Kwong Fook Tsz, Chinese temple in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.
Kwong Fook Tsz is a temple at 40 Tai Ping Shan Street, at the junction with Pound Lane in Sheung Wan. Its front is a dark red-brown wall base topped by a tall red metal frame holding tiered shelves of conical brown incense coils. A red metal staircase with mesh panels rises on the left; yellow signs read 佛堂公所, 地勝 and two diamond signs on the stairs.
The temple was established in 1856 as a storage facility for ancestral tablets and coffins of Chinese people who died far from their homeland. This establishment eventually led to the founding of Tung Wah Hospital, marking the arrival of the first Chinese medical institution in Hong Kong.
The temple is also called Pak Shing Temple, "temple for all folks", because its back hall holds the ancestral tablets of ordinary people who died in Hong Kong far from home; these tablets cannot be privately transferred. Its main hall honours Kshitigarbha and Ji Gong, and rites are held to release the souls of the dead.
The temple stands at 40 Tai Ping Shan Street, at the junction with Pound Lane in Sheung Wan, and is managed by the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. The entrance is on the street front; the red metal rack of incense coils and the stairway with the yellow signs are the first things in view. It is an active place of worship, so keep voices low and avoid photographing worshippers during rites.
In April 1869 a government investigation found dying patients and corpses sharing the hall of ancestral tablets; the acting registrar Charles May inspected the death of a migrant worker and the English press, including the China Mail, reported the conditions. The outcry closed the shrine and led to the founding of Tung Wah Hospital in 1872, which then took over its management.
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