[ { "id": 206637, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n179\n\nIn c. above, he is two different beings, his benevolent form is as a man with two eyes, “ear pressing\" tufts of hair, three pairs of arms, and hair standing erect on the back of his head. In his malevolent form he is depicted as a man with a leopard's head, three eyes, a lion's nose, a tiger's mouth, a bear's tongue, a boar's tusks, and three pairs of arms. Again, above his ears are \"ear pressing\" tufts of hair, and on top of his otherwise bald head is a headdress called a k'ui ying.\n\nIn the two and a half thousand or so temples visited in South East Asia, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, the basic forms listed above can be grouped into general categories. T'ai Sui/Yin Ch'iao were seen in 48 temples; among which 11 were Fukienese, 28 Cantonese, 2 Hakka, 2 Ch'ao Chow and two inter-community Buddhist temples. Of these, 18 were in Singapore, 15 in Malaya, 9 in Hong Kong, 3 in Macao, 1 in Cambodia and 2 in Taiwan. The 'youths with a scroll' are mainly Cantonese, as are the majority of the 'youths holding a bell.' The ‘elderly man with a bell' was seen in two Hakka temples and one Cantonese community temple. The images of the 'fierce general' was seen only in Fukienese community temples and a few images of 'youths with bells or scrolls' were seen in Fukienese temples.\n\nThe groups of sixty images have been seen in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao, and in Fukien by Hodous. In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur large but odd numbers of T'ai Sui, including a mix-ture of them with scrolls or bells, were seen in two Cantonese community temples.\n\nThese images have not been seen in any Hainanese temples. Only in Cantonese and Hakka temples were these images observed standing on wads of hell money.\n\nThe four charms carried by T'ai Sui, according to a Fukienese god carver, are:\n\na. a seal of office, which, if shaken, causes the heavens to quake.\n\nb. two swords, one male and one female, which are able to destroy demons and wrong-doers.\n\nc. a bell, called Jung Kuei Ch'ung (*) which causes one to lose the way when rung. This bell causes demons to forget their tasks and to wander aimlessly. It is also a magic teller of time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206647, "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": 195, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n189\n\nMalaya, in nine of which he is the main deity. Twenty-seven of these temples are run by Fukienese emigrants or their descendants; one is run by Hakka, three by Cantonese, two by Ch'ao Chow and one by Hainanese. In Taipei all eleven observed images are in temples maintained by Ch'üan Chow emigrants. There are three Cantonese temples in Malaya in which he has been seen; one is in Seremban and two are in Kuala Lumpur. In one of the Kuala Lumpur temples he is to be seen beside a sand divination table; the temple keeper in the other said that he was a lesser deity donated by a Fukienese devotee. The Seremban temple had all three brothers seated together on an altar in a temple devoted to Hsuan Tien Shang Ti (玄天上帝).\n\nIn a Hainanese temple in Singapore there is a standing image of Fa Chu Kung with the usual unkempt hair, but he has only one foot resting on a fire wheel. He is the secondary deity in the temple, which is dedicated to Wen Chow Hou Wang (溫州侯王) who is a specifically Hainanese deity.\n\nIn one spirit medium temple in Singapore, where Fa Chu Kung is the main deity, the medium and the keeper are both Fukienese. The female medium speaks with a very deep voice, said to be that of Fa Chu Kung, and writes prescriptions for medicines dictated by him. To stimulate the spirit to reply, and thereby causing considerable interest to the spectators around the table, the female medium pauses between writing each prescription and extinguishes a lighted candle on the roof of her mouth.\n\nProfessor Wolfram Eberhard has confirmed that in his researches he has encountered this deity, the god of the cult of tea merchants localized in the areas of Ying Ch'üen (#) and Te Hui (德惠) whose birthday is on the 27th day of the 7th lunar month. Law suits were settled before this deity, who is mentioned in the Taiwanese folk almanac of 1963.\n\nMyths concerning the origins or deification of Fa Chu Kung\n\nMost temple keepers who have an image of Fa Chu Kung in their temples tell a different story about his origin. These tales do, however, contain certain common factors:\n\na. Fa Chu Kung is the head of all demons and is to be feared. His black face signifies his demonic origins. He warned all gods in the area of Ying Ch'üen in Fukien that the area was too\n\nPage 190 is missing\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206649, "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": 197, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n191\n\nChu Kung with his feet stretched out under the pan and flames leaping up from them boiling the rice and, being frightened, she screamed. Fa Chu Kung transformed himself into a god, flew up the chimney and thus became black on the way.\n\ne. In the An Chi area of Fukien province there was a very large snake which required one youth or maiden to be fed to it annually. Chang (3), a common straw sandal maker, and two men who had been chased from the An Chi area to a cave in Ying Ch'üen, fought and killed the snake after a battle lasting three days. Chang was so exhausted that he turned black. He was deified Fa Chu Kung and the two men who had helped him were deified with him as his foster brothers, for ridding the place of the nightmare.\n\nf. In a Singapore Hainanese temple a variation of e. above tells that Fa Chu Kung met an old man weeping. He told Fa Chu Kung that his grandchild had to be sacrificed to the big snake. Fa Chu Kung told the old man not to worry and went out and strangled the big snake; but, because he was bitten so badly, he turned black, his eyes became staring and he died.\n\ng. Fa Chu Kung was originally called Chang Kung (2) but later, after he had cured the Empress's boils which had been pronounced incurable by all the other physicians and magicians, he was given the title of Shen Chün (#).\n\nh. Fa Chu Kung was an Indian sailor or trader who settled in Fukien and helped the poor and the sick.\n\nThese various tales tell of Fa Chu Kung's ability to do magic, give a reason for his blackness and several explain why he has a snake wrapped round his arm. The snake is reminiscent of other sacrificial stories and may well be a story dating back to one of the early local cultures in Fukien. There is no indication of what era Fa Chu Kung is supposed to have lived—if, of course, he ever did. Temple dates in South East Asia and Taiwan are of little assistance here and the only dating the temple keepers suggested was the usual \"several hundreds of years ago\" or \"during the T'ang or Sung Dynasties\" (650-1100 A.D.).\n\nThere are at least two other major legends of people who use their legs as fuel for the stove. The first, in Ch'üan Chow, is the monk I Po who gave great assistance during the construction of the famous bridge there. He caused great astonishment when, because", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206650, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "192\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nof insufficient fire wood, he stuck his foot in the stove, and the flame shot up cooking the food in but a few moments. The second is no less than Li T'ieh Kuai (*), one of the Eight Immortals. One of the stories told about him is that, when he was young and very poor, his mother ordered him to go into the hills every day to collect wood but he was never able to collect more than sufficient for one day. When it rained they had none. His aunt cursed him and said they would use his legs as fuel. Now Li T'ieh Kuai had learnt some tricks from the Immortals in the hills and stuck his foot into the fire which blazed up much more brightly. His aunt shouted that she was only joking and pulled his foot from the fire. Because of this the bottom part of his leg fell off and became poisoned. The story ends by his aunt using the burnt-off leg to bank up the cinders!