IT'S 10AM AND thousands of worshippers, laden with offerings of flowers, fruits, chicken, roast pork and joss-sticks, are milling around outside the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple waiting to have their wishes fulfilled.
Among them is Au Lee Fung-ling, who's been praying to Wong Tai Sin - literally the Great Immortal Wong - for the well-being of her family since she was young. This Saturday is a little different. The temple is celebrating the deity's birthday and Au, 59, has brought her children and grandkids along.
This is one of three visits she makes to the temple each year; the other two are at the beginning of the new year to ask for blessings and at the end of the year to pay homage to Wong Tai Sin for another blessed year.
'I used to follow my mother to the temple every year when I was a kid. The temple was very shabby and just built on muddy land in the old days. It was not as beautiful and big as it is today,' says Au, who also comes for blessings on special occasions such as when her children got married or started a new job, as well as when her grandchildren were born. 'Our whole family has been very harmonic and well all these years under the blessing of Wong Tai Sin.'
Today's crowd is a reminder of the standing the temple holds in the eyes of Hongkongers. The benevolent deity is said to grant the wishes of all who pray to him - for anything from good health to business success and finding a good husband.
Worshippers also seek advice from the Chinese god on issues in their lives, using fortune sticks. Worshippers shake bamboo containers holding 100 numbered sticks until one of them falls out. They then get an ancient poem correlating to the number on the stick and can pay someone from the fortune-telling arcade next to the temple to decipher the allusions in the poem.