Huge, brash and colourfully decorated, the Wong Tai Sin temple was built in 1973 in honour of the eponymous god, a shepherd taken by an immortal as a young boy and taught how to devise an elixir of immortality. Today he is one of Hong Kong's most popular gods and the temple is one of the city's most revered Taoist shrines. 

The image of the god on the temple's high altar was brought from mainland China in 1915 and installed in a temple in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. It was moved to an earlier temple on the present site six years later. 

Before you reach the temple entrance you pass a street arcade crammed with fortune-tellers, palm readers, soothsayers and even physiognomists, who feel the bumps on your head. Lion Rock, a fine Hong Kong landmark, can be glimpsed from an open area just off the arcade. 

The temple itself is built to embrace the five geomantic elements of fire, earth, gold, wood and water. Fire and earth are represented in the Yue Heung Shrine, water in the temple fountain, wood in the Library Hall and gold in the Bronze Luen Pavilion. 

Devotees of Confucius are able to pay their respects in the Confucius Hall, while in the Three Saints Hall Buddhists are able to worship Kuan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, and Kwan Ti and the eight immortals. 

The rear of the temple compound contains two attractive Chinese gardens: the Good Wish Garden, a miniature copy of Beijing's Summer Palace and the Nine Dragon Wall garden, inspired by a renowned mural in Beijing's Beihai Park. 

Sunday here is very busy, although the area is thick with stalls and people selling lucky cards, windmills, paper (or 'hell') money, incense and joss sticks most of the time. People bring offerings of food or buy oranges from local stalls; the popularity of oranges as a votive explains why Hong Kong is the world's largest consumer of the fruit. 

The temple is especially busy over Chinese lunar New Year in January, when good luck is at a premium, the seventh lunar month (the so-called 'ghost' month) and on Wong Ta Sin's birthday (the 23rd day of the eighth lunar month - usually in September).