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JOHN T. MYERS
Especially in Fukien, Taiwan, and the eastern extremity of Kwang-tung Province one finds an apparently long-standing tradition of Chinese spirit-mediumship. Among the Western language accounts of that phenomenon the most notable are Doolittle's2 description of its practice in Fukien Province during the waning years of the Ch'ing Dynasty; Elliott's3 discussion of such cults among the Chinese of Singapore; and recent monographs by Jordan and Ahern on mediums in rural sectors of contemporary Taiwan.
With the exception of an article by Potter on female mediums in a New Territories village, there is an absence of detailed systematic study of spirit-mediumship in the Hong Kong region; and, for that matter, in Kwangtung Province. The dearth of scholarly literature is complemented by an apparent lack of familiarity with mediumship among Hong Kong's Cantonese residents." In those few instances when one encounters a knowledgeable informant his knowledge is usually limited to the type of female mediums discussed by Potter. The female medium known in Cantonese as a man sing poHis ordinarily a middle-aged or elderly woman who at the request of clients will contact spirits of the deceased. The man sing po in the urban area invariably act on an individualistic basis and conduct seances in their own homes rather than at temples. This type of medium is seldom, if ever, the central focus of an organized cult.
The man sing po, however, is not the only type of medium operating in contemporary Hong Kong. A reasonably careful search of resettlement estates and other urban residential complexes having a significant Chiu-Chow, Hokkien, or Hoi-Luk-Fung9 population will reveal the existence of not a few temples which serve as the operational base for another type of medium, the kei tung *E*
Unlike the man sing po the kei tung whom we have encountered in Hong Kong are males who do not hold commerce with the spirits of deceased mortals. Instead, the kei tung claims a special relationship with one or more traditional deities who on occasion utilize his bodily faculties to communicate with mortals. The urban kei tung is also more apt to limit his possession ceremonies to the
*
Despite the reference to non-Cantonese speech groups, romanization follows R. T. Cowles' Pocket Dictionary of Cantonese, 2nd edition, Hong Kong, 1949, this being the common tongue of Hong Kong. Arthur Wolf touches on the difficulties of transcription for Hokkien in the preface to his edited collection Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford 1974).