According to the oral history, there was a python guzzling much of the livestock across the Tai Hang village right before the Mid-Autumn Festival. The python was finally killed by the villagers. However, a plague then followed, taking with it many livers. The villagers believed the plague was a revenge from the python, which was actually the son of the Dragon King. A village elder claimed that Guanyin revealed to him in a dream that there was a way to end the plague by performing a fire dragon dance and letting off firecrackers around the Tai Hang village. The villagers did so and miraculously the plague disappeared. Hence, they kept performing Fire Dragon Dance every year afterwards.
The eyes of the fire dragon are made by normal battery-type torches, while the dragon saw-shaped teeth are made by iron plates. The dragon tongue is a steel plate painted with red colour and the 70cm length dragon beards are made by aerial roots of banyan trees. The dragon head weighs over 45kg and requires 8 to 10 performers to rotate alternatively to move it around.
On the 14th night of the eighth lunar month, the officiating guests perform rituals inside Tai Hang Lin Fa Kung to bring the dragon alive for the dance. The commander of the dragon dance worships and prays in Hakka dialect to the deity before the dance commences. The fire dragon is then moved to the parade starting point at Ormsby Street, at where the dragon head is decorated for auspicious purpose and festooned with over burning incense sticks. Under the beat of drum and gong and being led by two dragon balls, the fire dragon parades around the streets in Tai Hang in clockwise direction, marching through Warren Street, Brown Street, Ormsby Street, Wun Sha Street, Sun Chun Street, King Street, Jones Street, Lai Yin Street and School Street. More than twenty boys and girls accompany the dragon dance with lanterns modelled after the mythical lotus, cloud and star lanterns of the heaven, which demonstrates cultural heritage through participants from various sectors of the community.
The entire fire dragon needs a team of about 300 people to weave its way through the streets in Tai Hang and it performs various stunts during the parade, including “Dragon Ball Playing”, ”Fire Dragon Crosses The Bridge”, ”Fire Dragon Dances around Two Poles”, ”Fire Dragon-Twining Makes Pyramids”, “Fire Dragon Circles with Colourful Lights”.
After the fire dragon dance parade around Tai Hang on the 16th night of the eighth lunar month, the fire dragon will perform the last ceremony called “The Great Luck Movement” in which the fire dragon will parade in anti-clockwise direction in Tai Hang. Afterwards, the entire fire dragon dances to the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. After the ritual ceremony, they threw the fire-dragon together with the lanterns and paper cards into the sea. This ritual is known as “Dragon Returning to the Heaven”, symbolizing the dragons returning to sea while taking the misfortune away and brings about a new page in the community. Thus, the three-day fire dragon dance event come to an end.
