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to and honouring the memory of Wang Te-lu, an Imperial fleet commander who helped clear the Straits of Formosa of pirates during the early years of the nineteenth century. The Wang Clan Temple in T'ai-pao village in Chia I county in central Taiwan was an elegant building first built during the late 19th century by the proud clan whose surname Wang Te-lu bore. It was rebuilt in 1979, this time a modern metal frame construction retaining the comparatively small single hall in which there is but one altar on which stands one large multi-ancestor tablet and three ancestral tablets. The flanking walls bear texts, with Wang Te-lu referred to in a number of the captions as Wang Ta-jen, i.e. His Excellency Wang, and paintings of Wang Te-lu stage left and of his primary wife stage right.
Although we know little about Wang's early life apart from what has been retrieved from local folk memory which, as with all family recollections, is highly subjective and probably exaggerated out of all reality, we do have official records of the highlight of his life. This "five minutes of glory", depicted in a painting hanging in his Memorial Chapel illustrating the incident, was his victory over pirates who had been causing immense and terrible problems up and down the coasts of the southern provinces of Chekiang, Fukien and Kuangtung since the late 1790s. One pirate fleet in particular had sailed the Fukien coast under its dreaded Fukienese leader, Ts'ai Ch'ien. The Chinese Imperial naval commander, Li Ch'ang-keng, commanding the joint fleets of Fukien and Chekiang province, determined to suppress them, successfully defeated the pirates on a number of occasions but was killed in action in 1808, following which his two subordinate admirals, of whom Wang was one, were entrusted with continuing the task. Wang, in charge of the Imperial Fukien fleet, together with the Chekiang fleet under Admiral Ch'iu, fought the major battle in September 1808 near the Tai-chou islands off the Chekiang coast. The pirate fleet was destroyed with Ts'ai Ch'ien going down with his ship.
Wang was born and named Te-lu, literally meaning "To become prosperous and happy", in 1771, the thirty-fifth year of the emperor Ch'ing Ch'ien Lung, in Kiangsi's provincial city of Nanch'ang, and in later years acquired the courtesy name of Pai-ch'u, literally "All Honours are concentrated within Him"; and the literary name, Yü-feng, literally meaning "The Jade Peak". He died at the age of 71 in 1842 on the Pescadores, an archipelago in the middle of the Straits of Formosa, and having been borne in honour back to Taiwan, was buried in Hsin-
193
to and honouring the memory of Wang Te-lu, an Imperial fleet commander who helped clear the Straits of Formosa of pirates during the early years of the nineteenth century. The Wang Clan Temple in T'ai-pao village in Chia I county in central Taiwan was an elegant building first built during the late 19th century by the proud clan whose surname Wang Te-lu bore. It was rebuilt in 1979, this time a modern metal frame construction retaining the comparatively small single hall in which there is but one altar on which stands one large multi-ancestor tablet and three ancestral tablets. The flanking walls bear texts, with Wang Te-lu referred to in a number of the captions as Wang Ta-jen, 1.e. His Excellency Wang, and paintings of Wang Te-lu stage left and of his primary wife stage right.
Although we know little about Wang's early life apart from what has been retrieved from local folk memory which, as with all family recollections, is highly subjective and probably exaggerated out of all reality, we do have official records of the highlight of his life. This **five minutes of glory”, depicted in a painting hanging in his Memorial Chapel illustrating the incident, was his victory over pirates who had been causing immense and terrible problems up and down the coasts of the southern provinces of Chekiang, Fukien and Kuangtung since the late 1790s. One pirate fleet in particular had sailed the Fukien coast under its dreaded Fukienese leader, Ts'ai Ch'ien. The Chinese Imperial naval commander, Li Ch'ang-keng, commanding the joint fleets of Fukien and Chekiang province, determined to suppress them, successfully defeated the pirates on a number of occasions but was killed in action in 1808, following which his two subordinate admirals, of whom Wang was one, were entrusted with continuing the task. Wang, in charge of the Imperial Fukien fleet, together with the Chekiang fleet under Admiral Ch'iu, fought the major battle in September 1808 near the Tai-chou islands off the Chekiang coast. The pirate fleet was destroyed with Ts'ai Ch'ien going down with his ship.
Wang was born and named Te-lu, literally meaning "To become prosperous and happy”, in 1771, the thirty fifth year of the emperor Ch'ing Ch'ien Lung, in Kiangsi's provincial city of Nanch`ang, and in later years acquired the courtesy name of Pai-ch'u, literally "All Honours are concentrated within Him"; and the literary name, Yü-feng, literally meaning "The Jade Peak”. He died at the age of 71 in 1842 on the Pescadores, an archipelago in the middle of the Straits of Formosa, and having been borne in honour back to Taiwan, was buried in Hsin-
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