Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

Rising in front of you is a temple that looks as if it dates from the Tang dynasty, though it was completed in 2007. Beneath its gleam lie two unsettling stories.

1The street of the dead

Right next to it ran Sago Lane, named after its sago factories. From the late 19th century it became notorious for its "death houses". Many Chinese immigrants lived alone in tiny rooms and had nowhere to die. On the upper floors of these houses, the sick and elderly waited for the end. On the ground floor, their funerals were held. The lane filled up with undertakers, coffin makers and shops selling paper offerings.

The Cantonese called it "the street of the dead". Conditions in the death houses caused a scandal, and the lane disappeared during the urban redevelopment of the late 1960s and 1970s.

2A tooth under suspicion

The temple was built to house a tooth of the Buddha. According to the temple's account, a monk found it in 1980 in a collapsed stupa in Myanmar.

In 2007, several dentists consulted by the press said that, judging from photographs, it looked like the tooth of a cow or buffalo; the abbot replied that, for him, it had always been genuine.

The temple declined DNA testing. The relic is kept in a golden stupa on the fourth floor, and for the faithful its value is religious, not forensic.

3What to look for

• The Tang-style roofs, unusual among the city's temples.
• Sago Street, whose name recalls the old sago factories.
• The offerings of incense and flowers left at the entrance.