Hen_gai_gai is a photographic documentation project by photographer Lavina Lim and artist William Lim, centred on Gai Gai, a ceramic chicken they collected in Mexico in 2023. Since then, Gai Gai has travelled on over 50 trips across more than 35 countries, documenting global togetherness and solidarity despite geopolitical polarisation. We asked Gai Gai to share their adventures around Hong Kong in a new series of articles.
The night before my trip to Man Mo Temple in Sheung Wan, I thought about chickening out and asking my human guardian to just go without me. But my ancestors came to me in my dreams, reminding me why they instructed me to go in the first place. Go, Gai Gai, they said. Go and find out why we made you out of porcelain instead of bone and flesh.
I did always wonder why I am the way I am. Many assumed I came from a Chinese lineage because my blue and white porcelain body was created using a Chinese technique perfected for widespread use as far back as under the Yuan dynasty, more than 700 years ago — but this is still yet to be verified. I have no living relatives to ask about this, as I was born in Mexico, orphaned at birth and adopted by my human guardians from Hong Kong.
These two curious humans have brought me with them on their many expeditions to interesting sites around the world. Along the way, I always find myself looking for clues about my possible heritage in the country shaped like a rooster on the world map — that is to say, China.
Now that we are in my guardians’ hometown of Hong Kong, I can’t pass up the chance to learn about the 12 Chinese zodiac symbols embedded in the city’s cultural landscape. One thing I do know about the Chinese zodiac is that roosters are one of the signs, and I’ve always heard voices from my rooster ancestors that my human guardians could not hear. If my heavenly ancestors tell me to go to Man Mo Temple and learn about its relationship with roosterkind, I shall go then and complete the “chicken” leg of my Hong Kong and Chinese zodiac signs exploration.
And thus, my human guardian and I got up with the chickens to beat the crowd at the historic temple. As he carried me across the threshold, I leaned close to his warm torso, hoping to borrow some of his courage and warm up to this temple as quickly as I could.
To many, Man Mo Temple is a solemn yet welcoming place of worship, with Kwan Tai and Man Cheong at the top of the pecking order and in the name of this temple housing many gods. Kwan Tai is the patron god of both the police and the triads, as he represents fraternal brotherhood, loyalty and righteousness. His other name, Mo Tai, reflects his background as a respected military general in the Three Kingdoms Period.
The other namesake of the Man Mo Temple is Man Cheong, god of culture and literature. Students come here to ask Man Cheong for academic success; job seekers come asking for good news in their career development. Tourists from all over the world visit for dreamy photos of the colourful interior, incense smoke veiling their camera lenses with an ambience of serenity and spirituality. Pious worshippers flock here on religiously significant days to bring offerings of incense and joss paper. But to me, a porcelain chicken, Man Mo Temple is where many ancestors made of bone and flesh gave their lives as a result of humans’ pursuit of justice.
Don’t chicken out
In the 19th century, the legal system in early colonial Hong Kong was as young and underdeveloped as a spring chicken, but humans never stopped feuding no matter how society was organised. For the sake of settling disputes, the government at the time allowed Chinese citizens to take oaths using traditional Chinese folk methods in Man Mo Temple — specifically this one in Sheung Wan, and not anywhere else in the city, as Sheung Wan’s Man Mo Temple was already commonly used by the Chinese community as the venue for settling disputes.
The oath taker would kneel in front of the gods, and read aloud his vow written on a piece of yellow ritual paper. If I were lying, my whole family and I would suffer terrible deaths, one oath-taker claimed. If I had wronged my accuser in any way, my entire bloodline will end in my generation, said another. The temple steward would then bring out a cleaver, a chopping block, and a rooster — the yellow paper stained with the blood of the slain rooster would then be burnt, signifying that the oath taker is willing to face justice handed down by the gods if they were lying.
Refusal to take such an oath was seen as an admission of guilt. In 1918, two merchants were deadlocked in monetary disputes without definitive evidence or the goodwill to resolve conflicts from either side. The court ordered them to take an oath at Man Mo Temple with lawyers as their witness, but neither of them were willing to kneel and spill the blood of roosters. The court then gave a ruling that the claimant must be guilty because he did not dare to take an oath — a decision that shocked Hong Kong.
Man Mo Temple was thus a court of justice as well as a place of worship and community engagement; a place where humans sorted out their earthly disputes in front of the indisputably just deities, my ancestors of the bone and flesh an important prop in humans’ public claims of innocence.
A moment of contemplation
Some people feel invigorated when they visit sites where great loss of lives had happened, as they get to contemplate their own mortality and place in the vast universe in the face of other’s premature death. Others visit out of curiosity, mourning, or blissful ignorance of the past, which are all valid ways to interact with historical sites.
Although my porcelain body has no blood to spill, and taking oaths by killing chickens is already a thing of the past, setting foot in the historic Man Mo Temple still made me feel as though I was walking on eggshells. Why did my ancestors insist I come here, when they felt no need for anyone to avenge them as they have long accepted their role in the human world? What can I, a porcelain chicken, learn about the reason for my supernatural existence in this temple full of gods inhabiting bodies made of clay and paint?
I tried asking the pigeons roaming around boxes of incense near the entrance of the temple, but we were not birds of a feather, and they did not pay me any attention. The frustration was killing me; my thoughts were running wild like a headless chicken. Let’s go, I eventually said to my human guardian waiting patiently nearby. He gently picked me up from the cold tiled floor, and carefully held me close to his chest.
As we were leaving, I felt his heartbeat resonating in my hollow body; I became a vessel of something alive and real in the human world through our relationship. If I were a real chicken, I would not be leaving this temple alive in the era of chicken oaths, nor would I be granted entrance this morning as live poultry is not allowed in most places in the city. Is this it? I asked my ancestors. Am I made of porcelain so that I can travel in this city to places where live chickens could not, and become a vessel of observation and reflection for your sake? They smiled, but didn’t answer.