I read somewhere that Hong Kong is the 7th least
religious country in the world based on the number of people saying they are
atheist/agnostic.
I find this odd because I see religious buildings and signs of
religious observance all over the place – I’ve seen a startling number of
churches (which will feature at some point), a mosque, a big gurdwara, an
enormous Buddha statue, and loads of shrines like this one.
Many are tiny – some can be a shoe box sized on the floor in
the street; and you see small versions in shops quite a bit. This is probably
the largest I’ve seen, down a seldom-used mountain trail.
What I am getting at in today’s title is that I know embarrassingly
little about them. I am not 100% sure what religion they are (Taoist? Buddhist?);
I don’t know what the object of worship is; I don’t know what rites get
performed at them. The ‘massive lemon’ is just the funniest symptom of this –
you can see a big yellow fruit in this picture. It’s an offering of some form,
and when Claire and I first saw one we assumed that people try to find the
biggest lemon going to make their offering impressive. Turns out it’s actually
a totally different fruit. And I don’t know what that’s called either.
So I am reduced to saying ‘Oh, this shrine looks nice. And
what an impressively big fruit-of-unknown name you’ve offered there’. Hope to
fill said knowledge gap when we start our Canto lessons…!
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