Chung Yeung Festival

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday was a holiday in Hong Kong known as the Chung Yeung Festival. A lot of businesses were closed in observance, which gave us an extra day to get acclimated, and learn a little more about the history of this celebration and its roots in ancient Chinese culture. I did a little research, and below is what I learned. The Chung Yeung Festival, observed on the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese calendar, is a traditional Chinese Holiday, intended to respect and remember ancestors, a practice widely valued by the Chinese. In Hong Kong, whole extended families head to the hillsides to honor their ancestral graves by cleaning them, repainting inscriptions and laying out food offerings such as roast suckling pig and fruit, which are then eaten (after the spirits have consumed the spiritual element of the food). Once families have payed their respects, many enjoy hiking and kite flying, followed by a picnic lunch which often includes ko, a Chinese cake.

The Chung Yeung Festival also commemorates the day during the Han Dynasty (221 – 206 B.C.) when Fei Chang-fei, a Taoist soothsayer, advised a scholar, Huan Jing, to flee to the hills with his family to escape a pending disaster. Huan Jing and his family went to the hillside as directed, taking food and chrysanthemum wine with them. When they returned home they discovered that all the livestock had died from a plague, and they realized the soothsayer had saved their lives.

In honor of this history, it is tradition for Chinese people to drink chrysanthemum wine at their picnics during Chung Yeung. During this season, chrysanthemums, which are symbols of good health and longevity, are at their best.

A similar ancestral remembrance holiday takes place in the spring, and is called the Ching Ming Festival.