oh! my god(s)

Although I first came to Hong Kong more than 50 years ago, there are still places in the territory that I’ve never visited. Stanley, a small town on the south coast of Hong Kong Island, fell into this category until last week, when Paula suggested that we pay a visit after we’d been to the Registration of Persons office in Kowloon to pick up my new ID card (I’d lost my old one over the summer). Mind you, in common with many Hongkies who live on Kowloon side, I don’t often cross the harbour to the Island side, which partly explains the omission.

Stanley’s main attraction, at least for tourists, is its market, where you can buy all sorts of exotic items. However, when we arrived, the first thing I noticed was a sign pointing the way to a Tin Hau temple (Tin Hau is the goddess of the sea in Chinese culture), so that is where we went instead:

The first thin I noticed when we stepped inside was the door gods, Yuchi Jingde on the left:

…and Qin Shu Bao on the right:

Although I’ve recorded many examples of door gods on the doors of ancestral halls, study halls and temples, this was the first new example I’d seen in quite some time, and the first thing I noticed here was that the door gods weren’t merely painted on the doors; they were embossed, in a kind of bas-relief. I also noticed that although the two door gods held ‘standard’ weapons—a halberd by Yuchi Jingde and a pole sword by Qin Shu Bao—they grasped these weapons with both hands. It is much more common for the pair to hold these weapons with just one hand while holding a sword, still in its sheath, with the other hand. These door gods are also facing squarely forward, when they should be facing slightly inwards to ensure that intruders cannot sneak in between them.

I then took these photographs just inside the entrance:

I cannot offer any information regarding the subjects of these photos, although you might notice the dragons on the vertical panels in the third photo.

Then we ventured into the rear hall of the temple, where I spotted a sign that read ‘photography available’, which I interpreted as meaning that photography was allowed—we’ve visited temples and monasteries where photography is explicitly forbidden. And I certainly wanted to photograph what we saw here! My final five photographs show the array of gods along the back wall of the temple (from left to right):

I don’t know who or what the array of figures in the next photo represent (scholars and warriors?), but we saw a similar display in the China section of the Royal Ontario Museum when we visited Toronto back in August:

Notice the red signs on the walls behind these figures. These are the names of the various entities, something that I’ve not seen anywhere else:

And that was the Tin Hau temple in Stanley. Well worth a look inside, although the building itself is singularly uninteresting.

okie baroquie

When Paula and I visited Switzerland last month, our itinerary was suggested by my son Siegfried, who now lives there, and a major highlight of the week was a walk around the old town section of St. Gallen, a city east of Zurich. Naturally, I took a lot of photos, and what follows is a selection of what I consider the most interesting.

We had parked in a multi-storey car park, and almost immediately upon leaving this location I took the following photo, which shows a typical narrow street with a church in the distance:

Notice what I might describe as ‘bay windows’ on the upper floors on the right. Paula took this photo of part of the nearer example, which features some intricate carving:

The next photo is a view of the second ‘bay window’ (I imagine that there’s actually a formal architectural term for these features):

…followed by two close-ups of the structure:

Notice that the structure on the upper floor appears to be slightly misaligned, suggesting that it was added to the building at a different time.

This is a general view of the next street we walked along:

…and a slightly closer view of the church in the first photo:

Somewhere between the location of the two previous photos, Paula photographed these images, which I don’t remember seeing (too many other distractions):

When we finally reached the church, Paula took this photo:

…while I took this one:

I wasn’t able to ascertain the name of this church; nor were we able to go inside. And because of the closeness of nearby buildings, I couldn’t get far enough away to take a photo of the entire edifice, but it would certainly be worth taking a more detailed look on a subsequent visit.

Shortly after walking past this church, we emerged into an extensive open area. I don’t know for certain the nature of the surrounding buildings, but when I subsequently looked online, I found extensive references to an abbey, which once had an extremely large population of monks and still has a world-renowned mediæval library. The next three photos show the buildings surrounding the open area:

The imposing building on the left in the previous photo is the abbey’s former church, now the city’s cathedral (see below):

I took the last photo specifically because it shows the intricate pattern on the roof of the church I’ve been referencing above. And now for a closer look at the cathedral:

It struck me as quite odd that other buildings came right up to the cathedral on the left.

Paula took this photo of the side of the cathedral facing the open area:

…while these are mine, looking first straight on (this isn’t the main entrance!), then to the left:

I’ve just noticed the dormer windows set into the roof in the last photo, a feature that I’ve never seen before, so I can only speculate as to what they represent. If you have any positive information on the subject, please leave a comment. The previous photo also shows another feature that surprised me at first: a clock face looking back along the roof. But I should not have been surprised. Switzerland is a very clocky country, and even humble village chapels have clock faces on all four sides of their steeples.

I also took a photo looking to the right, but first a look inside the cathedral (we hadn’t expected to be able to go inside):

Although I’d never seen a Baroque church before, I recognized the style immediately (the present church on this site was built between 1755 and 1766, while the interior was renovated between 1962 and 1967).

You may be able to see what I think is a pulpit on the far pillar on the left. This is a closer view:

It never occurred to me to check the other side of the stone column to see whether there was a spiral staircase inside.

And this is the high altar area:

Even though Paula’s camera has a wider aspect ratio than mine, she couldn’t capture the entire panorama.

