Dili · TL

Chinese Hakka Guan Di Temple (Cina Maromak / Chinese Temple of Dili)

In the old commercial heart of Dili stands the Chinese Hakka Guan Di Temple, one of the capital's few buildings to survive nearly a century of war, occupation and upheaval largely untouched. Known locally as the Chinese Temple of Dili (Tetum: Cina Maromak), it was raised in 1928 by Chinese immigrants from Macau, funded with help from the Portuguese colonial administration and the wider diaspora, and it has never stopped being a working house of worship ever since. For a traveller, the temple is a quiet, vivid counterpoint to Timor-Leste's churches and mosques: a place where a small Chinese community has kept its gods, its rituals and its memory alive against the odds, and where the incense smoke is shared not only by Hakka families but by Timorese and Indonesian neighbours come to make a wish.