Macao and Hong Kong 2024

From October 10 to 19, 2024, the Macao Daoist Cultural Festival took place in Macau, marking the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Macao Special Administrative Region, while in Hong Kong we honored the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Fung Ying Seen Koon temple. At the invitation of President Wu Bingli Daozhang, SDT Rector Jure Čeh and SDT Vice-rector Darija Mavrič Čeh attended the event. 

The congress was held at The Macau Fisherman's Wharf Convention and Exhibition Centre (The Macau Fisherman's Wharf / 澳門漁人碼頭). 

The guest speakers on October 13, 2024, were:

Leung Tak-wah, President of the Hong Kong Taoist Federation

Yuan Weiqi (Jure Čeh), President of the Slovenian Daoist Temple

Hyo-wen, President of the Taiwanese Shin-Nang Gong Temple

Professor Wang Zhong from City University of Macau

Professor Wang Liying, Guangzhou University.

SDT Rector Jure Čeh, in an address titled Friendship – the Mutual Benefits of Cooperation Through Time, co-created by Vice-rector Darija Mavrič Čeh, emphasized, among other things, that Chinese-Slovenian religious ties go back at least 300 years. In 1738, the Slovenian Jesuit Ferinand Augustin Haller von Hallerstein (1703–1774) arrived in Macao, or China, as a missionary of the Catholic Church, where he worked and lived until his death. Hallerstein, known as Liu Songling, left an indelible mark on astronomy, mathematics, and cartography, and led the Imperial Astronomical Bureau for as many as 28 years.

Today, Slovenian religious representatives are once again visiting Macao, said the SDT Rector, but this time with the aim of presenting our experience with Daoism in Slovenia and Europe. Cultivating Daoism outside China is not simple, he emphasized, because people know very little about it. In Slovenia, most people know it through taijiquan, qigong, meditation, and also through reading translated Daoist works. Most also understand it as a philosophy, a worldview: “When we try to explain to them that it is much more than that, they lose interest. For Slovenia and other European countries, this is a completely unknown religious system,” he explained, adding a comparison of SDT with a gardener who sows the seeds of Daoism in Slovenian soil and seeks ways to connect human beings with nature and society. 

Daoist thought offers solutions to contemporary problems such as ecological balance, social justice, and empathy, the SDT Rector emphasized, noting as an interesting detail the distance between Macao and Slovenia, which amounts to a symbolic and fortunate 8,888 kilometers.