KEITH G. STEVENS
serve Buddhist devotees and which have Buddhist images on altars in their halls and offices. These include Buddhist schools, clinics, book-stores and libraries, homes for the aged and vegetarian food shops and restaurants.
Buddhist temples and monasteries are not only more airy, lighter and cleaner than the Daoist folk temples, their images are larger, gold-lacquered and usually distinctive. However, there are the exceptions, few though they be, of small, dark and, because they are old, more drab Buddhist establishments. Some images too can be multi-coloured, though very few are of any material other than wood.
Exclusively Buddhist establishments are few and far between, the majority having an altar or two containing folk religion deities. Quite a number of the Buddhist temples were first instituted in Hong Kong by a single wealthy Chinese who recommended or selected the specific deity or deities to be placed on the altars. The donation of funds to help found a monastery is not only a move to obtain merit for the donor, or for perpetual prayers to be said by the monks in the Memorial Hall of the monastery for the donor himself or for his parents or wife, but is often a gesture to display the importance of the donor (it entitles his or her name to be engraved and displayed at the entrance). Once the monastery has been built the flow of funds from devotees enables it to flourish, but when devotees disappear the monastery too withers. Once the decision to found a Buddhist temple has been made, a board of directors is established and executive decisions are then made by them. (The same is true of Daoist and folk religion temples). In Buddhist and Daoist establishments a priest is invited to become the abbot, and nuns, monks and lay men and women are gradually enrolled. Abbots and hermits choose attractive and secluded spots on remote mountain sides to escape from the tumult of life and to devote themselves to quiet meditation. Founded by either fervent monks or wealthy benefactors, they were usually built on sites which were both aesthetic and practical because, in addition to being a place of meditation, in old China travellers in remoter areas found it necessary as well as agreeable to stay overnight in monasteries. (Plate 1)
Three very distinctive areas in Hong Kong's New Territories were all sufficiently remote to satisfy the "hermit" in the monks.