RELIGION AND CUSTOM
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Fong Shan, near Sha Tin, there is a Christian study centre on Chinese religion and culture, where the work of the Christian Mission to Buddhists has been carried on for many years. To meet the demands of the urban population, Buddhist Ching She (places for spiritual cultivation), Fat Tong (Buddha Halls) and To Yuen (places for Taoist worship) have been opened in flats in residential areas. Sutras are also expounded under the auspices of various Buddhist institutions in the urban areas.
As places of public worship, the temples play an important part in Chinese religious life; it is estimated that worshippers of one major deity (Tin Hau) number no less than 250,000. The temples generally house, and are named after, one major deity, but other subsidiary deities may often be found in the same temple. Many of them are sea gods and goddesses, reflecting Hong Kong's origin as a fishing port, and, except for Kwun Yam, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, the majority of them are deified mortals who, as a result of their performance of true or mythical feats, have been tradi- tionally worshipped. The better known ones are Tin Hau (Goddess of Heaven and protectress of seafarers). Kwan Tai (God of War and the source of righteousness), Hung Shing (God of the South Seas and a weather prophet), Pak Tai (Lord of the North and local patron of the island of Cheung Chau), and Lo Ban Sin Shi (patron of masons and building contractors). Many Tin Hau temples are found near the entrances to fishing harbours, and the best known of these is the one at Fat Tong Mun in Joss House Bay, but other 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 at Sha Tin. In the New Territories, where traditional clan organisa- tion has been preserved to a great extent 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
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