Saturday Is Lan Kwai Fong’s Last Halloween Night

On October 24, the middle of three Halloween Saturdays, tens of thousands of people in costume filled Lan Kwai Fong. Huang Wei, 34, had come from Shenzhen dressed as the Monkey King, nine friends with him on the metro. He told Reuters it was “a great way to completely let loose” after work.

Reuters published the story on Monday. The white protective suits were in the street too, thermometers in hand, the old kit from the pandemic years. Halloween has been a harder night on the mainland since 2023, when Shanghai detained some people over costumes that mocked social and economic problems. Huang crossed the border for a party.

Two of the three Saturdays are already over. Saturday is the night that is left.

Allan Zeman, chairman of the Lan Kwai Fong Group, helped introduce Halloween to these lanes more than forty years ago. He told Reuters the parties lift food and beverage sales 20 to 25 percent each year. That percentage is his.

“Halloween, which was a Western holiday, was able to suddenly be accepted by the East now,” he told Reuters. The Hong Kong Tourism Board, the city’s tourism office, has made this October its first Halloween Month.

Organisers told Reuters that about 80,000 people were in Lan Kwai Fong on October 31 last year. One night, already past. The month itself is three Saturdays of street parties, October 17, October 24, and this Saturday.

If you want the picture before the lanes fill, the giant eyeball at Statue Square Gardens stays up through Saturday, day and night. Reuters said it was drawing crowds on October 24. The Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival is on at the Central harbourfront from today through Sunday, so the walk up from the water is already busy.

Saturday night is Monsters Night, and the tourism board lists it as free. D’Aguilar Street, and the lanes called Lan Kwai Fong and Wo On Lane, sit just uphill from Central station. Lan Kwai Fong has a monster show at 8 p.m. A DJ set ends the night.

More than 20 bars and restaurants are offering two-for-one signature drinks and 15 percent off signature dishes through Saturday. A few of the offers skip Halloween night. Ask at the bar.

In costume, you can ride a Halloween open-top bus and two party trams free on Saturday evening. The tourism board scheduled those rides for all three Saturdays.

After Saturday night, Lan Kwai Fong’s Halloween party is over.