The Water Ghosts of Aberdeen: Keeping the Fishermen’s Yu Lan Festival Afloat

Cultural conservationist Cardin Chan recently received a special invitation to visit the floating Yu Lan Festival in Aberdeen. Here’s her story.

Every summer, as the seventh lunar month wanes, a cluster of boats in Aberdeen Harbour transforms into an otherworldly stage. Smoke curls upward from joss sticks. Taoist chants drift over the water. Effigies sway gently with the tide. It is here that the descendants of Hong Kong’s fishermen continue a rare ritual — the Aberdeen Lok Sin Tong Water Yu Lan Festival, one of the city’s last ceremonies held entirely at sea.

The festival is organised by an association that might informally be termed Lok Sin Tong — its only official name is 香港仔樂善堂 (hoeng1 gong2 zai2 lok6 sin6 tong4) — which has roots reaching back before World War II. It shares members with the Ap Lei Chau Hop Shing Dragon Boat Club, both guided by Pang Kam-chuen, a 65-year-old from a fishing family that has stewarded the festival for generations. His father began organising the rituals in the 1940s, and Pang grew up learning the customs and their meanings.

“To us fishermen in Aberdeen,” says Pang, “there were only three main festivals: the Dragon Boat Festival, the Lunar New Year, and the Yu Lan Festival. But Yu Lan matters to us even more.” Unlike the festive air of dragon boat races, the Yu Lan Festival is solemn — a ritual of grief and remembrance for those lost to the sea.

Life on the water was perilous. For much of Hong Kong’s history, Aberdeen’s boat people lived apart from the city on shore, vulnerable to storms, shipwrecks and accidents that often claimed lives with no remains recovered. Many saw these deaths as both tragic and spiritually unmoored — the bodies lost to the sea becoming restless spirits. When tragedy strikes, help may not come in time, Pang explains. Those who die at sea may never come home.

From such tragedies, compassion took form. Fishermen who found human remains in their nets would report them to the Marine Department if in Hong Kong waters; if farther afield, they buried them on nearby shores, offering the dead a resting place. The annual Water Yu Lan Festival extends that same mercy — feeding, soothing and guiding the lost souls of the drowned, so both the dead and living might find peace.

Aquatic roots

The festival’s origins trace to the tau4 gaa1 lou2 (頭家佬), wealthy Aberdeen fishing magnates who financed boatbuilding in exchange for exclusive rights to their borrowers’ catch. In its earliest days, they sponsored the water rituals as acts of generosity and spiritual protection. Later, the festival’s organisation passed to less privileged fishermen, who maintained the tradition even as the community changed.

Unlike the land-based Yu Lan festivals found across Hong Kong, Aberdeen’s version follows no fixed date. The timing depends on the availability of Taoist priests, though never beyond the 14th day of the seventh lunar month — believed to be the end of the Ghost Festival. In the 1970s and 80s, when the harbour teemed with fishing boats, fundraising was easy. Volunteers went door to door across floating homes to collect donations, paying for priests, opera troupes and offerings.

Back then, the festival spanned three days and took place across several boats: one for opera performances, another for chanting, another for rituals. “Our King of Ghosts was much bigger than today’s version,” Pang recalls with a mix of pride and nostalgia. At the height of the celebrations, four flagpoles — at Ocean Park, Wa Fu Estate, mid-harbour and on a boat — were topped with white lanterns bearing the words “港九水上盂蘭節” (Hong Kong Kowloon Water Yu Lan Festival). These guided spirits through the harbour’s nightscape.

A rare invitation to join

Traditionally, the festival ended before dawn, with the cremation of the King of Ghosts marking the closing act. Over the years, the ceremony has contracted, yet the essence remains intact. I had the extraordinary opportunity to spend the whole day with Pang to experience the festival firsthand. 

We first collect a set of paper effigy offerings on a sampan, sharing the ride with the King of Ghosts. Upon reaching the main boat, the special delivery is offloaded, and the deck is swiftly transformed into a makeshift altar divided into sections on the water. The King of Ghosts is carefully moved to the middle of the top deck, secured and overlooking the entire scene.

