The Legend of the Lotus Pond and The Legend of the Oxtail Soup

By: Cate Lui

The legend of the Lotus Pond

Once, there was a couple in love who they planned to run away and get married. They set to meet besides a lotus pond at 12 o'clock midnight.

The girl came at exactly 12, yet the boy wasn’t there. She waited and waited for hours, but he never showed up. She was very disappointed - it was nearly sunrise and she had been waiting in the cold since midnight. Soon, she gave up waiting and decided to go back home.

While heading home, she suddenly spotted her boyfriend with another girl. She was so devastated that she ran back to the Lotus pond and jumped down, ending her life.

A long time after, another couple arranged to meet at the lotus pond at midnight. The girl was a bit late, so the boy had to wait a few minutes by himself. He waited at the edge of the lotus pond, pacing back and forth. Suddenly, a female voice asked “What time is it?”. The boy looked at his watch and replied “12:00.”

All of a sudden, two pale arms emerged from the dark water and dragged the boy down into the pond. He tried to pull the hands from his neck, but the grip was so hard, he failed. After a few torturous minutes, he was drowned to death.

The next morning, an old lady was strolling through the lotus pond when she stopped to look at the beautiful lotuses. She saw something odd underneath the flowers, so she took a stick and moved the leaves aside. She let out a horrified scream.

This started a new legend. It is said: if you are at a Lotus pond at midnight and somebody asks you the time, you should never reply -- or even look at who asks you -- or your life could be at risk.

Legends of the seven sisters (Tsat Tsz Mui)

Tsat Tsz Mui in Cantonese means "seven sisters''.

In 1934, an old village was buried under reclamation for urban development. This legend is the haunting past of Hong Kong’s Tsat Tsz Mui Road.

In a village of Hakka people, there was once a group of seven girls that had been best friends since they were very young. The seven playmates pledged to be sisters for life, pass on the same day, and never get married.

When they were all of age, their third sister's parents arranged for her to marry a man. She did not want to, but wouldn’t dare say a word against her parents. The day before the wedding, all seven sisters walked to the seashore. They tied their hair together and jumped down into the water, tragically fulfilling their pledge . As they had believed: even if they died, the currents couldn’t drift them apart.

The next day, at the bay appeared seven rocks. In awe, the villagers believed that they must be the seven sisters. Or it might have been that somebody put rocks there to scare the villagers. They were then named Tsat Tsz Mui Shek (七姊妹石): ‘Seven Sister Rocks’, and the village Tsat Tsz Mui Tsuen (七姊妹村):‘Seven Sister Village’.

The Legend of the Oxtail Soup

There once were a couple who attended the same university. They shared a dorm house, where the girl lived in the room directly above the boy.

The couple rarely got to see each other because they had to study hard in their rooms until very late at night. They were only allowed to see each other during visiting hours, and since there were no mobile phones at the time, it was very hard for them to contact each other.

To help him have a warmer and more focused study, every night the girl would make a cup of oxtail soup for her boyfriend. She would hang it out the window and lower it down to him, directly below her. Every time he drank this cup of her home cooked soup, he got a warm feeling inside.

One night, as the boy received his usual oxtail soup, he ate it all quickly, falling asleep with his books opened in front of him. The next day he went to visit his girlfriend, but strangely couldn’t find her anywhere.

He asked the other students, and they told him his girlfriend had died of a sudden flu a few days ago. He was devastated, but then an eerie thought occurred to him. If she had died a few days ago... who had been giving him the Oxtail soup?

Bonus Story

There is a lake in Hong Kong called the Bride’s pool with a frightening story behind it.

Legend has it that a bride was being carried through stormy weather in a sedan by four porters, on her way to meet her waiting groom. As they passed the pool, one of the porters slipped, and the bride tragically fell into the pool and drowned.

This pool is said to be Hong Kong’s most haunted place, and to this day, many people who pass through die in mysterious “accidents”every year.

But... who knows? Is it really just an accident, or is it the soul of the baneful bride, stuck in the pool, murdering people who enter it? If you ever go to Bride’s pool, remember to be careful, or you could be the next victim of the ghost bride...