Kwong Fuk Tsz Temple

One of the features of the Hong Kong Tourism Board's guidebook under "Scary Journey" is this temple in Sheung Wan. According to the guidebook, this temple is supposedly haunted because dead bodies used to be stored here even thought the elderly and homeless also lived on the premises. The terrible conditions caused the place to be called a "living hell."

Anyway, I've walked past this temple a lot (I worship at a nearby Guan Yin temple), and I honestly haven't felt anything. I mean, I'm not brave or anything. In fact, when it comes to ghosts, I think I'm quite chickenshit, but I'm really exceptionally dense to any hauntings.

I've never been inside the temple, mostly out of lack of interest in climbing those stairs. I don't know...sometimes, foreigners enter my temple while I'm doing my offerings, and I get kind of annoyed when they start taking pictures.

Anyway, Kwong Fuk Tsz Temple is on Tai Ping Shan Road, just around the corner from Man Mo Temple and a little bit further down from Haji and all those other little shops.

Hong Kong Heritage Office Guidebook

Okay, okay, maybe it's cheating to just put up a link, but this is such a cute guidebook that I think it's worth an entry on its own. The Heritage Office has created a little guidebook that you can download here. It's really super, and it even has a section on haunted places in Hong Kong (they don't cover the more dangerous or controversial haunted places, but that's understandable). It turns out that I actually live next to one of them. Big surprise.

Anyway, enjoy!

Chinese YMCA on Bridges Street

A historic building that's actually being used for the community instead of for expats, socialites and wannabes? NO!!!

But it does exist on Bridges Street in Sheung Wan. For now, at least. A lot of people visit the Chinese YMCA on Bridges Street to take photographs -- during spring and summer, you'll see a lot of betrothed couples posing around this area in their wedding finery. Sometimes, you'll also see a fashion shoot. But mostly, a lot of amateur photographers come here to practise.

This area is quite packed with places to look at. Man Mo Temple and Cat Street are just around the corner, the Museum of Medical Science is a couple of streets away, and above that is the Sun Yat Sen Museum.

Maybe I'm just ungrateful because I've seen this place enough times that its beauty has kind of faded for me, although I used to avail of the YMCA's services, especially the use of their indoor basement pool. A really awesome place, by the way, although a bit too many splashing kids sometimes.

The Y has been open since 1918 and is currently used as a centre for the mentally challenged. Before the Japanese Occupation, it was a refugee centre. During the Occupation, it provided pro-Japanese and pro-German education services to the community.

Isn't it kind of weird to walk around somewhere with a lot of history? When I lived in Florence, there were times when I walked past the Battistero di San Giovanni thought, "Dude, Dante was baptized here." Or that Michelangelo had touched the doors.

It was freakier in Beijing while walking around the Forbidden City and the Great Wall (where I got lost for eight fucking hours, by the way). I mean, it's just so bizarre peering into the imperial chambers and thinking how emperors and their families lived and died and did all these normal human things there for a couple thousand years. Or walking on the Great Wall and thinking how some dude took a leak five thousand years ago probably right at the corner where I was standing.

I have a few Chinese artifacts from the Neolithic Era -- the motherfucking Neolithic! -- and sometimes, I just touch them in awe, you know?

Anyway, I think about these things sometimes when I'm in the Y.