Buddhist devotees seek blessings from the deities for a good year ahead.
Buddhist devotees head up to the temple at the top of the hill.
KUCHING: The popularity of Chin San Yan Temple in Muara Tebas saw it receiving more than 30,000 devotees and visitors from the first day of Chinese New Year till yesterday.
Among the visitors during were this period tourists from China, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
However, it received the biggest number of devotees on the fourth day of the Chinese New Year.
One of the reasons, according to temple management committee chairman Kapitan Chang Chee Hong, was that many locals who worked overseas wanted to seek blessings before returning to work.
“It is a common scene year in and year out. We received the highest number devotees on the fourth day the Chinese New Year, and this year we cooked and prepared more than 900 kilogrammes of vegetarian noodles for our devotees on that day.”
He added that devotees usually started coming in big numbers during weekends on the first month of the Chinese calender, while from the second month onwards there would be more visitors and tourists, especially from Indonesia, than devotees.
He thanked the Muara Tebas Village Security and Development Committee (JKKK) for their cooperation and professional handling of traffic flow this year.
They also abided by the fee of RM4 for each vehicle, and the money collected would go Muara Tebas JKKK for the village’s development purposes.
The over 200-year-old Chin San Yan temple is situated on a 2.5 acre site on a hill, 120 feet above sea level. One has to climb 142 steps to reach the top.
The Sarawak Book of Amazing Facts and Records published by the Ministry of Tourism Sarawak in 2011 described the temple as the most decorative Buddhist temple in the state.
The temple and Muara Tebas village, which is a Malay community, best exemplifies the racial harmony and religious tolerance in Sarawak.
It has been declared a historical building under the Sarawak Cultural Heritage Ordinace 1993.