HONG KONG, China (Reuters) — Dozens of colorful handmade aircraft attempted to fly off Hong Kong’s old airport runway before plummeting into the iconic Victoria Harbor on Sunday (November 27).
The majority of the 41 funky and wonderful air crafts in shapes of cartoon characters, foods and animals plunged straight into the water without flying more than a meter.
One of the contestants, Sylvia Tang, was inspired by a character from the famous ”Angry Birds” game and said she wanted to use the word ”angry” to reflect Hong Kong citizen’s feeling towards the city’s political situation.
”The reason why we want to use ‘Angry Birds’ as our team flying item is that we think right now the economy (society), we are in a very intense, angry mode and I think the ‘Angry Birds’ represent the situation of our Hong Kong.”
Hong Kong’s third redbull Flugtag event drew a few hundreds of spectators. Members of the audience waved flags and cheered on the teams.
”I think culturally, you know, Chinese always have this problem to express their fun part of things, so I think this event really helped Hong Kong culturally to help express them to do something crazy and wild. It’s okay to feel you know, out of their comfort zone a little bit,” said Charlton Lau an engineer.
Team “Blank Space” won the event flying through the air in a machine shaped like a green alien spaceship.
”I am so appreciative, because we worked as a team and we helped each other. We had some argue and misunderstood sometimes but we fixed it. We felt we were more improved our relationship, technique and everything. It made me stronger and everybody stronger,” said Fiona Lau, Art Director of the winning team.
Four participants were slightly injured after they plunged into the sea, with one woman fainting and other victims suffering from light injuries such as cuts. All of the victims were taken to hospital for examination and treatment.
The Red Bull Flugtag contest started in Vienna in 1992, and has now been held more than 44 countries including the United States, Germany and Australia.
Hong Kong became the first city in Asia to host Red Bull Flugtag – ‘flight day’ in German – in 2010.
