CHINESE BUILDERS
HONG KONG'S building activity. probably the most frantic in the world, continues day and night and virtually nothing calls a halt to it. Typhoons are occasional excep- tions. The birth of Lu Pan - patron saint of Chinese builders. is always an exception.
No one connected with the indus- try, from the biggest taipan to the humblest coolie, will lift a finger on this day, the thirteenth day of the sixth moon.
Although Lu Pan was a carpenter, his followers include most types of craftsmen associated with building. including painters, paper hangers and bricklayers.
This year his birthday fell on July 21 by the Western calender and as usual colourful celebrations and din- ners were held in honour of the semi- legendary saint.
Throughout the Colony not a pile- driver was to be heard. No bricks were laid, wood sawn or nails driven. The silence was deafening.
Dinner Party
On the evening of the big day about 1300 people attended a large dinner party given by the Hong Kong Building Contractors Association.
The following day hundreds attended ceremonies at the Association's own temple to Lu Pan in Green Lotus Terrace, Kennedy Town one of the most colourful and well kept Chinese places of worship in Hong Kong
Since most Chinese (Taoist) gods are based on real people, it is surpris- ing to find practically nothing written about him in formal history.
Legend has it that he lived in the flourishing Kingdom of Lu (which may explain the surname) in the Spring and Autumn period of the Chou dynasty
about 700 to 500 B.C..
廟師先班魯
This picturesque and well kept temple is dedicated to Lu Pan. It is situated in Green Lotus Terrace, a quiet, tree-lined locality on Hong Kong island. The statue of Lu Pan on the opposite page is housed inside.
But if there was such an out- standing carpenter during this time, Confucius must have been strangely unaware of his existance, for he made no mention of him in his Spring and Autumn Annals, China's first recorded history and a history of Lu.
Mr. Edward Hsu, editor of the Hong Kong Travel Bulletin, wrote
the recently that
absence of any record of Lu Pan may have been due to his being an invented superhuman character emodying all the skills of carpentry a supposition he said seemed reasonable when it was realis- ed that the legend of Lu Pan actually arose in the Tang dynasty (618-906 A.D.).
THE HONG KONG & FAR EAST BUILDER-VOLUME 19, NUMBER 3
It may have been, we think, that Lu Pan did exist but that the time of his existance was, for reasons of pre- stige, placed in the golden period of Confucius. Time itself is all that is needed to embellish the image of any ancient figure, and of this embellish- ment or fact, for who knows there is plenty surrounding Lu Pan,
Colonel Valentine Burkhardt in his admirable three volumes on Chinese Creeds and Customs says there are innumerable stories about Lu Pan and the way he came to the assis- tance of craftsmen in despair.
He tells of one monarch, a pre- decessor ог successor of Kublai Khan. who decreed a summer
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