Pirates, Magic and Neon: Tsing Yi’s Chun Kwan Temple

Out on the South China Sea, war was raging between the forces of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279) and a fearsome pirate armada. These were not just any old pirates, though — no, they were sorcerer pirates. When imperial warships arrived to deal with them, they used magic to churn the wind and the waves, sending the Song navy down to the torrid brine.

Back at the Song military encampment, on the coast of Guangdong province near present-day Shanwei, the mood was bleak. It was on the eve of their decisive showdown with these super-powered pirates when a trio of mysterious visitors arrived to turn the tide. Led by Wu Ganghou, these three brothers and Taoist priests conjured a great feast, promising to join the men in battle the next day and fight fire with fire — that is, magic with magic.

When the two fleets met, the priests faced down the swashbuckling wizards in a one-to-one magical duel. Just as they became locked in a stalemate, Wu pulled out his trump card, summoning a giant turtle that bit the pirate sorcerer, shocking him out of his human disguise and capturing him in his true form: a snakehead fish, known to breathe air and capable of surviving on land for days.

Deprived of their demonic powers, the pirates were easily defeated by the imperial forces, and peace returned to the empire’s southern shores. The Song emperor, Lizong, sought out Wu to have him serve at his court, but Wu was nowhere to be found, disappearing back into the mist from which he emerged. Instead, like other capable officials, he was elevated to the pantheon of gods, awarded the title of Emperor Chun Kwan — the True Lord.

The Lord of Tsing Yi

That’s one version of the Chun Kwan legend, at least. Most are more prosaic, portraying our hero as a gifted administrator, a military general, or even a commoner from Fujian province. On one point, though, they all agree: he is honoured for quashing piracy on the Cantonese coast, whether by the magic of spells and summoning or simply the magic of good governance. 

Either way, Wu became a kind of guardian deity to the local people of Hoi Fung (whose name means “sea harvest” — hoi2 fung1 海豐) and Luk Fung (陸豐 luk6 fung1 “land harvest”) in present-day Shanwei — a pair of towns collectively known by the amphibious portmanteau Hoi Luk Fung. Labourers from the twin cities began making their way to colonial Hong Kong in the 1910s, settling around the lime works that once stood on the shores of the now-reclaimed Tsing Yi Lagoon. And when they did, they literally brought their god with them, carrying the idol of Chun Kwan on their voyage. This only deepened their faith, as they would attribute their safe journey to Chun Kwan’s protection. The new arrivals built a makeshift shrine in their new home for their idol, one that would later evolve into a full-blown temple — the only one dedicated to Chun Kwan in all of Hong Kong. It also happens to be the only temple in Hong Kong adorned with neon lights.

Its earliest incarnation was likely just a small tin hut built on the site of the Tsing Yi lime kilns, sandwiched between the hillside and the dormitories where the workers from Hoi Luk Fung lived. Official maps of prewar Hong Kong show a shrine — and later a temple — marked in this area. This simple structure also served as an ancestral temple for the first generation of migrants, a place where people would go to hold weddings and births and seek divine guidance. In the 1950s, the Hoi Luk Fung community banded together to build a permanent home more befitting their True Lord. Donations to the hometown association poured in, and by the end of the decade, the Chun Kwan Temple had been rebuilt and then expanded. In the 1960s, local Chinese-language newspapers reported that villagers had formed a festival committee and staged Cantonese opera performances to celebrate Chun Kwan’s birthday.

In the next decade, reclamation projects began that would wipe Tsing Yi Lagoon and Tsing Yi Bay off the map, swallowing up the neighbouring islands of Nga Ying Chau in the Rambler Channel and rocky Chau Tsai off of Tsing Yi’s southern coast. Eventually, the relentless pace of development forced the temple to relocate to its current home at the Fung Shue Wo Road Roundabout, where the lapping of the lagoon was replaced by the endless drone of traffic. The kilns’ embers long extinguished, it sat instead beneath a canopy of neon.

Locals only

Think of local gods in Hong Kong and a few things might come to mind. Many will think of a deity like the sea goddess Tin Hau, who is widely revered across the territory — but also in Chinese and diasporic communities worldwide. Others might imagine Tam Kung, another sea deity with a unique local connection, as a deified version of the last child emperor of the Song dynasty, who died in Hong Kong while fleeing south from the Mongol Yuan dynasty. But Chun Kwan takes the term to a whole other level.

When Japanese bombs rained down on Hong Kong in December 1941, the explosives that fell on Tsing Yi somehow failed to detonate — a miracle residents attributed to Chun Kwan. Then, during a Cantonese opera performance to mark the rebuilding of the temple in 1955, dark clouds gathered over Hong Kong Island, Tsuen Wan and Kowloon. Only little Tsing Yi was spared the downpour, basking instead in sunshine and blue skies. This is a god not concerned with what happens to the rest of Hong Kong, it seems, as long as his island home is safe. He is the guardian of this Tsing Yi and Tsing Yi alone, reciprocating locals’ devotion with a fierce sense of protectiveness.

In 1961, an alliance of sorts emerged between Chun Kwan and Tin Hau. The former celebrates his birthday on the 15th day of the third lunar month, while the latter does so on the 23rd. Villagers used to erect one temporary bamboo theatre for the True Lord, then take it down and build another for the Empress of Heaven just days later. The solution was simple: keep the same theatre up for both holidays. It also had an elegant, perhaps politically prescient name: jat1 paang4 loeng5 daan3 (一棚兩誕, one theatre, two celebrations). To this day, the two gods share a holiday home at the Tsing Yi Athletic Association Sports Ground.

