Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple香港黄大仙祠（啬色园）
- Type
- Temples and Abbeys (Gongguan)
- Location
- Hong Kong, China · Hong Kong · Wong Tai Sin District, Kowloon · No. 2 Chuk Yuen Village; altar name “Puyi Altar”; next to Wong Tai Sin MTR station
- Coordinates
- 22.3426, 114.1936 Map ↗
- School
- Daoist Temples and Altars of Hong Kong and Macau
- First built
- 1921 · Its predecessors were the Puji Altar at Pushan in Panyu, founded in 1897 (a temple was built for it at Huadi in Guangzhou in 1899), and the Puqing Altar at Rengang, Xiqiao, in Nanhai, founded in 1901; in 1915 Leung Yan-am and his son brought a painted image of Wong Tai Sin to Hong Kong, and in 1921 they built the temple at Chuk Yuen and founded Sik Sik Yuen
- Heritage status
- Hong Kong Grade I Historic Building (2010)
Overview
The Wong Tai Sin Temple is the most actively worshipped Daoist temple in Hong Kong, administered by the charitable organization Sik Sik Yuen. Wong Tai Sin is Huang Chuping, a Jin-dynasty shepherd of Jinhua; the episode of “shouting at the stones and turning them into sheep” is recorded in Ge Hong’s Biographies of Divine Immortals. In the late Qing he was venerated through spirit-writing revelations at the Puji Altar in Panyu, Guangdong, and at the Puqing Altar at Xiqiao in Nanhai. In 1915 Leung Yan-am and his son brought a painted image of the great immortal from Guangdong to Hong Kong, and in 1921 they built a temple at Chuk Yuen in Kowloon, founding Sik Sik Yuen in the same year. The temple upholds the “joint veneration of the Three Teachings — Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism”; along its central axis stand the Main Hall, the Three Saints Hall (Lü Dongbin, Guanyin and Guandi), the Lin Ge Pavilion (Confucius) and the Yue Heung Shrine, while the Good Wish Garden, the Nine Dragon Wall and the Yuanchen Hall (Doumu and the sixty Taisui of the sexagenary cycle) have also been built there. In its early years only Daoist adherents were admitted; from 1934 it opened annually during the first lunar month, and in 1956 it opened fully to the public. It is renowned for its divination sticks and their interpretation, and the rush for the “first incense stick” on New Year’s Eve is a great occasion of Hong Kong folk custom. Sik Sik Yuen also runs primary and secondary schools, homes for the elderly and clinics of both Chinese and Western medicine, and it was the first Daoist hall in Hong Kong authorized to conduct Daoist weddings and to issue marriage certificates. The Main Hall was listed as a Grade I historic building of Hong Kong in 2010.
Highlights
- Main Hall and Three Saints Hall
- Wong Tai Sin divination sticks
- Yuanchen Hall and the Taisui
- Good Wish Garden
- The first incense stick
- Daoist weddings