About Wong Tai Sin Temple
The sound that greets you is bamboo. Worshippers kneeling before the altar shake cylinders full of numbered sticks until one jumps out: this is kau cim. The number is exchanged for a slip of paper with the prediction, which interpreters read at the stalls nearby, and plenty of people check with more than one, just in case.
Completed in 1921, the shrine honors the immortal Wong Tai Sin and covers 18,000 m² at the foot of Lion Rock, with a Nine-Dragon Wall modeled on one in Beijing. On the eve of Lunar New Year, thousands of people wait for midnight outside to run to the main altar: tradition says that whoever offers incense first secures more luck for the year.