\n\nConclusion\n\nAlthough this Fukienese local deity is mostly to be seen, as is to be expected, in those areas of Taiwan and South East Asia where Fukienese immigrants from An Ch'i, Ying Ch'üan and the immediate surrounding areas are to be found, he is also to be found in Hainanese, Ch'aochow and Cantonese temples in South East Asia; where presumably this cult has been adopted by the other immigrant groups who wished to take advantage of his power.\n\nTai Pao(*)\n\nOne image likely to be confused with Fa Chu Kung is Tai Pao. Tai Pao is the monk Sha (*) who usually wears a necklet or waistband of skulls, but in many temples these have been lost and the black, unkempt figure of Tai Pao at first glance can easily be confused with Fa Chu Kung.\n\nTHE CULT OF THE EUNUCH ADMIRAL CHENG HO\n\nA deified hero and a Taoist Saint\n\nBackground\n\nThe intercourse between China and the West under the widespread rule of the Mongols lapsed with their withdrawal into Central Asia. The Ming dynasty emperor Yung Lo made great efforts to re-open trade routes and to expand the much diminished foreign trade by despatching between the years 1405 and 1431 A.D. seven major expeditions to the Southern Seas, commanded by eunuchs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207004, "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-1974", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\n69\n\nin Taiwan. Elsewhere, in most Asian cities with a large Overseas Chinese community there are retailers who sell gods but who neither carve nor repair them. (Plate 2)\n\nBy way of background let me explain the various types of image produced by Chinese. The majority of north and central China's images used to be made of mud and straw and painted with a dull gold paint. (Plate 3.) They have been destroyed by the myriad in the course of the numerous iconoclastic anti-superstition campaigns conducted on the mainland in the past fifty years or so and are rarely to be seen. The next group are the bronze, iron and other metal images of which only the smaller are still in existence, mostly in America and Europe; the larger having been too large to move have long since been melted down for scrap.\n\nThe third group consists of the carved and painted or lacquered wood images mainly from the forested south of China. The best materials for these images, so Chinese have assured me, were camphor and sandalwood and the finest carvings were from Amoy where a group of seven families produced their famous images over eight generations ceasing production only in 1950. Amoy figures were precise in detail, well-proportioned and expensive but rather baroque in their appearance.\n\nIn very general terms, Cantonese images tend to be rather ill-proportioned and stylised; commonly they are gilt-painted figures with heavy features (Plate 4). Hainanese images are generally recognisable by their short limbs; Taiwanese carvings are usually identifiable by their heavy use of blues and sea-greens, and nowadays for their gaudy, cheap and shoddy plastic images. Some Taiwanese images have been made from varnishing wadded rice husks into shape (Plate 5).\n\nFor several generations the Yangtze valley produced large numbers of well carved, handsome and beautifully finished gold lacquer images, predominantly for Buddhist temples, although many were also Taoist folk religion deities. Since 1949 a factory has grown up near Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong in which Shanghai refugees still produce these for Hong Kong and for export. A fifteen foot bodhisattva was being finished whilst I was there, rolled on its back prior to being shipped to Singapore, swathed in plastic sheeting.\n\nThere are very many other local styles such as the knotted-root carvings of Shantung, the boxwood carving of the upper Yangtze\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208920, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "50\n\nJIANN HSIEH\n\n* According to an imperial decree issued in 1645, a man could change his official domicile only if his grandfather had settled in a new place for more than twenty years, and if he could prove that in that place he had an estate and a clan graveyard (Ho, 1966:8).\n\n? According to the informant, who is one of the directors of the Wai-yeung Merchants Association is a locality association in nature, but not a merchants' guild.\n\n* It is especially true that genealogical seniority played a very important role in the leadership of the Chinese traditional clan associations. This emphasis on seniority also prevailed in the leadership structure of other kinds of voluntary associations through pseudo-kinship relationships (Gamble, 1929).\n\n• The division of residence by dialect or original locality survives even in today's Chinese community of Singapore. For example, most of the Hainanese concentrate in Hsiao-p'o, while the Cantonese are dominant in the area of Niu-ch'e-shui.\n\n10 Since all the Waichow schools are subsidized by the Hong Kong Government, it is an obligation for them to use Cantonese as the teaching medium.\n\n11 The estimated size of the Waichow population in Hong Kong according to the association leaders ranges from 700,000 to 1,200,000.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nA. CHINESE\n\nHo, P. T.\n\n1966\n\nChung-kui hui-kuang shih lun (A Historical Survey of Landsmannschaften in China). Taipei: Students' Book Store.\n\nHuang, C. L.\n\n1972\n\nMa-hua li-shih tiao-ch'a yen-chiu ch'u-lun (A Preliminary Study of Chinese History in Malaya). Singapore: Wan-li Press.\n\nLi, S. T.\n\n1957\n\nYuan-lang Sao-kuan-hu Li-shih tsu-p'u (The Genealogy of Lis in So Kwun Wat, Yuen Long). MS.\n\nLi, Y. Y.\n\n1970\n\nLo, H. L.\n\n1933\n\nIh-ko i-chih ti shih-chên (An Immigrant Town). Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica.\n\nK'ê-chiao yen-chiu tao-lun (An Introduction to Hakka Studies). (1975) Taipei: Ku-t'ing Press.\n\nSee, C. B.\n\n1976\n\nFei-lu-pin hua-jên wen-hua ti chih-hsü (Persistence and Preservation of Chinese Culture in the Philippines). Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 42:119-206.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210334, "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-1984", "page_number": 305, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "284\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\n14\n\n13\n\ndefence. Thus, the 200 Hainanese were saved. He stayed in Vietnam for more than 40 years. He had a very good relationship with the French. He started many new businesses and expanded the old ones. Chinese and foreigners owed him more than a hundred million, but he just left and didn't ask (them to pay back). Within the 40 years, he helped and encouraged many people from his native place and his lineage, and he protected many Chinese in Vietnam. The French law was strict and the ignorant could be accused easily. However, they were released whenever he spoke out for them. Thus, all the Chinese in Vietnam felt very grateful to him and depended on him in many things. Moreover, he contributed a lot to the petitions presented to exempt the Associations(f) and the free cemeteries() from tax. These actions were all praised and well known.