Wong Tai Sin (Huang Daxian)

Huang Daxian’s secular name was Huang Chuping, a native of Lanxi, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, during the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Legend recounts that at age fifteen, while tending sheep, he encountered a Daoist master who led him to a mountain grotto on Jinhua Mountain, where he cultivated the Dao for over forty years and acquired the power to command stones to transform into sheep. His elder brother, Huang Chuqi, searched for him for four decades; upon their reunion, he too renounced worldly life to cultivate the Dao, and both brothers ascended to immortality on the same day. The Song-dynasty Daoist text *Record of Chisong Mountain in Jinhua* documents his deeds, and successive imperial courts conferred honorific titles upon him. In modern times, the cult of Huang Daxian spread to Hong Kong with Guangdong immigrants; in 1915, the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple was established, becoming the most venerated temple in Hong Kong, famed for its efficacious responses to prayers—the phrase ‘grants all sincere petitions’ entering popular consciousness. Every year on his birthday—the 23rd day of the 8th lunar month—and at the start of the lunar new year, hundreds of thousands of devotees flock to the temple to vie for the privilege of lighting the first incense stick of the year.