Gods have to be appeased, bad spirits blown away and sleeping dragons soothed to keep luck on your side. Fung shui and the Chinese zodiac also play key roles in choosing dates for funerals, and sites for graves and ancestral shrines. Hong Kong has approximately 600 temples, monasteries and shrines, most of which are Buddhist or Taoist. Of Hong Kong's hundreds of temples, more than 40 are public ones maintained by the Chinese Temples Committee, which gets its income from donations by worshippers. Temples are usuaby dedicated to one or two deities whose images can be found in the main hall.
Side halls house images of subsidiary gods.
Since Buddhism and Taoism are both accepted as traditional Chinese religions, deities from both am often honoured within the same temple. The majority of temples are tiny but them are some enormous ones such as the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island, the Temple Of Ten Thousand Buddhas at Sha Tin and Wong Tai Sin in Kowloon. Aside from the Chinese religions, there are several other faiths represented in Hong Kong's cosmopolitan population. There are about 500,000 Christians. Due to the zeal of lay Christians and mission- aries, the number of independent Protestant churches has steadily risen since the 1970s, and now includes around 950 congregations.