| Yu Lan Festival |  |
Every year on the 15th to 17th day of the 7th Moon, shipyards and factories on Tam Kon Shan Road will celebrate Yu Lan Festival (also called Festival of Hungry Ghosts). Offerings are made to appease the spirits, the purpose is actually for “peace of mind” by asking for safety and peace for companies and staff, and it is a big event for the whole industry. The three-day activities include Yu Lan offerings at sea, Yu Lan offerings on land, evening banquet for all personnel, and the election of officers for the shipbuilding and repairing merchants’ general association.
Yu Lan offerings at sea and on land are both held on the 16th day, and Taoist priests are invited by the association to hold the ceremony. In the day time the priests ride on boats and go out to sea to conduct the ceremony of “Pacifying Water Ghosts” which is to make offerings for people who go to sea, and mourning those who died at sea. At night they perform Yu Lan offerings on land, right on Tam Kon Shan Road, to make offerings for the safety and peace of shipbuilding and repairing companies, as well as their staff, families, and all of the neighbourhood. Workers and their relatives and friends will be on the streets having something to eat. By 6pm, many round banquet tables are set up on the empty grounds close by the building of “Tung Yee Shipbuilding and Repairing Merchants General Association”. The shipyard and merchant staff will zealously call over to their family and friends and they would gather at the tables and start on the Yu Lan Festival evening banquet. The banquet is served for two days, on the 15th day only vegetarian food is served and no drinking is allowed. On the evening of the 16th, meat is also served; there will be some 20 tables, and it is a lively and happy occasion.
After dining well on the night of the 16th, they enter into the important event of the festival – “Tung Yee Shipbuilding and Repairing Merchants General Association” for the coming annual term. The Association was formed by merchants including all the shipyards and nearby establishments, such as paint factories, cement factories, stores, and so on. Each yearly term will require one “Chief Officer” and four “Deputy Officers”. Candidates are nominated coming from different companies, and five of them will have been elected by ballot in advance to be officers. On the night of the 16th, under the witness of in the outgoing officers and shipbuilding staff, the Chief Officer is elected by a folk and traditional method. The five candidates will come before the Great Earth King, a huge paper effigy built for the God especially for Yu Lan Festival. The five of them will kneel and perform the ceremony of throwing the “Holy Cups” (some call them “Divination Blocks”).
