[ { "id": 206074, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n149\n\nalso wear headdresses and tails to resemble dogs and they have a legend about their descent from a dog. This legend, as reproduced in the later Han history, is as follows. An emperor who wished to subjugate a certain chieftain offered his youngest daughter in marriage to anyone who would bring him his head. After this proclamation one of his pet dogs brought a man's head and laid it in front of the throne. It proved to be the head of the enemy. The princess then insisted that she should be married to the dog and the Emperor was forced to comply. The princess was taken by the dog to a stone fortress in a mountain in Hunan. There she changed her mode of living, discarded her Chinese clothes and wore a strange head-dress. She bore six children. They made bark clothes which they dyed with various grass juices. They cut them with a tail behind. They lived in the mountains. Their descendants multiplied and are known as the Man I\n\nMan and I are Chinese terms for barbarians. Man, as we have seen, is applied locally to the Hoklo, but it can represent a barbarian of South China in general. It generally represents Tibetan or western barbarians. When Chao T'o, one of the chiefs of the Canton estuary, made himself independent in the Han dynasty, he called himself \"King of the Man and I\". Since the Yao have the same dog myth as the Man I, there is a likelihood that this people were partly composed of Yao and partly of Indonesian stock.\n\nIt is only possible to take such broad distinctions as the Chinese historians allow. There were in ancient South China two types. One the \"dragon myth\" peoples, primarily in Fukien, using boats with eyes painted on the bows, and designated by many names Min Man Tan and so on with the radical for serpent or dragon. The other a mountain people with a \"dog myth\" stretched from the confines of Tibet to South China and included the Yao. The former may be of Indonesian and the latter of Tibetan stock.\n\nOne problem must still be mentioned. The presence of a very early Negrito population in South China is suspected. Negrito dwarfs are still found in Cochin China, the Malay States, the Philippine Islands, and Formosa and in the history of the Liang dynasty occurs the following text:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206395, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "186\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nOn the 2nd July of that year, I was walking out on Caine's Road in the afternoon with a friend, when we saw a steamer coming through Sulphur Channel. At first we thought it must be the mail, but it proved to be the Shannon, with Lord Elgin on board. As she steamed into the harbour, and she and the Admiral saluted each other, and the thunder of their guns reverberated along the sides of the mountain, which were then all fringed with mist, I said to my companion, \"There is the knell of the past of China. It can do nothing against these leviathans.\" And so it was. I need not try to tell you how Lord Elgin's measures were delayed in a manner that contributed much, through his prompt and magnanimous decision, to the preservation of our Indian empire. All this and his subsequent proceedings in China may be seen in brief in the memoir of his Life published during the present year. It is only when he is gone that the public at large have the means of knowing what a good and great man Lord Elgin was,—bold, prudent, far-seeing, conscientious. I hope all my hearers, if they have not already read, will soon take the opportunity to read, that memoir, and especially the chapters relating to his two missions to China.\n\nThe Government at home was equal to the exigencies of the occasion as well as Lord Elgin. Fresh troops were sent out. He went to Calcutta, but was back from it in September. The war at Canton was brought to an end by the capture of the city on the 29th of that month, and Yeh was taken prisoner a few days after. The surprise and disgust of the Chinese in general were great, because he did not seal his loyalty to the dragon throne by at once committing suicide.\n\nIn January, 1858, I made a visit to Canton, and had the satisfaction of walking all over it, and on a Sunday opened the first house, that was set apart in it to that purpose, for the preaching of the gospel. My sermon was followed by one from a relative of the T'ae-ping king, who came subsequently to be well known himself at Nanking as the Shield King. Poor man! He had been connected with the London Mission here for several years, and was the most genial and versatile Chinese I have ever known, and of whom I can never think but with esteem and regret. Had he taken my advice, he would have remained quietly in Hongkong as a preacher, and might have been living with his head on him to the present day.