Traditional Chinese Religious Practices in an Urban-Industrial Setting: The Example of Kwun Tong - Hong Kong

Abstract

This article examines the structure and vitality of traditional, rural-based, Chinese religious practices in an urban-industrial district of Hong Kong. Although statistically popular ancestor worship and the cult of deities have undergone major structural reorientations with an apparent loss of vitality due to the disappearance or debility of the tightly-knit particularist institutions in which they have been traditionally embedded. Alliance with minority speech group interests has, however, allowed temples and their associated cults to flourish in the urban milieu. Long-term prospects for traditional practices appear less promising since they have in large measure failed to appeal to the younger generation socialized in the fragmented institutional content of the urban-industrial city.