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possibly the one said to have been carried over by Koxinga, had miraculously brought it under control
Images of Pao-sheng Ta-ti have been noted on altars in only two temples in Hong Kong, one in a Ch'ao-chou refugee community and the other in a Hakka community temple. Although his image has not been seen in any Cantonese temples there, it has been noted in temples where Cantonese are predominant in Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
In Pao-sheng Ta-ti temples, in SE Asia in particular, devotees take articles of clothing usually worn by a sick person who is unable to come to the temple in person, and wave them through the incense smoke before his altar. This can be done by the devotee himself, but normally the act is performed by a priest or member of the temple staff with a formalised ritual. The article is then taken back to the sick person who, wearing it, believes that Pao-sheng now knows about his illness and will do something about it.
Hakka vendors of herbal medicines venerate the Great Emperor as their patron, and in Malaysia a Hakka devotee claimed that this deity is worshipped mainly by Hakkas, with Wu T'ao himself having been a Hakka. Vaughan in Singapore in 1878 also claimed that Hakkas in eastern Kuangtung worshipped him, but as the King of Medicine, Yao Wang, and described the image of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in the temple in Telok Ayer Street as a ‘jolly looking elderly gentleman who watches over the sick and afflicted.' Vaughan explained that the title, that of Ta Tao Kung, was particularly used by Singaporean Hakkas.
In SE Asia, Pao-sheng Ta-ti shares the main altar with one or two other deities from much the same part of Fukien. These are Ma Tsu and Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih, with Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih the senior and Pao-sheng Ta-ti the junior deity. There have also been a number of innuendoes hinted at by temple keepers that there is constant friction between Ma Tsu and Pao-sheng Ta-ti following the failure to successfully arrange a marriage between the two.
Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih
The second of the three cults, that of The Patriarch of Clearwater, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih, is a popular local Fukienese healing deity