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not only succeeded, but passed out the highest of his year. Subsequently, all Hakka youths from the area trying for the imperial examinations took to spending the first night away from home in the nunnery, in the hope of emulating Lee Cheung-chun's success, and its fame grew in consequence.
The roof was rebuilt in 1890, according to an inscription on the carved eaves-board, at the expense of a Loi Tung villager.
During the twentieth century, the nunnery became steadily less significant. The rebuilding of the Ng Tung Monastery to the north-east of Sha Tau Kok in 1906-1907 diverted some of the devout to this larger and more splendid place. The opening of the Fanling Sha Tau Kok railway in 1916, and, far more significantly, of the Fanling Sha Tau Kok road (completed in 1928), took traffic off the old Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun road. By the 1920s, the nunnery had become of only local significance.
In 1920 a hill fire caught the nunnery, and burnt part of its roof off and destroyed many of its fittings. The abbess was able to secure donations, mostly from the villages of the Ta Kwu Ling area, and from the Sha Tau Kok area, to allow for a full repair, but the effort further impoverished the nunnery, at a time when its income from passers-by was already dropping, and reduced its wider significance even more.
The abbess responsible for the repairs after the fire died in 1931. The local villagers appointed a replacement to care for the place, after a short time during which the nunnery seems to have been vacant, and the new abbess found a second nun to assist her. Both were elderly. These two old nuns both died during the Japanese Occupation. The abbess was the last to die, in 1944, leaving the nunnery once again vacant. Owing primarily to its remote location, it was not much harmed.
In 1949, the monk Kuk Shan Kit (竹山傑), or LTR, originally of Shek Ki and of the Hau (侯) surname, the thirteenth abbot of the Po Tsik (寶積) Monastery at Lo Fau Shan (羅浮山), fleeing from the Communists, came to Hong Kong with about a dozen disciples, and settled into the vacant building, repairing what damage the War had caused, and restarting the daily prayers.16
This change of the buildings from a nunnery to a house of monks does not seem to have troubled the local villagers, who seem to have