Thursday, January 18, 2007

Tower of Buns

Once a upon a time in a land not so far away, there was a story about the tower of buns, which I'll call it, Bak Pao Tower. (BP Tower?). Hhmmm ... I should refrain myself from being crappy because I'm seriously going to talk about history, here. Plus, I'm not even sure whether the bun was made of Bak (meat). :p

So let me start all over again ...

As we were strolling across Macau, we stumbled upon this antique house that not only they still preserve its structure like the one below but they also kept some interesting models, drawings, etc.



So, when my friend pointed at one of the model:



I quickly snapped the picture. Honestly, I've no idea what I was snapping at. I only knew my friend said ... oh isn't that the "bla bla bla bla" (I don't really understand Cantonese, you see and they were happily talking about it and I was happily being nosey about it too.)

Then they tried to explain the history which I didn't really quite grasped and finally I found a better version from Wikipedia (AGAIN??). :p .... Now can you see why I love to be online so much? The whole world is really at your fingertips. I love Internet.

So what's this tower all about?

"Nong" "nong" time ago, to be exact during the 18th century in the island of Cheung Chau (
長洲), there was plaque and pirate attacking the citizens. Distressed, they used the images of god Pak Tai and paraded through the village lanes. I believe the pirates and the plague would have disappeared. Then, they started to create string of events and activities to commemorate this event. And one of the activity is Bun Snatching (搶包山).

Historically, men (young ones) would race up to get the buns. It was believed the higher the bun you got hold of, the better fortune it'd bring to the holder's family. Argh ... I should have climbed the one I saw but unfortunately, it's just a miniature. No wonder I only discovered 5 cents and not 5 million dollars on the floor. (Dream oh dream ...)

Well, it's still money :p ..... Bak Pao Tower Rocks :p

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