ALTER IMAGES FROM HUNAN AND KIANGSI
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identified as those of the long-face northern Chinese, with narrow almost closed eyes, a furrowed brow and a black pointed beard resting on his upper chest.
The rest of the images, all with empty back cavities, consisted of one man similar to the first above, six women seated, dressed in robes, with their right hand carefully holding the edge of their robes and their left hand concealed, similar to the second of the six images described above, and one other Kuan Yin with an empty cavity in her back."
One slip only of the seven suggests that the Yin family placed an image on a family altar of a standardised, impersonal image of a female named Jen (perhaps the deceased wife of Mr. Yin). Perhaps it was the practice to place such standardised images of deceased relatives on family altars in Hunan? Cantonese god carvers in Kowloon were all quite positive that such a custom is not observed in Hong Kong, nor in their memory was it performed in Kwang-tung province. Several said that they understood that the Fukienese, and in particular the people from around Amoy, customarily placed stylised ancestral figures of old men and women on personal altars but never on temple altars. They also said that there is the well-known custom of the Boat People of South China, of placing standardised images of all deceased members of the family on the family altar irrespective of the age at death. (See my article on "Soul images and Gods of the Boat People" in Arts of Asia, volume 7, Number 6, Nov/Dec 1977).
Regrettably, Hunan was ill-served by foreign travellers and writers, particularly about its temples and gods, and so no collateral information would seem to be available. A photograph taken in the sixties in the entrance hall to Mao's birthplace near Chang-sha in Hunan province, shows the family altar, with Chao Kung-ming the wealth God and Kuan Yin both easily identifiable, the remainder being indistinguishable. None, however, look like the images described above.
An example of the Fukienese custom is the lady, Madam Hsieh (###), from a family household shrine in Singapore. The image, carved in 1931, some six inches high (see Plate 10) is again a standard, impersonal likeness of an elderly dowager. She is recognisable as an ancestral image by the white duck(?) under each of her bound feet. Otherwise, she is dressed in elaborate robes,