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one of the temple staff thought that Chih (b) bore the personal name Meng-piao (E).
A very few deities, on the face of it Pestilence deities, in practice turn out to be protective Wang Yeh. One such example highlights the probability that local devotees in southern China some considerable time ago, perceiving that their local protective deity bore the title Wang Yeh, assumed that he must be a Pestilence Wang Yeh and treated him as such. This was in a temple in Tungkang, south of Kaohsiung, said in a guide book to have an impressive display of 80 to 90 images of Wang Yeh. It turned out to have but one major Wang Yeh, a protective hero, Wen Hung. Wen Hung, also known as Wen Wang Yeh, a title said to have been awarded him by a T'ang dynasty emperor for his services, lived during the seventh century AD. A dozen or so portable images of him also stood on the altar table before the main altar. A handbook presented by the temple committee not only provided Wen Hung's biography but also contained charts shewing the routes his images had been carried around the parish for five successive years during the annual 'pestilence festivals'. This suggests that two cults have been combined, the cult of the T'ang hero Wen Hung, known as Prince Wen (Wen Wang Yeh) and, almost certainly due to a misunderstanding, the cult of the Pestilence Wang Yeh. Wen Hung's image is taken out during the Pestilence festival during the fifth month but unlike Pestilence Wang Yeh, he also has his own and more important festival celebrated on his birthday during the eleventh lunar month. His original legend, over the years, has had added to it elements of the Pestilence Wang Yeh legend, and to add to the confusion he now has his own Pestilence Wang Yeh boat. Such cases of apparent Pestilence Wang Yeh having a specific and individual personality are not at all common though they have been noted in several other cults in Taiwan.
Although there are four temples in Yunlin and one in Taipei county dedicated to ten specific Pestilence Wang Yeh, known always as the Five-Year Excellencies (†) or (EFE), the maximum number of images of Wang Yeh with different surnames seen by the author on any one altar is seven, the Ch'i Fu Ch'ien Sui (LT) in Tainan. In each of the temples dedicated to the Five-Year Excellencies images had been borrowed by devotees for private worship at home. The collective group of the Five-Year Excellencies each has an individual birthday though it was decided in 1662 that they would be feted on one day in a collective feast on the 29th of the tenth lunar month, with one