At the bow, a temporary food preparation area is set up — a kitchen for the wandering spirits at sea. The offerings include tofu, bean sprouts and uncooked rice. In front of the King of Ghosts, paper boats are lined up while a team member inserts joss sticks, a small portion of dried tea leaves, and rice into each one. Tea leaves and rice, staples of every Chinese household, were once precious commodities for fishermen who traded them to survive.

In the saloon, controlled chaos unfolds. Women gather to decorate the boat, fold paper offerings for the water rituals, and prepare space for the arrival of the Taoist priests. As if on cue, a wooden boat glides silently alongside, and a woman reaches out to hand over her donation, which Pang accepts with gratitude.

Once the priests board the main vessel, we return to the sampan carrying the paper effigies. When everything is ready, the two boats begin to move eastward along Aberdeen Harbour. Ritual music mingles with chanting as food and paper offerings are scattered into the sea. The first two paper boats are released in the east, symbolically replacing any real boats that might otherwise have been sacrificed and warding off misfortune.

The flotilla then turns westward. Near South Horizons, Pang releases two more boats — each bearing candles, joss sticks, rice, tea leaves, and a talisman — one following another, drifting with the current.

Between them, a string of “treasured shallow bowls,” each sealed with red paper and inscribed with donors’ names, is released into the water. Guided by the first paper boat and protected by ashes of Kwun Yum scriptures placed inside, the bowls float away accompanied by the steady rhythm of chanting and ritual music. The participants believe these good deeds are acknowledged and blessed by the deities.

As the boats make their return journey, offerings continue to be cast into the water from various points on deck. Once moored back at the starting point, the King of Ghosts is carried off the boat. Amid the priests’ chanting, he is set alight at the foot of the steps — the fire marking the end of the festival.

According to tradition, Pang instructs the boats to linger near sites where tragedies or accidents have occurred over the past year. On this occasion, an acquaintance informs him of a recent fatality that had gone unnoticed. In response, Pang reserves two boats to sail east once more, offering rites to the departed soul — an unscheduled act of compassion.

“Almost 20 years ago, our Yu Lan Festival took place at nighttime,” Pang recalls. “Can you imagine us taking boats and bowls out to the harbour and releasing them in almost complete darkness, with dim candlelight? It was sombre and almost poetic. The atmosphere has not been the same since.”

A tradition survives

Aberdeen Harbour has changed profoundly since the 1980s. The local fishing population began to decline as fish stocks dwindled and a catastrophic fire swept through the Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter on Christmas Eve in 1986, prompting many families to move to Lei Tung Estate. Rising oil prices during the 1990s further strained livelihoods, pushing more fishermen to abandon the trade for work as labourers or construction workers.

The Aberdeen Lok Sin Tong Water Yu Lan Festival has likewise weathered hard times. With fewer donations, the ceremony has been simplified but sustained through the efforts of Pang’s family and friends. Each contributes in their own way — taking days off work, lending boats for the event, or preparing offerings. “Even the Taoist priests and paper effigy makers are happy to charge us less,” Pang says with a smile.

Unlike many Yu Lan festivals across Hong Kong, this one remains closed to the public. “I do not do it for show, and we have our own standards to uphold,” Pang explains. His aim is to bring peace to the community and preserve the ritual’s integrity. He believes applying for funding could compromise its authenticity.

A few years ago, Pang feared for the festival’s survival, especially under the shadow of Covid-19. Although revived in recent years, he believes it will likely end with him. Yet this awareness does not deter him. Each year, he continues the ritual, refusing to see it as a countdown.

Stripped back to its essentials, the water Yu Lan Festival reveals what truly matters: togetherness and compassion. Though less elaborate than before, it still bridges realms — between the living and the dead, between land and sea. The nocturnal atmosphere of past ceremonies may have been replaced by the light of day, yet the festival still guides suffering souls toward peace and offers solace to those left behind.