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want to avoid the mandatory officer of the Emperor, to betake their horrid presence to the South within three days. If they do not do so in three days, I shall wait five days. If they do not do so in five days I shall wait a week. If they do not do so in a week it will mean that they definitely refuse to go, and therefore that they do not recognise the prefect nor obey his words. In other words, they are so stupid and bestial that although their prefect speaks to them they neither listen nor understand. Now those who disregard the words of the mandatory officer of the Son of Heaven and who refuse to go away, and those who are too stupid to listen and harm the people deserve to be put to death. Therefore I, the prefect, shall select good archers among the soldiers and people who will use their bows and poisoned arrows to shoot the crocodiles until they are all dead. And let them not complain then, for it will be too late.”
A year after, Han Yü was pardoned and allowed to return to North China. His passage in these parts was remembered by the first educated Chinese immigrants and Mount T'un Mun was provided with an inscription (§4§—)13 signed with his name which still stands on a rock at the summit in commemoration of his visit.
During the period between the T'ang and Sung dynasties our region was governed from Canton by local kings who styled themselves emperors of the Southern Han dynasty. During this period one or two facts about this region are recorded. One is that in 969 Mount T'un Mun was named as a sacred mountain. The ceremony may have been conducted by the Emperor himself performing the sacrifice. From then onwards Mount T'un Mun was called Shing Shan or "sacred hill." Its modern name of Ts'ing Shan or Green Hill dates from much later. Its Buddhist name is Pu Tu Shan.
From another source we learn for the first time that pearl fishing was carried on in this region during the Southern Han dynasty. The text is a petition from a local Chinese of the Yüan dynasty to the Government saying that pearl fishing and the enslavement of the fishers was reviving in the Taipo Sea where it had not been practised since the Southern Han dynasty, and that a repetition of
13 It was written by the ancestor of the Tang clan. See the next section.