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| For many years, the historical heritage site of Kek
Lok Si (Cantonese) Buddhist Temple or "Ji le Si "(Mandarin) which means
Temple of Nirvana is one of the main icon of Penang tourism - a sunny island which
was once the administrative center for the British East India Company during he colonial
days. Penang has Chinese Hokian as dominant population and practice Mahayana Buddhist
tradition. Kek Lok Si can be regarded as one of the largest and best known temple
in Malaysia. History suggest that the temple was first built in 1893. The beautifully
designed center stage of the entire area is the Pagoda (shown above) which sometimes
referred as Pagoda of Rama VI was built in 1930 (King RAMA VI actually laid the foundation
stone for the site). Kek Lok Si began extension a few years go with an addition of
a huge and tall (measures 30.2 metres) Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy) statue which was
completed in 2002, but on going construction works process are still on as at 09.2006),
the all bronze Goddess of Mercy statue is flanked by a few tall structure of Luohan
(Guards) statues. Another Guanyin head and shoulder section was built atop an annexed
temple roof. With the temple extension and other add-ons, the formerly well known
site of the Pagoda is less noticed but personally, I felt the old Pagoda has a kind
of flavor which is incomparable to other newer addons. Since a locally maintained Penang website already had this holy Buddhist landmark well covered, you
may try there for other interesting facts that relate, and save me sometime as I
need not have to duplicate similar resources on the web. MESSAGE BOARD / GUESTBOOK
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