ENG-1977 — Page 239

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RELIGION AND CUSTOM

Since Hong Kong has always depended on the sea for fishing and for trade, the most popular deities are those connected with the sea and the weather. Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven and Protector of Seafarers, is said to be worshipped by 250,000 people. There are at least 24 Tin Hau temples in Hong Kong, the most famous of which is located at Fat Tong Mun in Joss House Bay. Because of land reclamation, many of the Tin Hau temples originally established by the sea are now some distance inland. Other leading deities include Kwun Yum, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy; Kwai Tai, the God of War and the source of righteousness; Pak Tai, Lord of the North and local patron of Cheung Chau Island; Hung Shing, God of the South Seas and a weather prophet; and Wong Tai Sin, after whom an area of New Kowloon is named. The temple built in his honour, around which a public housing estate has been constructed, is of Chinese traditional style - as are several other new temples.

Taoist and Buddhist organisations help to meet welfare, educational and medical needs in Hong Kong directly or by contributing to charitable organisations. Many temples have donation boxes to collect money for schools, hospitals or charities.

In the New Territories, traditional clan organisations have been preserved. Many villages have an ancestral hall, where ancestral tablets of the clan are kept and venerated. The hall is the centre of both religious and secular activities among villagers of the same clan. Animism is found in the form of shrines or simply joss sticks placed at the foot of certain rocks and trees within which spirits are believed to dwell. It is especially common among Hakka villagers.

There are five major festivals in the Chinese calendar, with the Lunar New Year being first and foremost. Gifts and visits are exchanged among friends and relatives, and children receive 'lucky money'. During the Ching Ming Festival in the spring, ancestral graves are visited. In early summer, the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated with dragon boat races and by eating rice cooked in lotus leaves. The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth moon. Gifts of mooncakes, wines and fruits are exchanged, and adults and children go into the parks and countryside at night with colourful lanterns. Chung Yeung is on the ninth day of the ninth moon, when large crowds climb various hills in remembrance of an ancient Chinese family's escape from death and misfortune by fleeing to the top of a high mountain. Family graves also are visited on this day.

Christian Community

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The total Christian community Protestant and Roman Catholic is estimated at about 10 per cent of the population. Of these 450,000, the Roman Catholic Church makes up more than half while the remainder are Protestants.

Protestant

The year 1977 was one of anniversaries for the Protestant community. Highlighting these were the 90th anniversary celebrations of the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital and the Chinese Christian Literature Council. Nethersole Hospital was the first hospital in Hong Kong using western methods of medicine to open to the public. The hospital group started the first medical training (among whose first students was Dr Sun Yat-sen), began the first nurses' training and started the first training in mid- wifery. Nethersole was founded by the London Missionary Society. In 1923, it came