\n\nIn 1879, he was appointed by the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co.() to import rice into China (from Vietnam).1 Many famous diplomats, such as: Chung-hou( ), Kuo Sung-tao(#), Tseng Chi-tse(##), Shao yu-lien( ), Wang Chih-chun( 2), Hsieh Fu-cheng(# ), Lung Tien-yang(U), Huang Tsun-hsien(F) etc., wanted to know him, and relied on him as their host (when they passed through Vietnam).2 However, he was never arrogant, and he always treated them with great hospitality and respect.\n\nOn his 70th birthday, in 1888, his sons and grandsons celebrated it for him in Vietnam. Many officials and merchants came to the banquet. The French Government Offices(2), companies, schools, and mints(*) all raised flags to celebrate, and a holiday was given as if they were having their national celebration. At that time, the French Governor( t) awarded him a First Honoured Star(MSA) with a written citation.\" This excited the whole country, and everyone thought that it was a most honorific reward. However, he took it all casually.\n\nHe was filial and had a fraternal personality. The way he took care of his parents when living and at the time of their death was all according to the traditional ways. He lived with his brothers with fraternal love. He treated his nephews as if they were his sons. He liked to study, and even the old scholars could not equal what he wrote. Thus, his sons were well brought up, and succeeded in the official examinations.\" For himself, he, according to the Ch'ing regulations, donated money and got the title of Hua-ling-tao( = official ...)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210784, "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-1986", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "118\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nHai-pei Hainan Tao, i.e., the “Circuit or Intendantship of North of the Sea (straits) and South of the Sea” (Mayers, 1872). Since Hai-pei was already used to describe coastal Guangdong, the practice arose of referring to the island south of the sea as Hainan (Schafer, 1969), although it was not until 1921 that it became the official name of the island (Liu, 1938).\n\nThis new administrative footing established by the Mongols paved the way for the constitution of the island in 1370 as the Prefecture of K’iungchou Fu, named after the major city of the island (near present-day Haikou) which was first settled in 631 A.D. (K'iungchou fu chih, 1920 edition). The new prefecture was placed under the jurisdiction of Guangdong Province, an arrangement which has continued to the present. This new status marked the promotion of the island from remote dependency to an integral part of the imperial realm.\n\nRebellion, taxes, piracy and trade\n\nUndoubtedly, this integration was stimulated by the emergence of a flourishing commercial sector which had begun with limited trade in the Tang-Sung period (618-1280) when Hainanese cotton and incense aloeswood were exchanged by the Li for axes, salt, and cattle for their ceremonial rites (Savina, 1929). Through the increase in communication necessary for trade, and intermarriage between settlers and the Li aboriginals, an intermediate community emerged which accepted the supremacy of Chinese rule and adopted their customs and life-style. Known as Shu Li (literally tamed or civilized Li), this group served Chinese masters by tending livestock and tilling fields (Swinhoe, 1872a) in the buffer zone between the Chinese settlements on the coast and the unconquered mountain strongholds of the Sheng Li (literally wild or savage Li) in the island's interior. As their numbers increased, however, the Shu Li caused more anxiety to the Chinese Government by constant rebellion than the wild mountaineers, although most uprisings were self-inflicted by the rapacity of Chinese merchants and injustices meted out by government officials. Only when the Chinese garrisons were known to be weak did the Sheng Li sally forth from their impenetrable mountains and wreak devastation in the settled plains.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210796, "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-1986", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "130\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nernment looked to Hainan to rapidly expand production of rubber, coffee and tropical fruit as these were in short supply and could only be grown in small quantities in parts of Yunnan Province. However, in spite of this encouragement and efforts by the Hainanese, only 20 per cent of the Island's arable land was under production in 1965 (Kirk, 1965).\n\nAlthough significant achievement was made in the agricultural sector, this was overshadowed by advances made in industry. Only a few, poorly equipped machine repair shops were operative at the time of Liberation, but by 1965 more than 20 farming and other machinery plants were producing 73 kinds of new products, 38 of which were in serial production (Kirk, 1965). Among the latter were peanut planters, water turbine pumps, threshers, husking mills, coconut processing machines and fluorescent lamps for deep-sea fishing. Processing factories including food canneries, sugar refineries, textile mills and rubber footwear plants not only increased in variety, but also in product quality and economic efficiency (Kirk, 1965).\n\nDuring this period, Hainan assumed greater military importance: first in response to the conflict involving French and American forces in Vietnam, and more recently to the Soviet-backed military and political takeover of Laos and Cambodia by Vietnam. This importance was further enhanced by the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war and the discovery of oil and natural gas by American and French joint-ventures in the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea. As a first line of defence, China maintains constant surveillance from the air supported by a formidable naval force of 300,000 stationed in Hainan and the Leizhou Peninsula plus strategically placed missile bases (Hollingworth, 1982). Initially, military personnel were engaged in road construction, installation of communication networks and improvement of defence positions, but in these more settled times, they have played a key role in the agricultural and industrial development of Hainan (China Daily, August 11, 1983).\n\nIn spite of these efforts, however, development of Hainan's resources proceeded too slowly to raise the living standard to keep pace with the national average (Wu and Zhi, 1981). While the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210797, "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-1986", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "131\n\npeople applied themselves enthusiastically to the task, insufficient capital, the rigid application of ultra-Left policies such as the lop-sided emphasis on developing grain production which did not best utilize Hainan's tropical conditions, and poor technical support are all blamed for the slow progress in Hainan. During the Cultural Revolution in particular, the establishment of new plantations was discontinued, while large areas of mature coconut, rubber and coffee trees were felled to release land for grain production. Forests did not escape indiscriminate clearing: when liberated, there were 863,000 ha of tropical forest on Hainan, but by 1979 only 245,000 ha remained (Smil, 1983). Besides roads, one of the few benefits remaining from the ten turbulent years are the reservoirs and canal networks constructed to provide water for irrigation and generation of electricity.