Tung Lin Kok Yuen, Buddhist female monastery in Happy Valley, Hong Kong
Tung Lin Kok Yuen is a Buddhist female monastery in Happy Valley that houses a temple with multiple spaces for worship and practice. The compound accommodates both resident nuns and visitors who come for prayer and study.
In 1931 Sir Robert Ho Tung gave his second wife, Clara Cheung Lin Kok, HK$100,000 for their 50th wedding anniversary. She used it to buy a 12,000 sq ft plot on Shan Kwong Road and build Tung Lin Kok Yuen, completed in 1935 together with Po Kok Free School for girls. The name combines Ho Tung and Lin Kok. It became a declared monument in 2017.
The name combines the names of Sir Robert Ho Tung and his wife, Lady Clara Cheung Lin Kok. The site holds memorial halls with tablets for the deceased, where a public service is held each Remembrance Day, and courses taught by Sangha authorities run several times a year, sponsored by the Hong Kong Buddhist Association. The gate's stone plaque and couplets were written by calligrapher Ye Gongchuo.
The entrance is on Shan Kwong Road, and the main hall, front hall and Lotus Enlightenment Memorial Building stand in sequence along a central axis. A footbridge links the nunnery to Po Kok Primary School across the Jewish Cemetery; the stone pillars of the entrance gate are carved with the names of the two schools that preceded the nunnery.
The gate's stone plaque and couplets were written by the calligrapher Ye Gongchuo; the main hall holds a wooden couplet by Kang Youwei and a horizontal plaque inscribed in 1934 by Zhang Xueliang, reading "Kind clouds cover all". A hair mandala of Guanyin in the reception room was made from the hair of a Japanese laywoman in repentance for Chinese killed in the Second World War.
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