66
: JEN YU-WEN :
In the summer of 1958 a number of Chinese and Western historians, writers, poets, reporters and government officers accompanying the author, who had taken the principal interest in and had organized the research project, made three trips to the place to see and study the historic object. As a result of painstaking research and study, we are now able to decipher and read every character engraved there and to understand the exact meaning of the whole text. The full text is rendered more clearly on the opposite page.
The inscription and engraving were done by the Administrator of the salt field, Kuan-fu-ch'iang (Kwoon-fu-ch'eung) a place which is identified as present-day Kowloon Peninsula. The text describes the Administrator's full name and position, his visit to the site, the construction of the Stone Pagoda on South Fu-t'ang (the islet south of North Fu-t'ang now officially named Tung-lung Island), the repairing and renewing of these two places successively by several persons, the erection of another stone tablet (now disappeared), and finally, the elaborate repairs carried out by a local celebrity, Lin Tao-yi (Lum To-yi), who caused the text to be engraved on the rock on the aforementioned date.
Lin Tao-yi was also responsible for the construction of the Temple of T'ien-hou at North Fu-t'ang. The author, after visiting the place, had the privilege of being invited by some of his descendants in Kowloon to read their Genealogical Record mentioned above. It was found that Tao-yi's great-grandfather originally hailed from P'u-t'ien (P'o-t'in), South Fukien, and was the first ancestor of their clan to migrate to Kwangtung settling down in Kowloon sometime during the Southern Sung period. His own son had had two sons, Sung-chien (Ch'ung-kin) and Po-chien (P'ak-kin). The two brothers engaged in the transportation business with large sailing vessels between sea ports along the coast and Kowloon. Once while returning south they met with a typhoon near the Fu-t'ang gap. The ship was wrecked and sunk, but they held on to the matshed-cover of the ship which kept them floating. On the cover was a tablet of the Goddess Lin Ta-ku whom they had been worshipping aboard the ship. They tied their loosened hair to it and swam to South Fu-t'ang. Landing in safety they firmly believed that the Goddess had saved their lives and immediately made the matshed-cover