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temples.
JAMES HAYES
The village temples of Hong Kong Island were the centre of community activities at more than a single village level, as elsewhere in South China. A letter from Collinson of 29th April 1845 refers to:
"a great feast... celebrated in Chuck Chu [Stanley] for the last 3 days, which was nothing more or less than a fair in front of the principal Joss house."82
This "fair" was clearly celebrating the birthday of Tin Hau, which falls on the 23rd day of the 3rd moon, which in 1845 was 30th April. A temple fair to celebrate Tin Hau's birthday, still held on the land in front of the main Stanley temple, is still celebrated at that season each year. There can be no doubt, too, that the double festivities at Aberdeen, on the birthday of Tin Hau, and on that of Hung Shing (23rd of 3rd moon), on each of which celebrations the statue of the deity whose festival is not being celebrated is solemnly carried in procession to the other's temple “as a guest”, as a concrete demonstration of the local people's feeling that their prosperity and safety at sea depends on both deities, also date to before 1841.
Temples required management committees, and it was usual for temple management committees to take on, as the Kaifong, the general oversight of the market towns or the community of villages in or near which they stood. The towns on Hong Kong island certainly had kaifongs. A couplet of 1820 in the Tin Hau temple at Stanley was given by the Chik-sze (managers)83 which certainly implies the existence of a management committee at that date. If the tradition that the Pak Tai temple was founded in 1803 by the Hoklo community of Stanley is correct, it is possible that the Kaifong was built around ethnic groups, as was almost certainly the case at that date in Cheung Chau, and which was common later. **Certainly the 1820 Chik-sze are typical of later kaifongs in that, of the eleven Chik-sze named, five certainly, and at least a further two in all probability, were names of commercial enterprises, showing dominance of the kaifong Temple Committee by the market shopkeepers. Equally typical was the likelihood that