184
from China, whose image has not been noted during my travels around Chinese temples in South-east Asia nor in Taiwan, and almost certainly Hokkien as the main deity, the Third Prince Nazha, and the other deities in the original village temple included Fa-zhu Gong, Sun the Monkey deity and several unnamed pestilence Wangye.
An elderly carver in Singapore told me during the early 1960s that he knew nothing about the deity apart from having drawn a sketch for his personal records a year or so earlier. The deity is portrayed as a dishevelled fierce male, sitting, dressed in armour covered by a long red robe. He has bare feet, round staring eyes, and unkempt hair and beard. His skin is chocolate brown apart from the shaven or bald front half of his head and his cheeks which are decorated with white and coloured stripes of red and green. Such markings are very uncommon. Similar ones, typical of the painted faces of opera characters, have been noted on Fukienese pestilence Wangye and on minor warriors, escorts to major deities.
So, apart from his title and his possible ethnic group, Hokkien, we do not know his legend and background, nor do we know why or for what he was revered.
However, now that his image has reappeared on an altar, in Tampenis New Town, who knows what might happen. It is not impossible for a miracle, revealed perhaps in a dream or trance, to be attributed to Qixing Dadi and for the cult to take on a new direction and life.
184
from China, whose image has not been noted during my travels around Chinese temples in South-east Asia nor in Taiwan, and almost certainly Hokkien as the main deity, the Third Prince Nazha, and the other deities in the original village temple included Fa-zhu Gong, Sun the Monkey deity and several unnamed pestilence Wangye.
An elderly carver in Singapore told me during the early 1960s that he knew nothing about the deity apart from having drawn a sketch for his personal records a year or so earlier. The deity is portrayed as a dishevelled fierce male, sitting, dressed in armour covered by a long red robe. He has bare feet, round staring eyes, and unkempt hair and beard. His skin is chocolate brown apart from the shaven or bald front half of his head and his cheeks which are decorated with white and coloured stripes of red and green. Such markings are very uncommon. Similar ones, typical of the painted faces of opera characters, have been noted on Fukienese pestilence Wangye and on minor warriors, escorts to major deities.
So, apart from his title and his possible ethnic group, Hokkien, we do not know his legend and background, nor do we know why or for what he was revered.
However, now that his image has reappeared on an altar, in Tampenis New Town, who knows what might happen. It is not impossible for a miracle, revealed perhaps in a dream or trance, to be attributed to Qixing Dadi and for the cult to take on a new direction
and life.
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