A dozen or so glass-enclosed shops, each no larger than a pair of telephone booths, are located on Man Wa Lane, between Des Voeux Road and Wing Lok Street. All are engaged in cutting dies for business cards, seals and stamps, and the passer-by is welcome to watch their craftsmen at work. Ladder Street, a flight of steps leading off Queen’s Road Central, takes the inquisitive shopper to Upper Lascar Row, popularly called Cat Street. Cat Street’s dingy shops sell everything from jade carvings to used bottles, from rare china to chipped and broken junk, valuable antiques to outright fakes. The customer has nothing but his own wits to protect him. Americans would be unduly optimistic to expect a Comprehensive Certificate of Origin from merchants who don’t know and seldom care whether their goods are “hot” or legitimate. But Europeans who know Chinese antiques thoroughly have come to Cat Street, bargained shrewdly, and resold their purchases at home with sufficient profit to pay for their Hong Kong vacations. Man Mo Temple, at 128-130 Hollywood Road, stands a short way back from the street. Buddha enjoys the most prominent altar in its gloomy interior, but the temple mixes Buddhist and Taoist elements, with Kwan Tai and Man Cheong as two of its honored deities. Legions of minor divinities line the walls, including several seated in tall, glass-enclosed boxes. In former days, such boxes were equipped with long handles so that the faithful could carry them through the streets in times of disaster to soothe the angry spirits. Visitors are free to enter the temple if they behave as they would in any other house of worship. Straight and spiral incense sticks burn before the numerous shrines, and the many statues looming in dark corners suggest a spiritual serenity. A more urgent reminder of other worlds may be had at the Tak Sau coffin shop, 252 Hollywood Road. Massive pine coffins, ordered in advance of the prospective occupant’s death and tailored to his physical dimensions, are stacked about in plain sight. An ordinary model, costing from $50 to $150, can be turned out by a pair of carpenters in about 20 hours. The larger boxes once required 16 men to carry them, but modern trucks have now assumed the burden. A millionaire’s coffin, lined with silk and elaborately carved, may cost $3,000 or more. To demonstrate their continuing concern for the departed, surviving relatives visit a nearby shop which sells notes written on the “Bank of Hell.” No one likes to deliver these notes personally, and so they are burned to assure the deceased that his credit rating will be maintained in the spirit world.