When we turned to leave and I looked down the nave, I noticed a splendid organ at the back of the church:

And this is the view to the right from the side of the cathedral, which I mentioned earlier:

You can see a mural on the building on the far side of the open area outside the main entrance to the cathedral. And this is a closer view:

I cannot state with any confidence what is being depicted here, although I do suspect that there is a religious motif running through what appear to be unrelated scenes.

And this is a closer look at the raised ‘bay window’, the top of which you can see in the previous photo:

Once again, the intricacy of the carving is absolutely stunning.

I took two photos of the buildings to the right of the mural, but I couldn’t decide which one to include here, so I’ve kept both:

Which do you prefer?

I took just two more photos as we made our way back to the car. I don’t know if the imagery in the next photo is what you can actually experience in the restaurant:

Unbelievably, this final image has been created by chiselling off some of the cement rendering on the wall of the building:

I’ve no idea what ‘Zur Lerche’ refers to (or means).

And that’s the old town of St. Gallen. The abbey/cathedral is a UNESCO world heritage site, and I’m sure there’s more to discover here, if I get the chance.

she’s a big girl now

In order to preserve my fitness level since my bike accident back in November, when I sustained a hairline fracture in my wrist and was told by the doctor who treated me not to contemplate cycling until March, Paula and I have been going for much longer walks than we would normally do. During one such walk in the week before Chinese New Year, we walked to Ho Sheung Heung (‘village above the water’, the water in question being the Sheung Yue River). On the way back, via a different route, we happened to pass the Kung Chung Temple, a Buddhist temple close to Fanling station, which I’d noticed when travelling to the airport from Fanling and had made a mental note to visit sometime. Of course we went in.

Presumably because of covid-19 restrictions, we were unable to enter the temple itself, but I’ve mentioned this detour because we were given, without asking, two tickets for the Tsz Shan Monastery in the hills east of Taipo for a day last week. Some years ago, I’d cycled up a long and fairly steep hill to the entrance to this monastery, although this wasn’t because I wanted to visit. I was merely checking out all the roads in the area to see where they led to, but I did learn that you have to book online if you want to visit this monastery. So of course we took this opportunity to visit.

The central feature of the monastery is a huge statue of the goddess Guanyin, which you cannot fail to notice when cycling along Tin Kok Road to Plover Cove, which I used to do regularly before the start of the pandemic.

This was our first view of that statue when we entered the grounds of the monastery:

If we were to visit again, we would go up these steps:

…but we continued to the right because the statue seemed to be the main attraction, although I did notice that the guardians on each side of this temple didn’t appear to be the conventional lions or lungma that I might have expected (see below).

The statue grew ever larger as we drew nearer:

The next three photos give you a good idea of how tall and imposing it is:

And this is the closest view among the photos I took of the statue:

According to Wikipedia, it is 76 metres high, although I do think that this is an exaggeration (my own estimate was 40–45 metres). However, to Wikipedia’s credit, the entry on its pages has been flagged as ‘…contains content that is written like an advertisement’. I believe that my estimate is closer to the actual height!

The plinth upon which the statue stands is described in this article as a ‘lotus platform’, which you can see clearly in the previous photo. I took the next photo to show the elaborate patterns in the wall beneath the lotus platform:

The structure underneath the statue is a museum, and my main memory of it is that it was so dark inside—only the exhibits were illuminated, not brightly—that it took me 15–20 minutes to be able to see the floor. Most of the exhibits were of figures from the Tang (AD 618–907) and Ming (1388–1644) Dynasties, although whether they were genuine antiques or merely reproductions I’m unable to say. You can see the entrance to the museum in this photo taken by Paula:

And this is the first photo I took after leaving the museum. The monastery’s main temple is on the right:

There were notices prohibiting photography inside this temple, but I took this photo, which shows the three deities enshrined here, from a short distance outside:

You can tell that it was taken around the new year because of the kumquat bushes, which are a symbol of prosperity in Chinese culture. We also took a few photos along the side of the main temple, which you might describe as quasi-abstract:

Paula took the second and third photos.

The next four photos are general views of the area between the statue and a smaller temple facing the statue:

You might describe this as the ‘correct’ approach to the statue from that temple:

Paula also took this photo, which shows what I would describe as the equivalent of a cloister in a mediæval European monastery, leading away at right angles from the smaller temple:

…while I took this photo of the shrine inside the temple (before I noticed the small ‘no cameras’ icon on the right, which stopped me taking photos of the two figures, each about 6–7 metres high, on both sides of the shrine):

As I was coming down the stairs towards the main entrance, it struck me that it would make a good photo looking out to sea—if only there weren’t people in the frame:

But there were people, standing idly, in the frame (of the doorway):

However, I did eventually manage to get a clear shot:

Finally, here are photos of the two guards that I mentioned at the start of this report. Both have names and are traditional guardians of the Buddha. This is Naluoyan Jingang (on the left):

…and Miji Jingang (on the right):

And that was our visit to the Tsz Shan Monastery. Like the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Shatin, construction began in the 1950s, so it is not an historical site, although it is certainly interesting. According to the brochure that we were handed at the gate, the architecture here is a traditional style that was popular between the Tang and Northern Song (AD 960–1127) Dynasties, which probably explains why I didn’t see a single dragon motif anywhere, unlike, for example, Wun Chuen Sin Koon, a Taoist monastery on Ping Che Road, northeast of Fanling, which has hundreds of golden dragons adorning both the external and internal walls of its main temple. Although we enjoyed our visit, we’re unlikely to come here again, mainly because access isn’t easy. The minibus that we took from Taipo Market station merely passes the bottom of the hill that I referred to above.