Ten Thousand Buddhist Temple
Friday, February 5, 1999

After lunch one day, Toshihiro and I decided to go to Shatin to take a look at the Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple. It was about a 5 minute’s walk from the Shatin KCR station. According to the guidebook, "This colorful temple is named for the Buddha statues that line its walls, each slightly different pose. Actually, there are closer to 13,000 Buddhas now - good value after a climb up the 400 steps that lead to the temple."


Entrance of the Temple. Notice the Diagonal Elevator on the side

When I first entered the temple I thought that the temple was quite new. The walls were so white washed. Heck, there was even an elevator there! There was quite a lot of stairs, but not quite 400. Inside were quite a lot of graves. There were many Buddha statues but certainly not 10,000. I thought that the 10,000 was just a figure of speech, like one statue representing 36 buddhas... One thing for certain was that there was a lot of graves. Inside was a pagoda, with the words "5 Storey Po Fook Pagoda, we offer the Suddhartha - the yu Lai Supreme Buddha. Once he was an Indian prince and he is the founder of buddhism." I began to ask some of the workers here. What a mistake I had made. They told me that I was at the wrong place - this is a graveyard! The worker also told me that the temple was behind the graveyard! Anyway Toshi was pressed for time and had an appointment so he had to leave first. At the left of the graveyard was a path up to the pagoda. However it was closed due to mudslides. At the right was another path, through a small village. Along the path, there were many dogs. Also the houses were filled with the sound of mahjong! I actually saw a monk passed by so I was certainly going to the right way. It took 404 steps on the stairs to reach the temple. I had made it!

top: front view of the main building right: a red pagoda. Inside was a music box of the chanting of monks.

The Monastery is actually quite big but parts of it was closed due to repairs. I entered the main building and there was really over 10,000 buddha statues inside! Each was uniquely crafted and in slightly different positions. It took undoubtedly took years to make all these. I bought a set of old postcards for $18 HKD and the photo below is a photo of the interior.