\n\nSome of these problems were caused by inadequate communication between the central government and the grass-roots level, while others are a direct result of ignorance of the biological potential of the tropical environment. The latter was undoubtedly aggravated by debasement of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution. Further, following the withdrawal of Soviet experts and technical aid to China in 1960, the fostering by Mao of an isolationist policy from both Eastern and Western blocs meant that technical and economic development had to rely exclusively on Chinese talents and expertise. Given the dearth of experience with tropical agriculture amongst the Hainanese, overseas Chinese who had worked on plantations in Malaya, Indonesia and Thailand, but returned to Hainan in the 1950's and 60's, brought a great number of skills with them and deserve credit for much of the achievement made in planting tropical crops. Returning farmers brought with them seeds of crops never before grown in Hainan, and after some nursery testing, pepper, oil palm, new coconut varieties and traditional medicines were sown commercially, initially on overseas Chinese state farms.\n\nThe \"open door\" policy\n\nWith the ousting of the \"Gang of Four\", a resolution on Hainan's development was passed by the State Council in 1980 which placed primary stress on tropical agriculture and associated", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212165, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "84\n\nprotective deities, small portable images of the deity himself are kept in the shrine and loaned to devotees to take home for private reverence when the devotee has a personal problem requiring spiritual assistance.\n\nIn a temple in Madras Street in Singapore images of a Mr Ch'en and his wife, again without personal names, are revered by elderly ladies for boons and protection. No one within the temple has any idea who the Ch'ens are or where the images now on a side altar came from.\n\nIn a second temple in Singapore yet another image of a Mr Ch'en stands on a side altar. This time we know his personal names, Yueh-k'un, and that his image was donated in the 1960s by an unidentified old lady, thought to be his widow, who left a sum of money to maintain regular offerings before it. Its history and identification died with her. The image, of a stylised general, is prayed to by devotees who believe him to be a protective deity.\n\nLiang Chin-chung was killed by lightning in Singapore, in a kampong in Tanglin, in 1946 at the age of seventeen. Shortly after the incident ladies in the kampong in which Liang had lived attributed remarkable events to his spirit and whenever they prayed before his tablet their wishes were fulfilled. A cult quickly developed and devotees came from all around. An attap hut already dedicated in the kampong to a Hainanese fertility goddess was altered to make room for a small altar dedicated to Liang, on which a rough portrait image of the boy was placed. The cult disappeared when the kampong was razed for building development in the seventies.\n\nAn image of a Miss Liu stood on a folk religion temple side altar next door to the big Buddhist temple in Kim Keat, Singapore. In 1962 she was known as 'Liu-hsiu Ku-niang', though this full name disappeared within the next ten years. Her image, swathed in silken yellow robes, always had incense sticks smouldering before it. She had no festival and no special identifying features. She did, however, have the occasional packet of face powder placed before her by girls who believed that she could make them more physically attractive. Also slung around her arm were two or three very small handbags or purses. According to an elderly nun, Miss Liu was a vegetarian who had lived in the nunnery, and when she died her old...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212167, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "86\n\nA local Ch'ao-chou cult image seen on a secondary altar in a tiny makeshift rural temple in Ulu Sembawang in Singapore is said to represent the spirit of a nine-year-old boy who died in the late 1960s. He is the medium spirit who speaks through his aunt, providing advice for local devotees. His aunt raised the image after she found that the spirit of the boy returned to her in a dream offering to help people. The boy is known by the title of 'the Prince of the East of the Sea', Hai-tung Tai-tzu.\n\nA Cantonese Kuomintang soldier, Huang Chin-ch'uang, crossed to Taiwan in 1949 with the retreating KMT forces. He was posted to Pingtung near Kaohsiung and served with a unit near the main village on the island of Little Liuchiu where some time later he became ill and died. The people of the village, remembering his kindness and goodwill and knowing that he had no family of his own, buried him in an auspicious spot on the hillside. He became the spirit guarding the hills above the village and also gained renown for his ability to protect fishermen in danger. A shrine, a privately run temple, was built in his honour and an image of him placed on the altar where he is now known as Marshal Huang despite having been a mere private soldier.\n\nWang was a sailor left behind in Java by the great Ming explorer Cheng Ho at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His image is to be seen on a side altar in the Earth God temple at Ancol, not all that far from Jakarta, whilst tablets dedicated to him are to be seen in Chinese temples in Semarang and near Sourabaya, all on the island of Java. Local Chinese belief is divided as to whether he was pure Chinese or Javanese, and whether he was a shipwright, navigator, or senior member of Cheng Ho's crew, or merely a Javanese interpreter. They are at one, however, that Wang was a Moslem and that he married a Javanese wife and lived out his days, dying peacefully in Semarang.\n\nOf these ten male and two female spirits, all but two are represented by stylised images on altars, and they are taken from each of the main ethnic groups along the south China coast, the Cantonese, Fukienese, Hakka, Ch'ao-chou, and Hainanese.\n\nFive originated during the past fifty years, three some time during the past century, whilst four definitely developed during the Ch'ing dynasty.\n\nOnly six of the spirits still have their full names remembered, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212381, "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": 323, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "300\n\nin Singapore but not elsewhere, and the temple keeper was unwilling to offer any further information. A year or so later under a little pressure he revealed that he, personally, called them White Crane Mothers (Bai He Mu).\n\nRecently his son, who has now set up his own establishment, was more forthcoming. He began by saying that he did not agree with his father's description; the images were neither spirits (shen) nor demons (kuei) but were rather a substitute for the individual human (Ti-shen). Such images were carved by him for people who brought the description of the image required written, usually on red paper, by a spirit medium. He claimed that the practice was not unique to Hokkiens (people from the southern coastal province of Fukien) and that he had heard of it ‘all over China' including Taiwan (which is predominantly Hokkien speaking). He himself is a Hokkien though his clients in Singapore included local Ch'ao-chou, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese people.