Easter Sunday in Hong Kong

I have a friend or two who can manage Easter. They decorate the eggs, bake the goodies, organize the hunt and all. I even have one totally capable friend who goes to church on Palm Sunday and makes pancakes for Mardi Gras! Usually Easter finds me stapling construction paper swiped from school into a box-like shape to make a basket and going out to buy a candy bar or two to put in it. I've even had to use real grass for the lining. But this year Easter was done right at my house. It was because my mom came to visit with Cadbury eggs, baskets, cute Beanie Babies, fake grass, an egg-dying kit, plastic eggs, Hershey kisses and jellybeans! My sole contribution was buying the only white eggs in the store (imported from America) and boiling them.
After a sweet, two-kid egg hunt in the morning and coffee cake for breakfast, we continued to celebrate the occasion by going to the Giant Buddha, Po Lin Monastery and The Wisdom Path. Hong Kong is known for its very specific superlatives (e.g. the world's longest road-and-rail suspension bridge built in the last quarter of the twentieth century), so this Buddha is very precisely, the world's tallest outdoor, seated, bronze Buddha. It has two hundred and seventy-eight stairs to the base of it according my boy's count. Another fun thing about it is you can take a 25 minute long cable car (gondola) ride to get to it. Luckily for us it had re-opened in January after being closed for 8 months for repairs because a couple of the cars fell off last year.
You can only go to the base of the Buddha for free. In order to go inside to one of the higher tiers you have to pay. But the fee is not for going in; what you have to buy is a meal or snack ticket to the nearby vegetarian restaurant. We didn't buy a ticket, but I've read it's actually pretty good food.
While we were up there we started to hear chanting/singing from the monastery nearby. Though it wasn't nearly the call to prayer, it was still compelling. It was a beautiful monastery and lots of people were lighting incense of all sizes in the courtyards. I'd been to lots of temples in Korea and was bored silly with them, but with the prayers loud enough to feel in your bones and the heavy incense smoke, it was all quite other-worldly.
Nearby was the Wisdom Path which is described as "an outdoor replica of the centuries-old Heart Sutra, one of the world's best-known prayers that is revered by Confucians, Buddhists and Taoists alike. The sutra is displayed on wooden pillars placed in the form of an infinity sign to symbolize the immeasurable splendour of achieving emptiness." Despite that description, the pillars were dappled with moss and bark and looked like they belonged on those hills against that grey sky.