Business and Money Tips

Hear My Prayers, Guan Yin Pusa If you walked past the Guan Yin Thong Hood Cho Temple at Waterloo Street during the late 1990s or early 2000s, you would have been swallowed by a sea of thick incense smoke, the rhythmic clattering of divination lots, and hundreds of devotees bowing in prayer. But if you looked closely at the altar, you would have seen a scene that is permanently seared into my memory. An elderly man in his late 70s, his body worn down by decades of grueling labor at the Chinatown stalls, was kneeling humbly on a red cushion. His hands were pressed tightly together, his eyes closed, and he was bowing his head vigorously before the statue of Guan Yin Pusa—the Goddess of Mercy.   That man was my father. Back then, nobody in the family asked him what he was praying so fervently for. We never asked if he was drawing divination lots, or what silent burdens he was laying down at the feet of the Pusa as he offered his flowers and fruits. We just watched him from a dista...