A cultural Icon and a must visit place when in Hong Kong

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The Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple in Hong Kong

A cultural Icon and a must visit place when in Hong Kong

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Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple in Hong Kong is home to three religions, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism and pays tribute to famous monk Wong Tai Sin. Featuring five geomantic elements, the temple is as much a scenic attraction as it is an important religious centre. | Courtesy of the Hong Kong Tourism Board

“In April 1942, guidance from Master Wong Tai Sin was received through divine writing. These Taoist priests were directed to erect a new temple in the area of Chuk Yuen in Kowloon City. The writings from the Master indicated “This place, a symbol of the wings of phoenix, is blessed and it is the most appropriate place to set up a temple to propagate religious doctrines.” They then inserted a bamboo stick on the ground as a sign and thus set up the main altar. At the beginning, the Main Altar, Confucian Hall, General Office, dormitory, main gate and the wells were built in the temple. The other buildings were constructed continually in the coming years. Its Taoist architecture reflects nothing less than the significance and teachings of Taoism. The buildings contain the five elements in Chinese Fengshui culture, where Bronze Pavilion represents “Metal”, Scripture Hall represents “Wood”, Yuk Yik Fountain represents “Water”, Yue Heung Pavilion represents “Fire” and Earth Wall represents “Earth”.

The Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple, Kowloon | The Temple is open from 7.30am - 4.30pm daily and it seems that is for 365 days every year.

The above is the official blurb taken from the Temples Official Website and some commentary from the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

We have well over 600 Temples in Hong Kong and I have to say that the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple is by far my favourite one to visit.

I have been to the Temple thousands of times over the decades primarily because the place just rocks, it has a vibe that cannot be beat and no matter if it quiet or bursting at the seams with visitors it holds your interest and yes I shook the hand of a famous reputed gangster at the Temple some years ago!

There are plenty of people out there (local Chinese included) that think a place like this is for superstitious old biddies and down on their luck poor folk... I can assure you that this is NOT the case, over the years I have observed tens of thousands of people here and a huge cross section of Hong Kong society passes through the gates everyday along with visiting Chinese people from all over the world as well as many non Chinese tourists.

This Temple (to me anyway) has a huge influence in Hong Kong and is part of the very fabric of society here and you mock it at your peril.

I just love the place and I love the neighbourhood that it is in and by the way, even as a non Chinese local I am always made to feel very welcome by the friendly staff who appreciate the efforts made by the private guide community in Hong Kong to explain local culture to visitors.

..... oh - and one of my favourite things to do in Hong Kong is too shake the sticks!! this has had a profound influence on my life over the past few years, I am not a superstitious person but I should point out that I was born on Friday 13th! and I have a deep connection to number 16 and I have shaken out that number stick quite a few times…………

Below is some more blurb from the Hong Kong Tourism Board who very helpfully give you an explanation of the whole shaking the sticks routine.

Meanwhile, a contrasting destination for culture, heritage and religion lies just one MTR station away. Embodying the religions of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple is probably the busiest temple in Hong Kong, and has a reputation as the luckiest too. Dedicated to the god of healing Wong Tai Sin, this iconic temple is a feast for the senses, with bright red pillars, bronze zodiac statues, jade-coloured roofs with intricate latticework and dragon adornments, and the scent of incense thick in the air.

“I have been coming here to wish for good luck for at least a decade,” says 65-year-old Wong Mei-yu. “I follow the same routine every year — I buy nine incense sticks and a stack of wishing papers from one of the stores outside the temple, and then write my family members’ names onto the papers. First I present the incense sticks to Buddha and the gods, then burn the papers to wish for good luck and fortune.”

Visitors can also get their fortune told by shaking a bamboo stick out of a box onto the ground. The temple provides free bamboo for this, with each stick inscribed with a number and corresponding Chinese saying.

For help deciphering your fate, head to one of the fortune tellers in the adjacent Wong Tai Sin Fortune-Telling and Oblation Arcade — they will translate the reading, providing context to your life, for a small fee. Their doors are plastered with photographs of celebrity customers and signs indicating their language abilities. They can also tell your fortune from palm or face reading — ancient arts that Chinese people have relied on for generations to help navigate their future.

I have noticed recently (more to the point since Covid ended) that the Temple seems to expand all the time, there are always new buildings being constructed or repaired and quite often the place feels like a building site and what I hate the most is the barriers and tape all over the place to try and maintain some form of crowd control, it feels tacky and spoils the ambience of the place.

Yes, crowd control, over the past 10 years the Temple has become a firm favourite of Mainland Chinese Tour Groups, visitors from China, well, they represent 80% of our tourists. I have no problem at all with them I just feel that there are simply too many of them (ie overtourism) and they simply overwhelm any place that they visit.

People forget that our 600+ Temples where built for the locals to have a place to worship, they where not built to be a tourist attraction and they certainly where not built to handle 5,000+ tourists turning up over the space of a few hours.

On the other hand many of our Temples rely on donations to pay for the upkeep and such so they have no problem with that but for locals, 10 minutes of silence and privacy is long gone.

This overtourism is particularly felt at the Man Mo Temple on Hong Kong Island and the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon, both long standing cultural icons that these days feel overrun with out of control tourist visiting - it is a balancing act and at the moment it just does not feel right, but do not let my comments stop you from visiting them.

The problem is not caused by those of us that run Private Tours of Hong Kong, the problem is the Travel Companies that run tours by coach, with 50+ people on a coach and there are many hundreds of them clogging the streets and sites at any one time

I was amused to see when I was at the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin recently that they have installed turnstile machines outside the toilet facilities within the Temple grounds, clearly you now to pay to use the facilities which seems to have stopped people using them, I see this as a positive sign as prior to the turnstiles the toilets where mobbed and the smell was disgusting.

So there you go, the opening and closing times are very agreeable, it is an instagram friendly place to visit, you can consult a fortune teller (there are a few that speak excellent English) and you soak up the atmosphere, so when in Hong Kong, pay a visit to the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon, it is absolutely worth your time.