Hong Kong Garden*

26 March 2010
Another hugely enjoyable day. In the morning we caught the MTR (the subway) using our Octopus Cards and went to visit the Nan Lian Garden. In the middle of high rise apartment blocks and motorway overpasses lies 35,000 square metres of tranquillity. A Tang Dynasty style garden which features characteristic timber structures, reflecting ponds, waterfalls, various naturally sculpted rocks and lots of old and valuable trees – including a bonsai garden where seats are provided for meditation. The whole garden has been artfully arranged to imitate nature and it does so very successfully but the background of skyscrapers never let us forget the artifice. The garden has been designed in the traditional Taoist manner so that the path through the garden should be taken in only one direction so that new splendours and vistas unfold with each step. At the rear of the garden is the huge Chi Lin Nunnery, a Tang-style wooden complex built in 1998 without the use of a single screw or nail. It is set amid serene lily ponds and has in the ‘cloisters’ (don’t know what else to call them) rocks that have been sculpted by nature and then polished, each with a meditative Buddhist Sutra. There are enormous statues of the Buddha and other Buddhist saints who have achieved enlightenment – sadly the nuns are of one of the Buddhist sects that have made the Buddha into a god and worship him as such. Nevertheless the whole complex shows the harmony of humans with nature and is a visually, architecturally and emotionally uplifting place. G even got a CD of the nuns chanting.

After that we visited the Sik Sik Yuen Tai Sin Temple. To the people of Hong Kong this is one of the most popular temples to visit because, allegedly, Wong Tai Sin is able to ‘make every wish come true upon request’. The temple is home to three religions which seem to co-exist happily together: Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. The place is a sensory whirl of colourful pillars, bright yellow roofs and green and blue latticework, golden dragons, flowers and huge amounts of incense. The place is hugely atmospheric and a sense of happiness and joy pervades the whole complex. The mix of classes, ages and races was astounding with some performing prayerful devotions (usually involving incense), others diving the future with ‘chim’ – bamboo sticks that are shaken out of a box on to the ground and then used for fortune telling. Behind the main temple are the ‘Good Wish Gardens’ complete with colourful pavilions (including an hexagonal one called the ‘Unicorn Hall’, zigzag bridges and ponds with turtles – we even saw one woman who had bought along small turtles to put in the pond as part of her offering.