The story
Jiao Festival Hong Kong Villages in New Territories villages
Jiao Festival, or Tai Ping Ching Chiu, is a Taoist purification and thanksgiving ritual practised independently by dozens of New Territories villages, with cycles ranging from annual to once every sixty years depending on the community. Each observance combines multi-day Taoist rites, a period of communal vegetarian eating, opera or puppet performances, and processions carrying temple deities through the village.
Roughly 46 villages and rural communities across Hong Kong's New Territories hold their own version of the Jiao Festival, known locally as Tai Ping Ching Chiu, a Taoist ritual of thanksgiving and purification whose exact timing depends on each community's own cycle rather than a single shared calendar date.