ABU ROBOCON 2012

 In our game, robots will be the bun-snatchers. They will travel through the Tunnel, cross the Bridge and land the Island where the Bun Tower locates. They have to snatch the “Peng On Bun” in order to achieve “Peng On Dai Gat” .Who will be the winner of the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2012 after a great “journey” in Hong Kong? Let’s see!

 Hong Kong will be the host city of the 11th ABU Robot Contest in 2012. By then, students from the Asia-Pacific region will gather in Hong Kong, directing robots to cross Bridges and Tunnels, land the Island, climb the Bun Tower, snatch the lucky Buns and achieve “Peng On Dai Gat”. Who will be the winner of the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2012 after a great “journey” in Hong Kong? Let’s see!
Hong Kong is hilly with a rich landscape that includes over 200 islands, leading to a particularly strong need of bridges and tunnels. Among these we have the Cross Harbour Tunnel linking up Kowloon and Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbour, while the Tsing Ma Bridge is the world’s longest road-and-rail suspension bridge that brings Lantau Island closer to us. Thanks to these bridges and tunnels, Hong Kong now boasts a well-developed traffic network.


On Cheung Chau, one of those little islands of Hong Kong, the Jiao-festival has been celebrated for more than 100 years. Cheung Chau was once devastated by a plague in the late Qing dynasty; accordingly local residents set up a sacrificial altar in front of Pak Tai Temple to pray for peacefulness. Eventually, the plague ended after performing such rituals. Since then, residents on Cheung Chau have organised a Bun Festival every year to express their thankfulness. The residents' annual participation allows the ritual to pass along generations.

Meanwhile, the festival is also a platform for residents to perform their folk crafts, such as making paper-mache effigies, setting up the bamboo scaffolding of the Bun Mountain, and making handmade buns in preparation for the Bun Festival. This is accompanied by folk performing arts like music, a parade, lion dances, qilin dances and drumming. Year after year, elderly residents participate in such festive activities with their offspring, allowing the experience to pass from one generation to the next. And for tourists all over the world, the festival is also a carnival for the family, attracting tens of thousands of tourists. As an additional note, the Cheung Chau Jiao-festival is also listed as a State-level Intangible Cultural Heritage of China.

The weeklong festival climaxes with a large, carnival-like street procession featuring costumed children on stilts held aloft above the crowd, lion dances and so on.The parade winds its way through the narrow streets, which are highlighted by the enormous bamboo towers, studded with sweet white buns, and where the main festivities take place.

 At midnight, athletes scramble up one of the towers in a tough contest of both intellect and physique, to grab the top-most ‘luckiest’ buns as told in traditions so as to achieve “Peng On Dai Gat”, that means peace and prosperity. It is from this bun-grabbing contest, an attraction for local and foreign tourists in itself, that comes the festival’s other name – the “Bun Mountain Festival”

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