\n\nThe son explained that a living human may suffer from an unidentifiable ailment and having been to a western trained doctor and consulted a Chinese physician or herbalist, neither of whom has been able to diagnose the cause, in desperation he consults a temple spirit medium who, in a trance, discovers the cause, usually an 'unpaid debt from a previous life. Immediately after death souls are judged on the misdeeds done during their lifetime on earth and after purging their sins they are reborn. Occasionally misdeeds are missed and only discovered after the individual has been reborn, hence the ailment as punishment. The spirit medium is tasked to discover the identity in his or her previous life of the human now suffering from the unknown ailment and to record his or her likeness in that previous existence which will then be carved into an image. The surname of the individual in his or her previous life is also recorded on the reverse of the image. This image is unique to the family of the individual now alive, almost always with an entirely different surname to the one of the previous incarnation, and is kept on the family altar. It is never placed on a public altar for public reverence. After a ritual performed by the spirit medium the image is considered to house the spirit of the living individual with the ailment but with the identity of the previous incarnation, and it is expected that the spirit now residing within the image will absorb the 'unpaid debt' lifting the punishment from the living individual.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215062, "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-2000", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "Fang Xiang\n\nLi Bing\n\n李丙\n\nHuang Chengyi Z\n\n丞乙\n\nZhou Deng\n\n周登\n\nLiu Hong\n\n劉供\n\n115\n\nThe Spirit who is the Bearer\n\nof News\n\nThe Spirit who Superintends the Year\n\nThe Spirit who Superintends the Month\n\nThe Spirit who Superintends the Day\n\nThe Spirit who Superintends the Period\n\nThe Iconography of Taisui\n\nIn a few temples Taisui is represented simply by an image of the President, Yin Jiao,* where he is depicted as a fierce figure with eight arms and a third eye. In the majority of temples there is either a lone image or more usually in southern China, sixty images or sixty tablets representing each of the Taisui, one for each of the years within the sixty-year cycle of years.¥ The cycle was known as Hua Jia Hua Jiazi¥, which was the measurement of time during Imperial days.\n\nIn a few temples a large deeply carved gilded tablet dedicated to Taisui stands in the centre of the Taisui hall, in addition to the one or sixty images.\n\nIn Fukienese communities in Taiwan and South-east Asia his single image tends to stand alone, an awesome deity, whereas in Cantonese, Chaozhou and Hainanese communities his image either stands alone, a benign conventional young man, sitting holding either a ruyi [sceptre] or, more usually, an extended scroll bearing Chinese characters. The Taisui can also be portrayed in a group of sixty each one of whom is again usually a benevolent young or middle-aged man. Each of the sixty serves for one year, in rotation, within the Chinese sixty-year cycle. All sixty images are generally carefully carved and decorated, each being different, some being radically different. An aspect of Taisui", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215235, "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-2001", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nFRIENDS OF THE HKBRAS (UK) REPORT\n\nHON. AUDITOR'S REPORT\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nARTICLES\n\npage\n\nxiv\n\nxxix\n\nxxxii\n\nxlii\n\nNorman Miners - Industrial Development in the Colonial Empire and the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa 1932...\n\n1\n\nGöran Aijmer - Earth God Wine and the Meeting of the Fluttering Butterflies: Local Customs of Early Spring in Late Imperial Central China...\n\n25\n\nKeith Stevens - The Popular Religion Gods of the Hainanese ...........\n\n43\n\nValery Garrett - Chinese Baby Carriers: A Hong Kong Tradition Now Gone\n\n95\n\nAnthony Hedley and Alfred Lin - The Lugard Tribute...............\n\n109\n\nCésar Guillén-Nuñez - The Façade of St. Paul's, Macao: A Retable-Façade?\n\nRobert Nield - Bhutan - Why Not?\n\n131\n\n189\n\nKo Tim-keung - A Review of Development of Cemeteries in Hong: 1841-1950........\n\n241\n\nLouis Ha and Dan Waters - Hong Kong's Lighthouses and the Men Who Manned Them\n\n281\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nKeith Stevens - A Tale of Sour Grapes: Messrs. Little and Mesny and the First Steamship Through the Yangzi Gorges\n\n321\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215318, "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-2001", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "THE POPULAR RELIGION GODS\n\nTHE HAINANESE\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n43\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis article is a study of the popular religion gods to be found on the altars of Chinese folk religion temples on the island of Hainan as well as in 'Hainanese temples' within the confines of former colonial territories in south-east Asia. I will be endeavouring to isolate the purely Han Chinese Hainanese deities from those of their surrounding neighbours, the non-Han minority peoples on Hainan itself as well as from emigrant Han Chinese communities in south-east Asia. The latter includes emigrants who speak the Han linguistic groups of Hakka, Hokkien (and its sub-groups including Minnan and Hengwa (Xinghua)), Cantonese (and two of its sub-groups) and Guangxi, as well as the smaller groups such as Chaozhou [Swatowese].\n\nThe tropical island of Hainan, literally \"South of the Ocean,\" lies off the south coast of China and was formerly part of Guangdong province. In 1988 it became a province in its own right. 150 miles in length and 100 in breadth, it is one sixth the size of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, half the size of Ceylon and four times the size of Cyprus, with its main port of Haikou and the provincial capital, Qiongzhou, both on its northern coast.\n\nSeparating the island of Hainan from the mainland is the Qiongzhou Straits, with the 170-mile-long Leizhou peninsula in Guangdong province leading into the mainland proper. The proximity of the Leizhou peninsula has led to a small number of the deities with a Guangxi base being incorporated into Hainanese legend and carried by emigrants to all parts of south-east Asia, often without the connection being realised. Devotees in distant parts have assumed that these deities were unique to Hainan, even to accepting place names within the legends as Hainanese when they were quite clearly from the Leizhou-Guangxi border region.