Mystery and magic abound at Marriage Rock

ANCIENT superstitions are alive and well-tended in modern Hongkong. Every day, female worshippers climb Bowen Road's steep hillside to pray for luck and good husbands in front of ''Marriage Rock''.

Also known as ''Lover's Stone'', there is an air of mystery about the 10-metre high monolith.

Some sources suggest the boulder was worshipped in prehistoric times by Hongkong's aboriginal, animist tribespeople. Like Sha Tin's Amah Rock, it was a natural landmark, shrine and source of legends.

One legend tells of a grief-stricken girl, abandoned by her lover, who followed a fortune-teller's advice to offer prayers to the rock: her lover returned to her. Ever since, it is said, women have prayed in front of Yan Yuen Sek, or ''The Rock of Predestined Lot in Marriage'', also known as ''Maiden's Rock''.

Nowadays, the power of the rock is invoked on its strongest days - the 6th, 16th and 26th days of each lunar month. It is believed to be at its most potent on the 7th Day of the 7th Moon, when the Maidens' Festival is celebrated in a carnival atmosphere around the boulder site.

Chi Shih (7th Night of the 7th Moon) enshrines the myth of Chi Chieh (''Seven Sisters''). The sisters were the Heavenly Emperor's daughters, the youngest of whom laboured at her weaving loom all day. She fell in love with a cowherd on the other side of the Milky Way, and their marriage was approved by her father - until her weaving fell behind schedule. Henceforth, he ruled, she could only join her husband once a year, on the 7th of the 7th.