Lucky Bun

To visit as many places as possible and bring luck there.

Lucky Bun comes from a small island called Cheung Chau in Hong Kong. Every year on the fifth to the ninth days of the fourth lunar month, there is a festival called Bun Festival in Cheung Chau.

It all started with a plague that devastated Cheung Chau in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911). The islanders built an altar in front of the Pak Tai Temple and petitioned the god Pak Tai to drive off the evil spirits besieging the island, while parading statues of deities through the narrow lanes of their village. The plague ended after the performance of these Taoist rituals and 100 years later the rituals are still performed in a festival that is listed as an intangible part of China’s cultural heritage.

The Festival called the Bun Festival was because there is a bun scrambling competition during the festival. competitors stand poised at the bottom of an enormous bamboo tower studded with imitation buns. On the signal, they scramble up it and try to collect as many ‘lucky’ buns as possible. The higher the buns, the more points they are worth. People believe the buns from the tower brings luck for the whole year.

I buy the bun there in an eventful day. I went to Cheung Chau to grab my 1st FTF. After that, when I was retrieving another cache, I was suddenly surronded by some stray dogs. After some 5 minutes of desperate I finally made the dogs give up on me. Feeling lucky as I could go back to civilization unstreched, I decided to get a lucky bun with me to mark my luck.