Before the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841, Tai Hang was a humble fishing village sheltered in a bay along the barren northern coastline of Hong Kong Island, “on the back of the frog”, with reference to the frog-like shape of the island. Over the years of British colonial administration, the fishing village grew into a serene middle-class and upper-middle-class neighbourbood where ethnic Chinese merchants and intellectuals found comfortable respite from the colonial lifestyle and the Christian faith imported from Europe, which many of them deemed too exotic and foreign. It was the idiosyncratic "Chinese uptown", a reasonable commute along the tramway or by bus from the Central District of Victoria City, without the societal pressure to speak English, dress in European fashion or convert to Christianity as these well-to-do and learned Chinese residents had felt around the British colonial élite settling on the Peak and suburbs in western parts of the island. The Chinese Recreation Club (中華遊樂會) was inaugurated in 1912 in Tai Hang as a recreational and social club open to Chinese membership and which serves Chinese food for patrons. After the war, land reclamation projects filled in the bay and built the now Victoria Park.

 

True to its marine roots, Tai Hang retained strong traditions of Buddhist Kwun Yum worship (觀音, also known as the Guanyin in Mandarin Chinese, referring to the Avalokiteśvara, a Mahāyāna bodhisattva for mercy) and Taoist Tin Hau worship (天后, also known as Mazu/Matsu [媽祖] in Mandarin Chinese, Goddess of the Sea). Every Mid-Autumn Festival, during the full moon in the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, Tai Hang villagers perform the Fire Dragon Dance at night to ward off evil, pray for good health, and please the Kwun Yum housed in the village temple Lin Fa Kung (蓮花宮) with the hope that she will yield divine blessing for all in the neighbourhood in the upcoming lunar year. The Fire Dragon is made of rattan frames, rice straw, ropes, and sticks of burning incense that light up in the dark, a massive structure over 60 metres long that requires 200-300 strong men to parade it and march to thundering drumbeats through the streets and alleys in Tai Hang for the ritual. Below images were photographed during the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2023, the first instance of resumed annual Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance since civil unrests and the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong 2019-2022.