Bamboo union

On the first morning of his birthday celebrations, Chun Kwan is approached by members of the temple’s organising committee who ask if the god is ready to move house. This is more than just a formality. In 1961, the Hong Kong Observatory hoisted a T10 typhoon warning on the day before the True Lord’s birthday celebration. But Chun Kwan told organisers not to cancel, and to go ahead with the festivities as planned. Overnight, the skies cleared completely. When the temple was being renovated in 1970, its Chun Kwan idol had to be moved to a temporary residence, but the god refused to begin his procession at 8am as planned, and insisted on leaving an hour early instead. As a result, celebrants were spared a downpour that began promptly at eight o’clock

These communications are conducted via two clamshell-shaped implements called jiaobei (筊杯 gaau2 bui1), or moon blocks. Supplicants clasp the wood — sometimes bamboo or actual clam shells — between their hands in prayer, then pose a yes-or-no question before dropping them to the floor. If one lands face-up and the other face-down, the answer is “yes.” If both are face-down, it’s a “no.” Two face-ups means the gods are laughing at your question, either because it was unclear or the answer is obvious — it’s open to interpretation.

Once he’s ready to hit the road, Chun Kwan is loaded into a palanquin. The first stop is Lutheran Village, a resettlement area built in the 1960s with funding from the Lutheran Friends of Sweden. Despite its Christian name, the village is a hub for folk deities, encircled by shrines to Tin Hau, the Taoist moon goddess Tai Yam Neong Neong, fellow righteous government official Hung Shing Ye, and legendary Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. In this small, sleepy cluster of two-storey houses, gods almost seem to outnumber mortals. Signs posted around the shrines warn visitors not to leave idols, as is often the case in other parts of Hong Kong. Too many gods, it seems, can be a serious problem. Here, Chun Kwan begins collecting a divine entourage. After climbing the stairs just behind the temple, the True Lord’s procession marches around Lutheran Village, picking up the gods’ statues one by one to let them join the party.

On the festival grounds, dragon and lion dances and Cantonese opera performances are staged for five days. When the sun goes down, bright lights and fireworks light up the sky, and the smell of hawkers selling street food fills the air: everything from traditional snacks like fried glutinous rice to teppanyaki and the latest Instagrammable treats from Taiwan’s famous night markets.

Island story

Sitting on his throne and peering beyond a veil of incense smoke, Chun Kwan has witnessed a century of change that is remarkable even for Hong Kong. In the postwar decades, Tsing Yi went from backwater to a vital industrial hub.

But the island was never quite a rural idyll: it was industry, in the form of the lime kilns, that first brought the True Lord and his acolytes from Hoi Luk Fung. At that time, lime was an essential material for some of the colony’s most important industries: it was used in construction for plastering walls and ceilings, and was necessary to treat drinking water for the local community and to refine sugar from Southeast Asia for the Chinese market. After firing the shells for hours, powder from the furnaces was heaped into piles and mixed with water, then sieved through copper mesh. At the end of the process, lumps of waste residue were thrown into the lagoon, slowly reclaiming it from the sea.

The raw materials for lime came from the ocean: oyster shells from Lau Fau Shan, coral heads from Sai Kung, and shellfish beds that were dredged up from wherever reclamation was taking place in the colony, when they would be fought over by local Tanka boat people and then sold to lime kiln operators. Kilns themselves also tended to be built near the shore, so that the kiln could have a private pier to bring in raw materials and transport the finished product. 

The San Shing Lei kiln, where Chun Kwan’s devotees worked, began in Sai Wan shortly after Hong Kong was established. But as the area became more developed and prosperous, the factory and its noxious fumes were forced to relocate to quieter, less developed environs — first to Tsim Sha Tsui, then to Tai Kok Tsui, then to Sham Shui Po, and finally to Tsing Yi in 1915. The island was very remote, with only a few residents at the time, according to Wong Tai-yan, a descendant of the Wong family from Chung Shan that ran the San Shing Lei kiln. 17 years after it had become part of colonial Hong Kong, Tsing Yi was still an untamed frontier, where the lime kilns kept swords, rattan shields, and handguns to defend against pirates. It’s easy to see why early residents kept their pirate-fighting god as an extra line of defence. 

More than a hundred workers — known at the time as “general coolies” — from Hoi Luk Fung were employed at the kiln, which had to buy vast quantities of dried grass from the villagers to fire the furnaces. The private pier built by the factory for shipping out goods was also open to the public. As a result, a growing community grew around the facility. “Many of the workers started to live near the factory, so shops could set up nearby and hope for business,” recalls Wong. “Because of this, the area became steadily more prosperous, and outsiders started to invest there, building houses and factories until the area became a general market.” 

The local construction business was booming, and the raw materials for lime were still abundant. In the 1960s, though, lime began to be imported from China, where labour was much cheaper, and Japan, where the industry was more mechanised and efficient. San Shing Lei closed in the early 1960s, and the others soon followed. As the lime industry declined, however, others arose to take its place: stone quarries, power plants, oil depots, paint factories, ship breaking yards and a container terminal for the new Kwai Tsing port facilities.

One island, two faces

Many of these still operate today, forming one of the island’s two very different faces. One is marked by sprawling, towering housing complexes and cavernous shopping malls — clusters of tower blocks bifurcated by wide, humming roads, soaring bridges and gargantuan traffic interchanges. 

The other exists in the shadows of the gritty business that gave Tsing Yi its start. It can be hard to believe both belong to the same little island. But climb atop the peaks known as the Three Joss Sticks and you can take it all in: the oil depots and container terminals to the south and west, and the gleaming towers around the MTR line in the island’s north and east. The mountains act like a natural barrier, keeping its more presentable face clean.

Peering out from behind a veil of incense and a haze of neon light, the god of Tsing Yi sees it all. Whatever the future holds for this island, one thing, maybe one thing alone, will stay the same: its True Lord will be here to protect it.