Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch ORASHKB and author
Vol. 1 (1961)
ISSN 1991-7295
109
bers, although poorer members may elect to pay $5 and well-to-do members may pay $40 or $100. The activities of the Association are in the hands of a Board of Directors of 35 members, of whom 15 are monks and nuns and 20 are laymen, the Chairman of the Board being the Abbot of the Po Lin Monastery, while the Vice Chairman is a prominent Buddhist layman. The directors hold office for two years and vacancies are filled through election at the annual General Meeting. The Association's office is at 15 Shan Kwong Road, Hong Kong, on the premises of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen MW (see above p. 44).
To disseminate the dharma, the Association has sponsored courses of nightly lectures on various sutras, delivered by an authority from the Sangha. These courses have been held three or four times a year, lasting two or three weeks each time, usually at the Tung Lin Kok Yuen. Attendance has run about 200 people.
The Association's welfare enterprises include four schools, a cemetery, and two clinics.
The Chinese Buddhist Free School, at 117 Wanchai Road, was established in October 1945. It is co-educational, and has an enrollment of 223. Though it is government-subsidized, pupils pay no tuition. Another school, also at the primary level, was opened during September, 1960 in the ground floor of a resettlement block at Wong Tai Sin (the use of such ground floor space for classrooms is encouraged by the Resettlement Department). Known as the Buddhist Boddhi Primary School, it accommodates 1,440 boys and girls, operates on a government subsidy, and charges the standard tuition fees.
By far the most impressive educational enterprises of the Buddhist Association, however, are the two schools on Eastern Hospital Road (near Causeway Bay). They began operation in September 1959 and comprise a primary school with 1,053 boys and girls ("Buddhist Wong Cheuk Om Memorial School") and a middle school with 321 boys and girls ("Buddhist Wong Fung Ling College" #+4) HK$350,000 of the construction cost was donated to the Association by two devout Buddhists, whose names the schools bear, while the other $650,000 was provided by the Hong Kong Government, $150,000 of this being in the form of a loan that the Association will eventually repay out of its portion of the school fees.
The Board of Directors of the Buddhist Association has full responsibility for and control over the operation of all these schools, although about 70 per cent of the operating costs, including teachers' salaries, are met by Government subsidy. The curriculum includes the study of Buddhism which, at the suggestion of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association, was accepted by the Education Department in 1959 as one of the optional subjects thereafter to be included in the Hong Kong School-leaving Certificate examination.
Up until now Buddhists, unlike Christians and Moslems, have had no separate cemetery facilities. The Buddhist Association's cemetery, which occupies seven acres of land recently allocated by the Government on Cape Collison, opened early in 1961.
M
HK$3 a month "t'ong fei" added to the standard fees for subsidized schools of $5 and $32 a month.