire dragon is wrapped in chamberbitter weeds. With a body measuring roughly 220 feet, the dragon is pierced through its entirety with lit incense sticks before the ceremony.

This is a fairly common occurrence in traditional festivities worldwide (hello, deep-rooted sexism), but according to tradition, women are not permitted to touch the fire dragon after it has been built, as the dragon is considered a sacred object. The day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, villagers will gather in Tai Hang’s Lin Fa Kung Temple for the consecration ceremony, which is conducted fully in the Hakka dialect. After the fire dragon’s pupils have been drawn on, it is then considered to be alive and ready to make its way through the streets.

The Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance can be categorised into three portions. The initial part is the traditional parade through the neighbourhood, which is then followed by a performance on Wun Sha Street that focuses on wielding fanciful moves. At the end of each section, the fire dragon performance troupe will hand out incense from the dragon to the audience as a blessing for good luck.

The third and final part of the performance comes on the night after the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the dragon goes through its last ‘grand parade’. Journeying in a counterclockwise direction, it dances its way to the Causeway Bay typhoon shelter, where the troupe will then cast the fire dragon into the waters. This is because in Chinese folklore, dragons are considered the offspring of the Dragon King, who presides over the rain and all bodies of water. This part of the ceremony is therefore called the ‘dragon returns to heaven’, and symbolically takes away the filth and negative energy in the neighbourhood. However, in light of pollution awareness, the dragon has been cremated in recent years, and the ending ceremony’s name changed to the ‘dragon soars in the sky’ instead.

Nowadays, we have health and safety regulations to keep things in check, which makes sense when there are huge flaming objects, crowds, and narrow streets involved in the mix. However, things didn’t used to be quite so civilised. There never used to be restrictions on where the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance performance could be held, and the distance between the performers and excited festival goers was practically nonexistent. When it got close to the end of performance portions, the audience would already be grabbing sticks of incense straight from the dragon to take home for offering at their family altars, instead of waiting for the troupe to distribute them and risk running out. 

Back when the ‘dragon returns to heaven’ ceremony was still part of the festivities, the fire dragon would be sent out to sea, only to be swiftly fished out by the boat people living in the typhoon shelter, and the dragon’s body and head divided amongst each other. The remains of the fire dragon would then be displayed on their house boats as a blessing for peace and safety while at sea. These days, of course, there are barely any boat people living in typhoon shelters, and the Tai Hang fire dragon is taken care of by the troupe themselves.