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206652, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 200, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "194\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nin Thailand and at Nakorn Sri Thammarat. The few observed examples of his statue have all been in temples run by Fukienese emigrants, and probably the most famous statue is to be seen in Malacca in a temple run by Fukienese emigrants from An Chi county. (Plate 28)\n\nThere does not appear to be a standard identification characteristic for images of Cheng Ho. The Malacca statue is of sandal wood, carved some 8\" high, in Amoy style, depicting a Mandarin seated on a throne with his right hand clutching his girdle, his left palm cradling a flat elongated plaque of office or sceptre, which rests in the crook of his left arm. He is beardless and has the raised eyebrows so often seen on Chinese opera generals; he is wearing a military hat with one pompom on top, and a tassel hanging from each side of it over his shoulders. He is accompanied by two standing attendants; the one on his left a military attendant is carrying his sheathed sword, and the one on the right a civil attendant is carrying his seal of office wrapped in a red cloth. Alongside, on the same altar, is Kuan Kung, the Chinese god of loyalty and patron of soldiers, who is also the patron of Chinese businessmen. In the temples listed above, Cheng Ho has several birthdays and feast days, the most common of which is the 30th day of the sixth lunar month.\n\nOne of the many images on sale in a Singapore godshop, was another Amoy style carving of Cheng Ho, some 10″ high in wood, now in the possession of an English news correspondent. This image of the Admiral depicts him as an elderly benign man without a beard, dressed in gilt dragon robes, and standing with a fly whisk in his right hand and a scroll in his left. (Plate 29)\n\nCheng Ho in Java and the Philippines\n\nThe Admiral is held in the highest esteem in Semarang in Java as the Chinese patron deity of the town. It is said that he left behind in Java some ten men under his sick navigator, Ong King-hong, who founded the town of Semarang. Before 1724 a statue of Cheng Ho together with four carved wooden attendants was brought from China, and these stand in a cave near the town. During the British occupation of Java in 1945 the commander of the British forces recommended the Chinese of Semarang to evacuate the town for their own safety. After consultation with Cheng Ho, they decided\n\n11 Willmott, D. E., The Chinese of Semarang, (Cornell U. P., 1960).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208340, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "48\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\ndecorated with a large dragon across her bosom, and the \"bird\" hat with its representation of a small bird, wings outstretched, lying on top. She holds a raised fly switch in her right hand and her girdle is grasped in her left hand (the latter pose is usually reserved for male images). She is seated on a dragon throne.\n\nPerhaps readers can offer their views on the use of impersonal images on family altars and further examples of the practice in other parts of China?*\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Lao Tzu—the philosopher generally believed to have founded Taoist philosophy.\n\n2 Erh Lang (#) often identified with Yang Chien (##) the nephew of the Jade Emperor, the supreme Taoist deity.\n\n3 The Five Thunder Magic () is used in Taoist folk religion as the ultimate threat; a magic of destruction brought about by Taoists against those who broke the rules or opposed the Taoists.\n\n4 Lei Kung (2) the God of Thunder.\n\n5 usually read Wei, is read Yu in this surname.\n\n6 The image of Kuan Ti, the God of Loyalty and one of the most popular of deities throughout China also contained a slip which noted that it had been dedicated in the autumn of 1789 in the same area in Wo Kang as the images in illustration 2 and 4. The slip tells us that Devotee Pan Mu-shih, together with his wife, two sons and two daughters-in-law offered sacrifices to the deities in the City God shrine in the local temple, reporting that he and his whole family had had the image of Kuan Ti carved by a scholar. This they respectfully presented to have its eyes opened before the Gods so that it would be able to rid their dwelling of evil spirits and bring them blessings. The latter part of the text on the slip says that, \"Your Honour Kuan Ti is the cleverest, most faithful and righteous in the world both past and present. You are a true spirit, a wonderful inspiration and have the ability to suppress demons. To show you our sincere respect we shall now dress you up, worship you every morning and evening with incense and further, offer you Spring and Autumn sacrifices each year....\n\n7 The provenance of three further images in the shipment, in better condition, is unclear though possibly they came from one of the areas in Hunan or Kiangsi from which the others originated. Of these three, two are versions of Yao Wang (1) the King of Doctors, who is easily recognisable by his tiger and dragon, one below and the other above him, and the small red pearl he holds aloft between his fingers. The third image is Yao Wang's aide, a middle-aged man standing carrying a herbalist's case slung over his shoulder and a furled umbrella in his hand.\n\n* Mr. Stevens has made a further discovery in the matter of ancestral images: see the Notes and Queries section at p. 206.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 2, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "201\n\nI would like to add two more passages to this note, both of which came my way after I wrote the above. The first passage was kindly given me by James Hayes, who was given it by Mr. Ho Kei Fook, of Kei Ling Ha village, born in 1928, and educated (1937-1941) in the neighbouring village of Tseng Tau, previously village representative, and Vice-Chairman of the North Saikung Rural Committee. The second passage I came across in Ch'en T'ieh-erh5, \"Huang Hsiao-yang yu Pai-e t'an\" (Huang Hsiao-yang and the White Goose Pond), in Kuang-tung wen-hsien chi-k'an vol. 15 no. 2 (1985) pp. 60-62.