Hong Kong puts hi-tech spin on Hungry Ghost Festival to breathe new life into old traditions
- Organisers announce first Yu Lan Cultural Festival since end of pandemic as city’s Chiu Chow community prepares to mark traditional period for appeasing spirits
- Federation of Hong Kong Chiu Chow Community Organisations promises blend of traditional practices, innovative technology and popular culture to draw visitors
Hong Kong’s largest celebration of the Hungry Ghost Festival will return after a three-year hiatus and include innovative activities such as an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot and a role-playing game to bring in young visitors.
The Federation of Hong Kong Chiu Chow Community Organisations on Wednesday said the event would be held in early September at Victoria Park and hoped the city’s young generation would attend to learn more about the festival.
“We hope that Yu Lan Cultural Festival activities, where we combine elements from the present and our traditional practices through the use of innovative technology and popular culture, will be able to attract young people to learn about our culture,” said Anven Wu Yim-chung, the group’s deputy director.
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The festival takes place during the seventh lunar month, with celebrations reaching their peak during the middle of the period.
A cornerstone of the festival is venerating ancestors through rites and burning offerings in the street to appease wandering souls, as the period is traditionally viewed as a brief window for spirits to roam the living world.
The festival is also highly prized by the local Chiu Chow community, an ethnic group that traces its roots back to mainland China’s Guangdong province.
The federation’s annual event, which was introduced in 2015, has not been held since 2019 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Wu on Wednesday said organisers had decided to introduce more innovative elements this year, acknowledging that traditional activities such as reciting scripture and Chiu Chow opera performances might not be enticing for some participants.
New activities include a festive chatbot powered by AI-generative software ChatGPT 3.5 and a live action role-playing game.
Known as “Yu Lan bot ChatGPT”, the software is a modified AI tool that can tell visitors more about the traditional festival, with organisers saying they hoped it would help participants to develop a deeper understanding of the event.
Wu brushed aside concerns about the reliability of such software and said the chatbot’s primary aim was to spark discussion about the festival.
“We want people to experience the answers produced by the chatbot. Afterwards, we will get some interaction and people will ask ‘are these answers correct?’,” he said. “They will ask us and try to understand more, so we are trying to create this type of environment.”
Wu also promised an immersive experience for those taking part in the event’s role-playing game, which will feature augmented-reality elements, as well as scripts for players and puzzles to be solved.
A longer version of the script would be available to those who booked a time slot for the game, while walk-ins would be able to play with a shorter copy, he added.
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Wu said the games aimed to foster values such as the act of giving and receiving, as well as the concept of karma.
He expressed optimism that the number of attendees would exceed past levels of between 30,000 and 40,000, predicting the new activities would help attract a larger crowd.
Highlights from past events will also make a return, including the hugely popular “ghost grappling competition” that sees participants compete against one another to catch as many “offerings” as they can with a handheld funnel-shaped tool.
Organisers said about 30 teams each had already signed for school and open competitions at the event, while workshops were available for attendees interested in learning more about crafts related to the festival.
