The Most Peaceful Place in Hong Kong

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Sunday 25.01.09

Nan Lian Gardens and Chi Lin Nunnery

I spent my morning wandering around the beautiful and peaceful Nan Lian Gardens. At times I forgot the city hustle and bustle was just outside the garden gates, but then I would look up and see the towers looming overhead and remember; but, for a while, all the usual city noise was gone. The gardens are attached to the Chi Lin Nunnery for the Bhuddist nuns. To get to the Nunnery from the gardens you wander through some lovely Lotus Pond Gardens and through three gates which represent the Bhuddist principles of compassion, wisdom and skilful means.

There are lots of different shrines to Bhuddist deities, all with offerings of incense and fruit placed before them by the nuns.

I was disappointed to find that the nun's vegetarian restaurant was closed while I was there due to it being Chinese New Year, but they were selling some nut and coconut pastry crescents which are a Chinese New Year treat. I have heard that the nun's restaurant is very good and may warrant a return visit soon!

Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple Complex
After the serenity of the gardens and the nunnery it was off to the madness of this temple complex. It has Bhuddist, Taoist and Confuscist temples all in the same complex. I thought it was quite busy while I was there, but I did notice that they had some barriers ready to make up a queing system, so they were obviously expecting it to get a lot busier. I saw on the news that over the next few days people werer having to que for 2 hours to be able to get in to make their offerings, and in some cases they were being limited in the number of incense sticks they could use. Wong Tai Sin is worshipped by the sick and those wishing to avoid illness as, it is said, when he was 15 he was taught how to make a herbal potion that would cure all illnesses.

The complex also has many, many fortune tellers. At Chinese New Year time it is traditional to have your fortune told, and there are various ways of doing this: you can have your palms read, or you can shake out a numbered bamboo stick from the container and have someone interpret the meaning of the number. This bamboo shaking exercise was done by a Hong Kong official for the Chinese new year, to determine the fortune of Hong Kong this year - unfortunately he drew number 27, which depending on which interpretation you follow means that HK will not be able to isolate it from the global economic turbulence but that there is cause for cautious optimism; another interpretation was that it signifies possible conflict between the government and its people. Whatever explanation they agree with, most people agree that 27 is not a good stick - the last time they drew 27 in HK was in 1992 when Chris Patten arrived causing political turmoil. In other years when it has been drawn, the stick has been burned and another drawn instead!!

I opted to have my palms read - amongst other things she told me that I will finally find true love when I'm 36 and I'll be ready to settle down when I'm 38 - so, Lynn, Lesley, Alyson and Elaine, it doesn't look like I'll be finding that millionaire NZ man that you were hoping I would find on this trip!!

Kowloon Walled City Park
On this site a long time ago, there was a walled city. The walled city wasn't included in the lease of lands to Britain along with the rest of HK, although I'm not sure why. It was known for its gambling, prostitution and illegal dentists! Now its a quiet park with lots of winding paths and a Chinese Horoscope garden; if you hunt through the pictures at the end, you should be able to find the animal for your year. Ironically, 1977 was a year of the snake, but, since I won't have any snake things in my house, I bought a little monkey charm instead!

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