\n\nPassage 1\n\n\"It is said that in the Ming dynasty there was this man Ho Tsoh Shing who obtained a wonder book. The book recorded thirty-six grave sites at the mouth of the dragon. [The family] buried there would achieve great wealth for its descendants and even produce an emperor. Ho Tsoh Shing was already an official at court, holding the post of Minister of the LeftE. But his mother did not have the good fortune to support this achievement. When his wife was pregnant, his mother scolded her saying, 'My son is an official at court many mountains and seas away, so how is it that you are pregnant?' The daughter-in-law said, 'He comes back every night'. What happened was that every night Ho Tsoh Shing rode home on a bamboo-rigged flying horse, and early in the morning he rode the flying horse back to court. The daughter-in-law said, 'If you don't believe me, you can hide by the courtyard tonight and watch him as he comes in'. [This the mother did] and saw that that was what really happened. The horse stopped at the courtyard, and the mother, being curious, rode on it. The horse could not fly, because it was bogged down by the woman's breath. When Ho Tsoh Shing rose the next morning to go to court, the horse was still bogged down by woman's breath. So immediately, he went to cut some bamboo to rig another horse to fly to court. He was late. The emperor was in his court calling the rolls. When he came to Ho Tsoh Shing's name, Ho answered from the outer court [in such a loud voice] that it shook the emperor. The emperor then suspected that Ho Tsoh Shing was scheming to take the throne, and other officials also made many comments. They found out that Ho Tsoh Shing possessed the thirty-six grave sites at the dragon's mouth. When this was known, Ho Tsoh Shing was killed by the emperor, and the fungshui was\n\nto", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208841, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 3, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "202\n\nTo\n\nand\n\nsites were also rendered ineffective by the emperor's golden pen. My knowledge, the elders knew of four sites. One of them was on Tiu Chung Chau at Kau Sai in Saikung. The fungshui of this site was ‘a golden bell hanging on a silk thread'. Every year at the Double-ninth festival, nine buffaloes came to worship at the grave; there was also the sound of a bell being struck. A second site was at Yuen Chau Chai at Kei Leng Ha Village. The fungshui name was 'the general comes down from his horse to drink three cups of wine'. In the middle of the sea, there is Wu Chau (with the adjacent island of Sam Pui Tsau) that resembles a pig, three cups of wine and two cups of tea. Another site was at To Tau Tsui at Wu Kai Sha, which is opposite Nga Chau (usually nowadays called A Chau) in the Tai Po Hoi. The fungshui name was crows going into the ocean. Legend has it that in the old days a mud embankment connected Wu Kai Sha to Nga Chau which sank into the sea after the emperor put down the dragon. The embankment has not been seen again. One more site was on Ap Chau opposite Kat O. The fungshui name was 'precious duck going through the lotus'. The legend is that Ap Chau used to be able to swim between Sam Mun Kan and Mirs Bay. Later, it was blocked by a duck pole, that is, the place currently known as Hak Ngam Kok. After that, when paddy ripened in the Yim Tin Village area near Sha Tau Kok, there was no rice grain on the stalk, because it was all eaten by the duck. After the emperor put down the dragon with his golden pen, the head of the duck... and then there was grain again.\n\nI know about the fungshui of only these four grave sites.\n\nhe cut off\n\nPassage 2\n\nRecorded by Ho Kei Fook\n\n\"An extraordinary person saw that Huang Hsiao-yang [rebel in the Canton area in the early fifteenth century] had features fitting to make him emperor and gave him a bamboo shoot to plant at home. When the 'bamboo grew to the height of his brows', he was supposed to be able to make an arrow out of it which he could use to kill the emperor with and thereby take over the throne. Huang planted the bamboo shoot as he had been instructed and a bamboo stem grew", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209003, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n133\n\nmy first such expedition was I accompanied by anyone from the China Travel Service and that was simply because he knew the way, not because he had been ordered to check on my activities. I was never followed. Taxi drivers made out duplicate slips on each of my expeditions. They gave me a copy and kept the original (as they always do for every taxi ride). In my opinion Public Security cadres did not correlate—or even read—the slips from my many expeditions. One thing alone is of concern to cadres when it comes to tourists: foreign exchange. My taxi rides produced foreign exchange—though taxi fares are far less than in the United States or England. This is because there is only a minuscule charge for waiting; and the taxi often waited for me at a monastery for two or three hours.\n\nThe People's Government wishes the outside world to know that there is now freedom of worship in China. I found that there is freedom of worship and have even published a remarkable photograph to prove it. Thus I have helped Peking to undo the harm that was done to public opinion abroad in 1949-1976.