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Lisa Lim

A highlight of Hong Kong’s celebrations for the Mid-Autumn Festival – also known as the Moon or Mooncake Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month – is the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance.
The dance involves no ordinary dragon. This one is 67 metres (220 feet) long, is made of bamboo and straw, comes festooned with more than 10,000 burning incense sticks, and is handled by 300 performers.
A fire dragon also dances every year at Pok Fu Lam Village.
These performances are much more than a festival event or tourist draw.

The Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance has roots going back more than a century in the history of this traditionally Hakka village.
The Hakka – whose name haak gaa 客家 means “guest family” – are a Han Chinese group who, in a series of migrations beginning in 200BC, moved from China’s central plains to Fujian and Guangdong provinces in southern China.
They later relocated further, settling in Hong Kong from 1700, establishing walled villages in the New Territories as well as in Tai Hang, and engaging in farming, construction and provisioning ships.
Historically, the Hakka language was widely used in Hong Kong, spoken by more than 50 per cent of the city’s residents. By the 1911 census, Hakkas comprised 15.1 per cent of the population, the second-largest language group after Cantonese.
Fast-forward a century, however, and factors including demographic changes, official language policy and identity politics have had an impact on the cultures and languages of indigenous communities like the Hakka, Tanka and Weitou.
Communities have undergone the common pattern of language shift across generations to become Cantonese-dominant; only the oldest generation still speak and understand their heritage languages.
Returning to the fire dragon, its origins are found in the 1880 plague in Tai Hang. To ward off disease and dispel misfortune, villagers, prompted by a vision, crafted and paraded a dragon with burning joss sticks and released firecrackers – whereupon the plague came to an end.
Since then, villagers have performed this three-day fire dragon dance every year to pray for peace and blessings from the gods.

The sustained practice of the fire dragon dance is a showcase of the preservation of intangible cultural heritage (ICH).
ICH goes beyond that which is tangible, such as monuments, furniture, crockery, weapons, jewellery and material artefacts so well conserved in museums.
As Unesco articulates, ICH includes traditions or living expressions inherited from ancestors and transmitted to descendants. This includes oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.
But what is intangible is often more difficult to hold on to.
Fortunately, there has been growing recognition and action, notably following Unesco’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Hong Kong’s first ICH inventory of oral traditions and expressions, part of a wider inventory that was announced in 2014, does include language varieties such as Hakka, Wai Tau (Weitou), Hokkien and Fuzhou, Chiu Chow, and Hoklo.
Hong Kong’s 2017 Representative List of ICH, whose 20 items the government has vowed to preserve and promote, features both Tai Hang’s and Pok Fu Lam’s Fire Dragon Dance; the former is also included in China’s third national ICH list (2011).
It is important to recognise that linguistic heritage is a fundamental component of cultural heritage. Heritage languages enable speakers’ expression of cultural identity, and function as a carrier of values and knowledge, notably indigenous ecological knowledge.
Conversely, the practice of cultural heritage offers good opportunities for embedding heritage language transmission.
This year, Hong Kong is delivering “an epic display of tradition and modernity”, with Tai Hang’s fire dragon complemented with a smaller one decorated with LEDs, and one made up of drones, part of the Hong Kong Tourism Board’s first Mid-Autumn-themed drone show.
Some may bemoan the overtaking of the traditional with technology, and the commodification of heritage. A balance, nonetheless, between tradition and evolution is crucial for cultures and languages not just to survive but to thrive.


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Members of the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance team spin balls of joss sticks as the “dragon” winds through Tai Hang on September 29, 2023. Photo: AFP

Members of the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance team spin balls of joss sticks as the “dragon” winds through Tai Hang, Hong Kong, during Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations on September 29, 2023. Such events are vital in preserving the city’s intangible cultural heritage, including its language traditions. Photo: AFP

Crowds watch the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance on September 28, 2023. Photo: Sam Tsang

The Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance has its origins in the 1880 plague in Tai Hang. Photo: Sam Tsang

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Lifestyle

Arts & Culture

Events like the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance help Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritage, including its language traditions, to survive


Events like the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance help Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritage, including its language traditions, to survive.


Mid-Autumn Festival

History of Hong Kong districts

Hong Kong culture

History

Living heritage of Hong Kong

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Language Matters

Language Matters | Why Hong Kong’s fire dragon dances, part of Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations, are so vital

Events like the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance help Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritage, including its language traditions, to survive