A festival for all who carry sorrow and rage

In San Francisco Chinatown on August 23rd, the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead grows thin culminating in the Hungry Ghost Festival, organized by our colleagues at CCCSF. Currently the communities that we represent face relentless attacks from demons wearing new faces. AIISF and the countless others involved in the Hungry Ghost Festival confront them through remembrance, resistance and cathartic release.

This year’s festival summons the Ghost King Parade, a main stage, and powerful site-specific artworks. The 14-foot Ghost King—crafted specifically for this moment and led by the Lotus Tao Cultural Institute—will march through Chinatown, performing a ritual that mends fractured souls and keeps the evil at bay. From Cantonese opera to trans Indigenous folk punk, the stage belongs to shapeshifters and mythmakers. Surrounding it, commissioned altars and ritual installations by BIPOC artists rise, responding directly to our theme.