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fame of Huang Daxian in Hong Kong. They have learned about this god from relatives living in Hong Kong, or from the Hong Kong media. However, in Guangdong province the Hong Kong Huang Daxian is frequently identified with another Taoist figure with the same surname but a quite different biography." The Hong Kong Huang Daxian, Huang Chuping, was, before his deification, a Taoist hermit living during the Jin dynasty (317-420 A.D.) on Jinhua Mountain in Zhejiang province, where he became an immortal. However, as the first author discovered during a research visit to China in 1985, many Guangdong Taoists believe that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian lived and became an immortal on Mt. Luofu,* in Guangdong province. They believe that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian is the same figure as a Mt. Luofu "Huang Daxian” known as Huang Yeren (Huang the “wild man”), who lived, according to the sources, roughly during the same period as Huang Chuping.
In August of 1987, we returned to China to visit the remains of a Huang Daxian temple in the ancestral village of the founder of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian temple.' We also visited Mt. Luofu to learn more about Huang Yeren. We discovered that some people were unaware of the difference between the two Huangs, and that their confusion of the two was due to lack of knowledge about the biography and origins of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian. However, attempts have also been made by people with some awareness of the differences between the two Huangs to merge these two figures: to unite two deified Taoist hermit-saints into one personality on the basis of similarities and supposed historical connections between the two. Evidently this process of the merging of several originally distinct deities into one figure has occurred a number of times in the history of religions, but it is rare that one has the opportunity to witness it firsthand."
The following is an account of the two Huangs, and of our discoveries in China of the confusion or merging of the two figures.
Hong Kong's Huang Daxian: Huang Chuping
The main Huang Daxian temple in Kowloon contains a plaque