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Journalism of Courage
HONG KONG, September 20: Offerings of fruits and steamed chicken were neatly placed outside the door, where a small red shrine of the “God of Earth” had been placed. A young couple lit joss sticks and burnt “paper money”, asking the deity, left by previous tenant of a luxury flat in North Point, to leave as his service was no longer required. “It is a Chinese tradition we have to follow as they are supposed to be sacred,” said Ann Tsang, who admitted she and her husband were Christian.“It is sacrilegious if we just simply throw the shrine away,” said Tsang, which, to many in Hong Kong, could bring bad luck and misfortune. The shrine was later placed under an old banyan tree at a street corner near Hong Kong’s famed Victoria Park, joining dozens of other “decommissioned” deities in serving as homes for sparrows.
Growing piles of ceramic statues of Buddhist or Taoist deities, left homeless by their former owners, can be seen all over Hong Kong and have become something of a tourist attraction.Among the “homeless” deities were the God of Fortune, the God of Longevity and the God of Happiness.The deities were abandoned because of migration, or simply because they were no longer seen to possess the power to protect their owners, said experts. But no one, not even the government, dares to remove them for fear of inviting bad luck, despite anti-littering laws carrying fines up to 646 US dollars and a jail term.
“I leave them where they are,” said street sweeper Liang Sam. “No one dares to remove them or throw them into the garbage. It will provoke the ire of the spirits,” she said. Some of the statues, left for years, have attracted western antique collectors because of their distinctive workmanship. Statues of deities are considered to have a sacred quality, and removing their shrines require elaborate religious rites, experts said.
Joseph Bosco, a specialists in Chinese religion and customs at the Chinese University, said such a belief was common in Chinese society. “To many Chinese, theseicons or statues of deities are sacred as they are considered a medium to communicate with the spirit,” he said. Bosco admitted he had collected such dispossessed statues of Chinese deities for their artistic values, but his students were “terrified”.
He said he understood their concerns.
“It is not superstition, it is their religious quality,” Bosco said.
