World Religions reflective journal #8

Today Paul taught us the about Religions in Hong Kong. Finally come to topic that is more related to our daily life. I (probably many other classmates) feel quite sad and disappointed for the cancel of our field trip to Happy Valley. This is a memorable place to me, a place where I was born, a place where I lived, a place where I went to kindergarten, a place where I finished my primary education, a place where I got baptised, a place where I spent my whole childhood.

But it's still nice that Paul has given us a "powerpoint tour" to Happy Valley, introduced us the religions existed in the very small Happy Valley community. Indeed I have been to the religious areas introduced by Paul, so that's not really a loss. But I have never noticed the unique feature of the religious pluralism in this place. I am thinking, what make Happy Valley so unique?

Happy Valley is a place clustered with Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. I guess, maybe it's related to the history of the place. Happy Valley, is one of the places with the earliest local development. Wikipedia told me in the 19th century, Happy Valley was once the place of military camp of the British army, serious plague killed many soldiers there, so, cemeteries were built to bury the corpses. While Happy Valley has long been the living place of bigwigs, who had great power and social status. This and these allowed the region to develop with little or no opposing voice. The high degree of freedom might make Happy Valley became the hinterland for religions growth. These are all my guess...

By the way, we have presented our group project today, which is about a case study of the Jiao Festival in Cheung Chau. Me and my partner Tin Yan were quite nervous and afraid of presenting the wrong thing because the idea of religious syncretism in the last part was just proposed by ourselves. We had no clue if our claim is correct... but fortunately, Paul was quite satisfied. Indeed things we've learnt today is quite applicable to our presentation :)