NOTES AND QUERIES
199
Popularly known as FAN Yi-lang (-), his full title is 'The Great Immortal Master FAN' (FAN Ta Hsien Shih) (#14 BF). His birthday is celebrated in the village from the 12th to the 17th of the fifth lunar month, with his birthday proper falling on the 16th day.
Legend claims that he was one of three brothers, believed to have lived near the county capital at Pao An (7) formerly Hsin An (†✯) (just north of the present Sino-Hong Kong border), where he and his brothers were bowl makers. FAN Yi-lang however, through his diligent cultivation of the Tao, achieved immortality.
About 200 years ago the people of Mui Lung near Pao An (then Hsin An) moved to what became known as Wun Yiu in Hong Kong, where they continued their trade of bowl making. Most villagers bear the surname MA, and at that time they brought FAN's image with them because, as a bowl maker and an Immortal, who but he could look better after their interests? Although bowl making is no longer carried on in the village, evidence of it remains in a pile of shards and moulds lying just outside the temple. (For a note on the Wun Yiu Kilns see JHKBRAS15(1975):291).
FAN continues to serve the villagers well and is consulted on a variety of topics, notably on auspicious dates for commencement of local building projects. The original image was destroyed some years ago, and the present one is a copy carved in Kowloon.
It has been said that FAN is the patron of bowl makers and by extension, of potters. This is not so. FAN is simply the local deity of a village which used to be involved in bowl making, and was a bowl maker himself. The general patrons of potters, in eastern China at least, were the twin Immortals of Fortune, Ho Ho Erh Hsien (和合二仙).
(An extract from a work at present in hand, The Gods on the Altars of Hong Kong and Macau by Keith G. Stevens).
Hong Kong 1979
KEITH STEVENS