\n\nHarvard, Mass 1981\n\n+\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nCHINESE RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT WITH ISLAM\n\nSince I wrote my Note on two examples of Chinese religious involvement with Islam on pages 199-202 of Volume 19 of the RAS(HK) Journal 1979, I have been fortunate enough to be able to purchase an image, some ten inches high, a typical Chinese altar figure, said to be off a Chinese temple altar in Surabaya on Java. It is of a middle-aged gentleman, dressed in songkok, sarong and a white shirt with cufflinks and removable buttons, worn outside the sarong. He also has white trousers under the sarong and is seated on a Chinese dragon-throne, a typical pose, decoration and carving of a Chinese deity from Fujian province.\n\nThe Chinese who sold it to me said that he had obtained it from the temple keeper in Surabaya as it was no longer needed. It depicted, so he was told, the former President of Indonesia, Dr. Sukarno, born in Surabaya in 1901 and died in 1970. The image had been carved and placed on the altar in a Chinese temple as an\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212382, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 324, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "301\n\nThese images, occasionally called 'Household Spirits' (Chia-shen ) by the carver, can be ordered by parents even if their son or daughter who is suffering from an unidentifiable ailment is mature, living away from home, and does not believe or wish to be involved.\n\nThe god carver explained that the image remained on the family altar until removed, usually because the individual concerned is no longer alive, when it is normally incinerated. However, there are times when an elderly lady does not wish to burn an image and, being unsure what to do with it, presents it to a temple with a fee, where it remains on the crowded 'mixed altar' (Lieh T'an ) and receives its share of public reverence and incense.\n\nIn theory, the god carver explained, these images can portray humans in many forms. Also in theory, in a previous incarnation the present human may have been an animal or an insect, though this is very unlikely and he had never heard of a case. In practice, all were Chinese humans in previous incarnations and the majority identified as generals or marshals, senior graduates, mandarins, and ladies of rank. The carver raised an eyebrow and added that it was not for him to question the word of the spirit mediums. Many of the ladies who come to him with their 'prescription' for an image would appear to have been male in a previous life, and it is very rare for a man to have been a female in his previous incarnation.\n\nImages usually consist of either a seated lady or man with a number of 'unique' characteristics. The standard lady is a dowager with a heavily decorated hat and robe, and a crane under each of her feet. Some hold a scroll, a fly switch, a cup or bowl, or a gourd, whilst others simply hold their belt with one hand and rest their other hand on the arm of their 'dragon throne'. Male images vary from the scholar to the soldier, portraying them sitting on a 'dragon throne' and holding a scroll, seal, bowl, flag, or a tablet. Generals and Marshals, very occasionally portrayed seated astride a horse, have their battery of four or five triangular coloured flags in a rack across their backs indicating their military rank, but only rarely are they depicted with a weapon. Usually, the seated male has a lion, dog, or stylised creature, one under each foot, whereas the female, on rare occasions, might have frogs rather than cranes under hers.\n\nKEITH STEVENS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213063, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "112\n\nduring which he acquired extraordinary powers having been provided with a set of secret prescriptions, exorcists and talismans by the major goddess, Hsi-wang Mu'. He was a Taoist Master, a vegetarian who never married and a philanthropic doctor who died at the early age of 58 having worn himself out in the service of his fellow men. A tale told by a Taiwanese related how Wu T'ao's father, Wu T'ung and his mother, née Huang, fled from their home in northern China, during the troubled times of the Sung, to a village near T'ung-an on the Fukien coast where they settled and built a thatched cottage. His mother realised after a dream that she had become pregnant by a famous deity and eventually bore a child naming him T'ao. In another version his mother conceived after she had dreamt that she had swallowed a white tortoise.\n\nWu T'ao, or as he is known in a number of temples, Wu Chen-jen [Wu the Perfected Man] is often claimed to have come from Ch'uan-chou in Fukien, although in SE Asia there have been several other cities and areas claimed by devotees to have been his birthplace, including T'ung-an, Swatow and Chang-chou [in practice, as we have seen, he came from a small village in the centre of a triangle between T'ung-an, Amoy and Chang-chou]. As Wu T'ao grew up he travelled far and wide studying Taoist disciplines and grew strong and healthy but remained celibate and vegetarian. A temple keeper in Singapore understood that by vegetarian it was meant that he could eat buffalo and goat meat but not dog.