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THE KWUN YAM AND
TUNG SHAN TEMPLE
OF EAST KOWLOON 1840-1940
J. W. HAYES
This note details the origins, rise and fall of a temple, over the course of a full century, in what was originally a rural district of East Kowloon. The community connected with the temple originally comprised farming villages and stone cutters' settlements. To this core, urban and suburban elements were more and more added until they eventually came to dominate the area entirely. These changes led to the virtual extinction of the original community and, with it, its temple.
The Tung Shan Temple is now in ruins; only the walls remain. It became derelict during the Japanese Occupation, and was not repaired after the war. There are, in fact, two temples, standing side by side. The stone inscription above one door states that it is a Kwun Yam (*) or Goddess of Mercy temple, rebuilt in the 13th year of the Kwang Hsü reign (1887). The inscription above the main door of the other states that it is the Tung Shan (*) or Eastern Peak temple, dated the equivalent of 1904. The two are here treated as an entity, as (it is stated) they were always under the same management.
According to two elders from the Chu Family (朱) of Tai Hom village (born in 1891 and 1896; interviewed 1967-1968), the Kwun Yam temple is built on land belonging to their clan. The Chu's were Hakka latecomers to rural east-central Kowloon, arriving in the 18th century and taking up higher land under the encircling hills. The spot where the temple was constructed was originally padi land, growing poor quality rice; but after a great grandfather had placed an image of the Goddess of Mercy near the fields they began to yield good crops. At the insistence of this same man, the village elders erected a small temple there in the Tao Kuang reign (1821-1850). My informants had this story in their youth from their clan uncles.
The next chapter in the history of the Kwun Yam temple opens with its repair in the Kwang Hsü reign (1875-1908). No