\n\nHistorically, Hainan island was one of the later regions to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215319, "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-2001", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "44\n\ncolonised by ethnic Han Chinese. It was occupied during the reign of Han Wu Di, a century or more before the Christian era, albeit for centuries merely in pockets around the seaboard with the non-Han ethnic groups, mostly Li and Miao, having been pushed back into the hinterland, the central mountainous area,\n\nBeing the southern limit of China the island of Hainan is semi-tropical with early settlers from the Chinese mainland tending to be involuntary settlers, not necessarily outlaws or banished political exiles but colonists despatched by the government who intermarried with the aboriginal Li. Ethnically the Han Chinese stock, referred to as Hainanese for Hoilam in Hainanese], came largely from the province of Fujian, speaking Qiongwen [commonly called Hainanese] a sub-group of Minnan3, though there are also many Cantonese and Hakka Han Chinese within the population and even pockets of pure Cantonese or Hakka Chinese. The result of the hotchpotch of immigration over the centuries is referred to as a whole as Hainanese, and their culture and social mores reflect elements from all of their original ethnic groups. Hainanese people, as would be expected, cannot be differentiated by foreigners from other Han Chinese. However, the Cantonese, the Chaozhou and Fujian Han Chinese are never slow to point a finger at the Hainanese who they claim to be clannish, insular and very suspicious people. Many go as far as to claim that they are slow, dim-witted and gullible, Certainly, they are different though to a non-Chinese the difference is not immediately apparent. My experience is that they are not only friendly but extremely welcoming to foreigners, and especially diligent as house-servants.\n\nHot and remote, it was pioneer frontier territory - far from the capital and major cities, used during dynastic times as a penal colony or at least a refuge for political exile for Chinese officials, a backward area with agriculture and fisheries as the only form of subsistence. The first official was exiled there during the Han, about the time of Christ, though the peak periods of such exiles were during the Song and Ming dynasties, with some like Hai Rui, Su Dongbo and Cao Yu, being renowned throughout China. Fortuitously their presence on the island accelerated the development of cultural life, and when joined by their families and entourages, they left their mark on the culture of Hainan,\n\nAlthough there are guide and travel books about most areas of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215321, "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-2001", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "46\n\nmuddy plats, eventually reached the first \"gun-house,\" as the crumbling fort was known to the Chinese. Finally, the passengers reached the Custom House and on to whatever accommodation they had reserved or could find in this very primitive European backwater.\n\nChinese immigrants from Hainan, along with those from Fujian, Guangxi, and Guangdong, flocked down to the foreign colonies of south-east Asia. Though integrated into the greater Han Chinese population of Singapore and Penang, as well as within towns and cities in North Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, even today Hainanese have remained in one or two linguistic pockets, such as is to be found in the area of Rengam and Kluang in southern Malaysia.\n\nOnly a few of all the Chinese temples visited in South-east Asia have been categorically identified as exclusively founded by Hainanese immigrants. Others, predominantly Hokkien, have a Hainanese altar stuck away in one corner, erected by the few local Hainanese, though two temples stood out, both in southern Malaysia, in which the images of the deities were predominantly uniquely Hainanese, though the temple custodians, the devotees, and the other images were all Hokkien. The picture gained from Hainanese staff and devotees in temples containing uniquely Hainanese images revealed the following minimum of temples being predominantly, if not entirely, Hainanese - six in Singapore, two in Penang, one in Kuala Lumpur, one in Seremban, and two in or near Kluang in southern Malaysia; on Sumatra, one in Medan and two in Palembang; on Java, one in Jakarta, one in Cirebon, and one in Semarang. There are several in Ha Tien in southern Cambodia and others scattered across southern Thailand. The strangest of all was the lone, small Hainanese temple on Bali.\n\nHainanese temple altars bear the usual accoutrements and have the same layout as altars in other Chinese communities, though, to generalise, with less clutter, particularly on altars in Hainanese Huiguan [community club houses]. Major China-wide deities, such as Guan Yin, Guan Gong, Hua Guang, City Gods, Earth Gods, and the Wealth Gods, are the same as in every Chinese community. There are also a number of predominantly Cantonese, Chaozhou, and even Minnan deities in many of the Hainanese temples both in Hainan and in South-east Asia, adopted from other immigrant ethnic groups, including Jinhua Niangniang, Caibo Xingjun, Fazhu Gong, Qi Tian Da Sheng, Longwei.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215322, "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-2001", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "47\n\nShenggong and Li Shan Shengmu. Also noted in Hainanese temples in the vicinity of Kluang are Under Altars, usually connected with Cantonese temples, though again presumably \"borrowed\" by Hainanese. Only two such Under Altars have been noted - both are typically at floor level and contain spirits of tamed demons unfit to be honoured with places upon the main or side altars. Finally, not too uncommon in Malaysia and Singapore where ethnic communities live cheek by jowl, a dark-skinned deity in the Hainanese temple in Jalan Pindu in Singapore was identified as General Supramaniam, placed there by a local Tamil and with the usual tolerance of Chinese devotees, though not revered by them, he has incense placed before him by passing Chinese devotees who realise and accept that he is a foreign deity and not of the Chinese pantheon.\n\nFrom 1949 until the late 1980s folk religion images were banned and removed from altars within China and therefore Hainanese deities have had to be researched mainly within overseas Chinese communities. To carry out the necessary research on Hainanese temples and gods it has been necessary to visit as many of the temples run by and in Hainanese communities outside China, mainly concentrated in Singapore, southern Malaysia and Cambodia. The regular visits to temples in Singapore over a period of years revealed changes within the temple community which would not have been apparent under normal circumstances. Accepting that the circumstances were unique in that the Singaporean authorities forced the resettlement of old and especially 'temporary matshed or corrugated iron' temples to the suburbs in the targeted population relocation of the sixties and seventies, a good example of the change was the resiting in 1984 of an atap hut temple, the oldest Hainanese community temple, in Lorong Ah Soo to a custom-built complex in Hougang Avenue 5. The layout of the altar images in the new Hainanese temple was unchanged as reflected in black and white photographs taken in Lorong Ah Soo in the late fifties and colour photographs taken in Hougang in 1985. The four custom-built temples, one of which is the Hainanese re-located temple, consist of a terraced row of four brick buildings, similar to two-car garages but with high ceilings and much wider than a standard garage.\n\nIn the years up to the 1950s not only did the diversity of language amongst the overseas Chinese in south-east Asia [Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Chaozhou, as well as Hainanese] impose a real barrier", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215323, "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-2001", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "48\n\nbetween Han ethnic groups but also both inter-ethnic fratricide and distrust, prevented legends of one ethnic group about their deities being passed to another. The stories of the minority Hainanese are therefore known to few non-Hainanese Chinese.