\n\nImages of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in general represent him as a black-bearded middle-aged man dressed in court robes and an imperial crown consisting of a flat mortar board with a bead screen hanging down before his face, and sitting on a dragon throne. There are a number of variations such as the scholar's gauze cap instead of the crown. His images are generally identifiable by the convention of the cuff of his left sleeve being clutched by the thumb of his right hand, with only this thumb visible. In Singapore where all carvers were aware of this convention such images are universal. However, the carvers all added that they were unsure whether such a convention was known elsewhere. It is, and in a number of temples in Taiwan the images of Pao-sheng Ta-ti have the right thumb just poking out of the right sleeve, although in Chia I the convention has added one finger to the thumb. In the majority of temples he is portrayed with small animals under his feet, said to be lions, whilst in two temples, both in Taiwan, he has two tiny tigers protruding from his clasped hands within the long sleeves of his robes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213203, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "4\n\nincluded (CO129/414, p. 177).\n\nThe three German females in the 1921 census are mentioned in a report Canon Bannister sent to the Church Missionary Society in 1914. The Berlin Foundling House had 150 children and the two Blind Homes had 120 children. \"The Government has allowed three German ladies to remain in each home and the writer was asked to take general oversight”, (Archives of the Church Missionary Society, University of Birmingham, England, CH1/P/4 No. 149, Bannister, 5 Nov. 1914).\n\nThe German community gradually reestablished itself in Hong Kong, but in 1931 it was less than half of what it had been in 1911.\n\nHong Kong being a British colony, the British were the largest non-Chinese community. Next was the Macanese-Portuguese. The third were the Germans. They were followed by the Americans,\n\nGermans in the Canton trade\n\nGerman-speaking merchants participated in the China trade in the eighteenth century. The trade was confined to Canton. In 1729, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor of Austria, chartered the Imperial East India Company to trade in the East using the port of Ostend in the Netherlands as its home base. At that time Netherlands was a part of the Austrian Empire. This company did not use German ships, but chartered British vessels which were principally manned by British crews. This was a stratagem to get around the efforts of the British chartered East India Company to control the European trade with China. Over the years there were usually two or three ships each season from Bremen or Hamburg arriving at Canton.\n\nBritish free traders used the protection of the office of Consul for foreign states to acquire the privilege of permanent residence in China. These free traders were large importers of opium of India, a trade the British East India Company ships did not engage in as it was prescribed by Chinese Imperial Edict and the company wished to maintain a good relation with the Dragon Throne. It feared that if it was too closely identified with the opium trade the Chinese authorities would curtail the company's lucrative and traditional trade in tea.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214355, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 213, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "178\n\namends. King Wu also held an audience at which he announced that certain Daoists and generals who had bravely fought and died should be regarded as heroes and revered as such. At that point a number of Daoist mythological heroes stepped forward and declared that as they were uncultured, having lived in the mountains and countryside, they now wished to return to report to their masters. They added that they were unable to accept honours or rewards as they had simply followed the orders of their masters. All seven left the Court, and the following day after a feast, they were reluctantly permitted to leave by King Wu.\n\nMy daughter, a friend and I during a visit to Song Shan in Henan province, one of the Daoist holy mountains, came across a large modern temple which, as we approached its entrance, looked real enough until we came to enter it. There were several young women in a uniform of sorts knocking a badminton cock around to while away the hours and, of all things, a turnstile. We then saw the name of the temple was Fengshen Gong, the Palace of the Investiture of the Gods, and entered wide-eyed wondering what could possibly be inside.\n\nOnce inside we were taken by our guide down a short corridor and out into what proved to be a massive wax-works, images of scenes from the Fengshen Yanyi as well as images of the major local deity, the Lord of Zhong Yüeh, the Lord of the Central Peak [Song Shan]. The exhibition, we were informed, had been built by the Tourist Board of the local city, Deng Feng, for Chinese visitors. Well over 200 images, mostly static but with some dozen or so automatons, lined the winding path leading through the large exhibition hall. With a not too subtle gesture our guide switched each on and off until, apparently bored by her foreign guests who spent quite some time at each exhibit, she abandoned us and returned to her badminton. The place was deserted apart from four small boys who were delighted to be alone with us and took enormous pleasure in switching on and off the various exhibits for our benefit without any guide being there to chastise them.\n\nScenes included the wicked Zhou Wang ascending his throne; Na Zha, the Third Prince, Causing Trouble with the Dragon King; Duke Fa [King Wu] subjugating Zhou Wang; the Terrace of the Investiture on which Jiang Ziya is reading out the decree canonising the heroes, and the Five Sacred Ones returning to Heaven. Several of the automated exhibits had the small boys in fits of giggles; one in particular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]