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telling. Folk stories have it that the eldest son of one of the Ch'ing emperors visited Taiwan in disguise. Some say that the prince was the son of the emperor Ch'ien Lung others, the emperor Chia Ch'ing. Still others suspect that it might have been long before during a previous dynasty but what matters here is that legend claims that the prince came under attack from robbers and was saved by a local hero. Some claim the hero to be Wang Te-lu whilst others are quite positive that it was Li Yung, one of Chu I-kuei's lieutenants during the revolt of 1721 who was captured by the Ch'ing forces and executed in Amoy. Images of Li Yung, known as Sui-chia Wang [The Prince Who Followed the Imperial Carriage], can be seen in at least two temples in Nantou county in central Taiwan where the legend is recounted with great zest. In another version Chia Ch'ing, whilst still crown prince, was said to have visited Taiwan in disguise, with the general in charge of his guards said to be Li Yung. When the crown prince was informed that he was about to be ambushed by the Hsiao family using Taiwanese hill tribesmen to do the dirty deed, he immediately instructed Li Yung to attack the Hsiaos. Li forced the Hsiaos to retreat but was himself killed in the struggle. He was later deified and his festival is celebrated annually in Nantou on the 12th of the fourth lunar month. Intriguingly there would appear to be no substance to the story that any crown prince ever visited Taiwan.
A fascinating story is told in Nan Kun-shen, the cult centre for five pestilence Wang-yeh, gods of pestilence, just north of Tainan in southern Taiwan. It is believed that the Wang-yeh are all deified officials and feared by demons; however, there have been occasions when demons have disguised themselves as Wang-yeh to take advantage of people and the only way to identify whether the image of a Wang-yeh on an altar is occupied by a genuine deity was for a senior mandarin to kick the image. If the occupant is a demon in disguise then the image will fall over. Wang Te-lu is said to have been taken to Nan Kun-shen where he kicked the image of the most senior Wang-yeh with his official boot without the image budging, proving that the deity was genuine.
This short biography of Earl Wang Te-lu reveals how little we know about him. What is interesting, however, is that unlike virtually every other biography of Chinese mandarins there is no reference to him winning high praise for his academic achievements, and his entry into officialdom, if folk memory is to be believed, was to all intents and purposes a commission awarded in the field, and his career, as far as we can perceive it, spent entirely in military capacity.