\n\nFolk Religion Deities on Altars in Hainanese Community Temples\n\nDeities worshipped by Hainanese, both in their temples and on their household altars, can be categorised into eight groups:\n\nThe first are the deities revered China-wide such as Guan Yin, Guan Gong, the City God, the Earth God, the Gods and Goddesses of Climate and Time and the patrons of trades and professions. As these are not uniquely Hainanese deities I will not refer to them again.\n\nThere are two exceptions: the first is a deity identified as either the popular and frequently noted deity, the Thunder God, Lei Gong, or Lei Zu, the President of the Ministry of Thunder. He has been noted on two Singaporean Hainanese temple altars where he was only known as the Chief Leader of All the Heavens, Wantian Zhushi, His title was displayed on the temple list in two other Hainanese temples, one in Pontian in southern Malaysia, and the other near Kranji in northern Singapore. His image depicted him with his usual attributes a bird's beak, an axe or hammer held aloft and a chisel in his left hand. In one of the two temples, in Paya Lebar Crescent, he was riding either a tiger or a Qilin a mythical beast, and according to the temple custodian he is the only deity permitted to do so. He was identified by temple keepers as Lei Gong and his image co-located with that of Doutian Fushuai, said to be Lei Zu. However, in the other temple, at Rumba Bomba Circus, he was also portrayed astride what looks like an unusual tiger and here he was identified as Lei Zu.\n\nThe second is Ma Zu Qiong, the Respected Mother of the Hainanese3. Although Tian Hou, the patron goddess of seafarers along the entire coast of China, is revered throughout Hainanese communities, she is also known in a number of Hainanese temples by this unique title. The usual title by which Tian Hou is known in most Hainanese temples is Nantian Shengniang Tian Hou, The Saintly Lady of the Southern Heavens, 南天聖娘天后.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215324, "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-2001", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "49\n\nSecond: deities only to be seen on Hainan island and not carried abroad by emigrants\n\nThird: major deities uniquely Hainanese\n\nFourth: secondary deities uniquely Hainanese\n\nFifth: deities shared with other ethnic Han Chinese groups\n\nSixth: Images on altars of aides to Hainanese deities\n\nSeventh: deified Hainanese locals in both Hainan and South-east Asia\n\nEighth: unidentified images in Hainanese temples believed by the temple custodian to be uniquely Hainanese.\n\n2: Uniquely Hainanese gods\n\nDeities not noted beyond the shores of Hainan island\n\nThese are the deities to be seen only on Hainan island and have not been carried abroad by Hainanese emigrants:\n\na] The Five Marquises, Wu Gong LA, were all exiled to Hainan, four by Qin Gui [1090-1155], the Prime Minister of the Southern Song who is best known as the Minister who ordered the execution of Yue Fei, the hero who became the patron of soldiers. All five are revered in a shrine in the southern suburbs of Haikou where Hainanese honour the memory of the 'five patriotic officials of the Tang and Song sent into exile' on their island. It was first built in 1617 and is dedicated to the Five: Li Deyu, Li Gang, Li Guang, Hu Chuan and Zhao Ding. Four of these officials, that is apart from Li Deyu, were exiled for their opposition to the traitor Qin Gui. Their images portray them today, reconstructed following their destruction during the Cultural Revolution, as almost identical standing officials, dressed in red robes and all with black beards.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215326, "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-2001", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "31\n\nexecution of Qin Gui, the famous \"traitor,\" as well as Wang Lun and Sun Jin, and the hanging of their heads in the streets to show to the public. For this, he was demoted to a post in Fuzhou (in 1138), from where he was transferred to Xinzhou in Guangdong province in 1142. Six years later, he was falsely accused by a man called Zhang (a member of Qin Gui's 'Death clique'), because of a couplet he wrote called Haoshijin, and was moved to the Jiyang military district. He retired to the Pearl Cliff to write a manual for officials, and set up a school. After the accession of the new emperor, he returned to the fray, holding a number of important posts before retiring in 1171. He died in 1180 at the age of 78.\n\nZhao Ding was a Minister of State and a steadfast opponent of Qin Gui and his policy of making peace with the Tatars, for which he was banished to various places. He was born in Shanxi and died in a distant post at Jiyang, on the south-west tip of Hainan, in 1147.\n\nb] The Three Marquises, San Gong, is a separate group of deities, scholar-officials of the 9th and 10th centuries AD whose images or tablets have only been seen on altars in Hainanese temples on Hainan Island. The three are Li Deyu [one of the Five Marquises: q.v.], Lu Duoxun 廬多遜 and Ding Wei 丁謂,\n\nThe second of the Three, Lu Duoxun, also a senior official exiled to Hainan, died some 136 years after Li Deyu. He was born in Henan province and he too became President of the Board of War in 979. La served a later dynasty, the Northern Song, and was also banished to Hainan following court intrigue. His poetry achieved the distinction of being remembered and quoted.\n\nThe third, Ding Wei, was also a high official of the Song and the only one of the three to survive his banishment. He returned home from Hainan to die in 1040. Ding was born in Jiangsu province and rose to become a Minister of State. He was degraded and banished following accusations of witchcraft and of oppressive rule. He also wrote a large collection of poems whilst in Hainan.\n\nc] Su Shi is probably better known as Su Dongpo, and is referred to in Hainan as Su Gong. He is one of the eight famous men of letters of the Tang and Song eras and lived from AD 1036-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215327, "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-2001", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "52\n\n1101. Though well known for his poetry, he was a celebrated scholar-statesman who has been deified by popular acclaim. However, though not recorded as such, it would be unlikely for him not to have been deified by posthumous imperial decree, an honour coming into vogue at that time.\n\nHe was born in Meixian in Sichuan province and died in Changzhou in Fujian shortly after being permitted to leave exile on Hainan island. His father was a distinguished scholar, and owing to his father's long absences from home, Su received most of his education from his mother. At the age of 21, he entered the state examinations and headed the list of competitors. He rose in public office and was prominent among the strenuous opponents of the political economist, Wang Anshi. His first fall from grace in 1079 was from ministerial office when he was downgraded to be Governor of Hangzhou Fu. In 1086, at the start of a new reign, he was restored to favour but again incurred imperial displeasure, this time being exiled, first to Huizhou in Guangdong and finally to the semi-barbarous island of Hainan in 1097 where he was appointed to the petty office of sub-prefect of Yaizhou. During his exile, having complained that Hainan was wild and its \"frontier\" people, settlers from the mainland, without culture, he took a genuine interest in their welfare as well as the welfare of the original non-Chinese inhabitants. He was permitted to return from banishment in ca. 1100 and died shortly after. He spent the four years of his exile in Hainan in Wenchang, in the north-east of the island, and was the first great name in Chinese history connected intimately with Hainan. His memorial temple in Haikou in Hainan island is now a museum. Within the grounds of the temple is the spring which he is said to have had dug during a severe drought.