While many of you cross-dressing rugby fans spent the last weekend in or around Hong Kong Stadium for an exciting oval ball chase, some 20.000 Hongkies traveled to Mui Wo last Sunday to witness one of the events that would make Hong Kong an event capital of Asia. At least according to the Tourism Commission Mega Event Fund. They were there to see our Mui Wo villagers launch a giant lantern into the sky. The event was sponsored by the government and anticipated to be a major attraction of the year. If the villagers succeeded in flying the lantern for longer than a minute, they would have broken a certain obscure Guinness World Record, and you know… that’s really Mega!

So how did it go? Apple Daily videotaped the explosive but preciously short life-span of the thing here. Before it could take off after getting into the right shape, it blew and tore apart from head to toe. The organizers blamed the wind direction and the local law that requires the lantern to be tied to the ground with wire ropes (there’s even a law for that?). Due to all these unfavorable conditions, it was decided to cancel the event and postpone breaking the important Guinness Record to next year. The poor spectators must have been pissed off, as reportedly they couldn’t even fly their own miniature lanterns after the event was officially canceled. The rebellious Mr Lee did fly his HK$ 88 lantern and got his ID number taken down by a police officer, we read.

The government’s Mega Event Fund amounts to HK$ 100 million and is a rather useless initiative by our Financial Secretary John Tsang. Regarding the list of selected projects, they definitely had lots of faith in the Lantern Festival; the government anticipated that this would attract more people than the upcoming Louis Vuitton yacht competition. I mean, everybody loves LV-anything in Hong Kong, right?!

Anyhow, TDS is going to apply for the fund to host the first ever Fish Ball Festival in the world. The climax of the event will be the rolling of one million curry fish balls down Peel Street to establish a new Guinness World Record. No worries, at least they won’t explode.

Henry has a guest post on The Dark Side and is one of the founders of the Libertines Pub.