CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS
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God and tutelary deity of the village) sits in a niche inside the ground floor of the tower of the gateway, watching over his parishioners. In the attic of the gateway of some of these villages, out of sight and only accessible by a rickety ladder, is an image of Gui Xing, one of the Gods of Literature, placed there for students to pray to prior to taking an examination, and for parents to pray to for the blessing of a bright child.
The majority of more recent temple structures, mostly built on hillsides during the past twenty-five years, mainly by Chaozhou immigrants and a few by Min An immigrants, have been extended room by room over a period of years and may be any shape and size, according to the possibilities of the site, and may have a dozen or so rooms for one use or other.
Quite a few of the temples constructed by ethnic minorities contain very local cults brought to Hong Kong from the area in China from which the emigrants came, and the temples themselves are a focus for the ethnic or sub-ethnic groups concerned. Thus, in Hong Kong over the years, separate shrines, halls, and finally complete buildings have been built by Chaozhou, Min An and Hoklo immigrants. There are even a few built by refugees from Shanghai and the north.
A unique structure in concrete, shaped and moulded to look like rock, was demolished in 1979 in Tsuen Wan to make way for a major new housing estate. The building, a squatter temple built by immigrants from Swatow, covered a large area and had three major and four minor altars. The inside of the temple was shaped to resemble a large rocky cavern with the altars shaped like small caves, fronted with glass and illuminated with neon lights. The outside walls were painted smooth concrete. The roof, however, was a phantasmagoria of small concrete figures from Chinese legend amidst miniature buildings, more caves and grottoes, all painted in vivid colours. The whole was over-shadowed by a large vividly crimson concrete structure which can only be described as a massive red pepper standing vertically on a greeny-blue base, and punctured by small holes to act as windows. Although the building looked a ghastly monstrosity to foreigners, it had a unique character and was very popular amongst the Chaozhou immigrants of Tsuen Wan and Kowloon.
* It has been resited, and is in course of redevelopment, but alas not in such a picturesque form! Hon. Ed.