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RELIGION AND CUSTOM
fishing harbours, and the best known of these is the one at Fat Tong Mun in Joss House Bay. Many of these Tin Hau temples are now some distance inland, as a result of reclamations made since they were originally established close to the shore.
Dedicated to the Gods of Literacy and Martial Valour, the Man Mo temple in Hollywood Road, which is under the control of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, is equally famous. In recent years by far the most popular Taoist temples have been the Sik Sik Yuen at Wong Tai Sin in New Kowloon and the Che Kung temple in Sha Tin. In the New Territories, where traditional clan organization has been preserved to a much greater extent than in the urban areas, many villages have an ancestral hall where the ancestral tablets of the clan are kept and venerated. In such villages, the inhabitants often all belong to the same clan and the hall is the centre of both the religious and the secular life of the village. Animism, in the form of shrines dedicated at the foot of certain rocks and trees where spirits are believed to dwell, is also to be found in the New Territories, particularly among Hakka villagers.
The Chinese as a whole observe five major festivals of the Chinese calendar. The first and the most important is the Lunar New Year, welcomed in Hong Kong in the traditional manner with a deafening barrage of firecrackers. It is a common belief that the mass discharge of firecrackers on this occasion will dispel evil spirits and bad luck, and usher in a happy new year. The customary exchanges of gifts and visits to relatives and friends are also widely observed. During the Ching Ming Festival, which falls in the Spring, visits are paid to the graves of the family ancestors. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth moon of the lunar calendar and dragon boat races are held at different places throughout the Colony. The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth moon, when gifts of mooncakes are exchanged among rela- tives and friends. The ninth day of the ninth moon is Chung Yeung, when large crowds climb Victoria Peak and other hills in imitation of a Chinese family of old who escaped death and misfortune by fleeing to the top of a high mountain. This is also a time for refur- bishing family graves.
The fact that Chinese may follow one or the other of these ways, or may combine them without any feeling of incongruity, has often meant that Christianity with its exclusive claims has been politely