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NOTES AND QUERIES
NOTES ON SOME VEGETARIAN HALLS IN HONG KONG BELONGING TO THE SECT OF HSIEN-T'IEN TAO:
(THE WAY OF FORMER HEAVEN)*
On Saturday, March 16, 1968, members of the Society visited four vegetarian halls at Ngau Chi Wan, Kowloon, belonging to a religious sect called Hsien-t'ien Tao. These notes are based on materials provided for the visit, which we have rearranged and expanded slightly, and they include also a brief account of the visit itself.
We chose vegetarian halls for our visit because they are, to many members of the public in Hong Kong, less known places of worship than the more popular temples, and the monasteries and nunneries of Buddhism. When we first came across these particular halls in Kowloon and discovered they were of the Hsien-t'ien Tao sect they seemed to us to be an obvious choice for another reason: they follow an ideology standing outside Buddhist and Taoist religion and again far less known to most people in Hong Kong than these faiths.
A field study will have to be made before a full account can be written up of either vegetarian halls or of the Hsien-t'ien Tao and its operation in Hong Kong today. These notes are intended to provide the reader with some general outline information and are based on information already obtained by Marjorie Topley here, and in research elsewhere, and by James Hayes in interview with members of these Kowloon halls prior to the visit. The short bibliography of works which we have appended provide more detailed material on the background of this and similar religious groups, and their vegetarian halls in China in traditional times. We refer the reader also to an article by Marjorie Topley elsewhere in this volume on matters of religion in the nineteenth century.†
I. THE VEGETARIAN HALL AND ITS PURPOSE
Vegetarian halls (chai-t'ang) form part of the organization of more than one Chinese religion. They are found, for example, in
* The illustrations to these notes are at Plates 14 to 19.
† See pp. 9-43 above.