Yu Lan Festival in Hong Kong

Early this month, in a night we were invited to a Yu Lan Ritual in Hong Kong's Shau Kei Wan district by Paul Chan, the founder of a cultural oriented tourism agency "Walk in Hong Kong."

"People celebrate Yu Lan by organizing more than 100 'Yu Lan Rituals', and you can imagine it as a carnival involving both ghosts and human beings," said Paul Chan.

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"It is a way of worshipping ancestors and expressing the filial piety in Chinese communities. The tradition has been handed down from generation to generation for more than several decades when the festival first came to Hong Kong in 1940s." Chan said.

Chan said that people perform Chinese traditional operas in temporary theatres to entertain ghosts and ancestors while the King of Hell, who acts like a "police officer", "monitoring" the whole ritual and "frightening" away bad evils.

At the ritual site, the King was standing in front of us gravely and in a dignified way, wearing colorful paper clothes and decorated with dozens of golden stickers.

According to normal ceremony of Yu Lan Rituals, the King often "cruises" streets in some districts to "supervise" general spirits. People who accompany him are expected to throw rice and beans to streets to help the King feed wandering spirits.

At the end, the King was burnt into ashes, and in this way he was sent back where he had been invited.