\n\nd] Zhu Chuping was a magistrate in Hainan who had preceded Su Shi in the post as magistrate by some twenty years.\n\n3: Major Hainanese Deities noted in all Hainanese communities\n\nThese are uniquely Hainanese Gods\n\n13\n\na] Images of the Marquis of Wenzhou, Wenzhou Houwang\n\nI have been seen only on altars in temples founded and run by ethnic Hainanese. According to devotees, he is uniquely worshipped", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215328, "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-2001", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "53\n\nby the Hainanese and especially those from the Hainanese county of Wanning where he is primarily prayed to by the sick. He is claimed to be extremely efficacious and able to cure or heal any sickness or injury. He usually sends his Black or White Horse Generals to help devotees and only leaves the Heavens himself for very important cases. His image has only been seen in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Borneo, Bangkok and Phnom Penh where his festival is generally celebrated on the 15th of the fifth lunar month. However, he must never be prayed to for prosperity.\n\nTwo entirely different legends describe the origins of this deity, one more popular in Singapore and southern Malaysia, and the other in Thailand and Cambodia. In neither is the Marquis identified by name and he therefore remains unidentified.\n\nHe is also referred to as:\n\nthe Lord of the Seas, Wenzhou Haizhu Houwang\n\nTongzhu Houwang The Marquis Lord of the Aboriginal People\n\nShanqin Houwang The Imperial Marquis of the Mountains\n\nThe first legend claims that a petty king in China was waved by an individual who, in the city of Wenzhou on the coast of Zhejiang province, north of and nearly opposite the island of Taiwan, was awarded the title of Marquis. This happened a long, long time ago. The ruler of Hainan, as a separate state, so the legend continued, had an image of the Marquis brought to the island of Hainan and placed in a specially built temple where he has been worshipped ever since.\n\nThe second story relates that the Marquis was, variously, a Ming governor of Hainan island or a minister of an ancient dynasty against whom, through jealousy, evil ministers plotted. They killed him and threw his body into the sea where it turned into a log and floated away. A fisherman found it, realised that it had spiritual properties and so carved it into a statue which he revered and quickly became wealthy,\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215329, "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-2001", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "54\n\nThe Marquis is usually represented on altars by tablets though where there is an image it conventionally portrays him as a scholar-official, sitting wearing a scholar's winged cap. He has a pink face, a black beard, a rolled scroll in his left hand and a plaque bearing the characters 'May the State Prosper and the People Enjoy Peace' in his right hand.\n\nHe is usually accompanied by two aides, generals on horseback:\n\nYinma Jiangjun The Silver Horse General [mounted on a white horse]\n\nJinma Jiangjun The Gold Horse General [mounted on a black horse]\n\nIn the temple in Hougang Avenue 5 in Singapore where the main deity is Shuiwei Shengniang, the side altar stage left is dedicated to Wenzhou Houwang whose image stands on the left hand of and paired with a deity simply known as 'Da Laoye' whose image is remarkably similar to that of Wenzhou Houwang. Da Laoye has two guardians mounted on horses and armed with long handled swords. They are Generals Gan and Meng [see below 4e - list of deities in temple loose-leaf records]\n\nb] \"The Holy Mother of Shuiwei,' Shuiwei Shengmu, is primarily a Hainanese local deity who, in Hainan, was a protective deity prayed to mainly by fishermen. In South-east Asia where her cult has been established within Hainanese communities, she has also been adopted by devotees of other Chinese ethnic groups. In Singapore she is worshipped as a goddess who heals the sick by both Fukienese and Chaozhou devotees, the two ethnic groups which dominate the Chinese community in the island state. Her shrines have been seen in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia [even in a Chinese temple on the island of Bali], in Vietnam and Cambodia but not in either Hong Kong or Taiwan. It is claimed that the oldest Chinese temple in Thailand is dedicated to Shuiwei Shengmu, at Paknam pho. Other old temples dedicated to her have been noted in Korat and the surrounding area. Her images have no unique identifying characteristics. She is a motherly matron, sitting on a throne, attended by several assistants, and in several places she is portrayed wearing a cap bearing one to five birds with open wings.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215331, "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-2001", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "56\n\nhis bill. He described the lady who had ordered the materials and when he heard that it was the goddess herself he forwent his bill and donated the materials. The temple was built on the side of the hill above Wenchang town, called Shuiwei Po, which became the cult centre.\n\nMarginal variations of the story heard in Penang and Cambodia include the following: a number of fishermen aboard a junk threw out their net and drew in an enormously heavy but small log, requiring the joint effort of the whole crew. After their communal vow to have the log carved and having hauled in two large catches, they were so embarrassed at not being able to afford to have the log carved and to raise a shrine to house it they left it on the edge of the village where it was incorporated into the walls of a pigsty. Pigs however began sickening and dying, and only when Pan saw a glowing light over the pigsty did he recall the log and their promise. He burnt incense, asked forgiveness and all became tranquil and normal. People claimed to have seen an exquisitely beautiful young woman on the branch overhanging the pigsty and came to realize that it was the spirit of the log. They collected funds, had a temple built and the log carved into the shape of the woman they had seen on the branch. The temple became the cult centre for the Holy Mother who is also known as:\n\nPaihai Shen The Spirit who Controls the Seas.\n\nAccording to Wilmott10, Shuiwei Shengmu, the main deity in the Hainanese temple in Phnom-penh, changed her name to being simply Shengmu because the Cantonese connotation of the term 'Shuiwei' was associated with bad fortune in business11 and kept many people from frequenting the temple.\n\n4: Uniquely Hainanese Secondary Deities\n\n[though a few are also revered China-wide by Han Chinese]\n\na] The One Hundred and Eight Brothers-\n\nYibai lingba Xiongde 一百零八兄弟\n\nThe tablet to the 108 Brothers is exclusively revered on secondary altars in Hainanese temples in South-east Asia only. The Brothers are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215332, "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-2001", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "57\n\nnot orthodox spirits shen\n\nbut dark spirits. Yinshen, the ghosts of those who have died a violent death before their due date.\n\nChinese usually describe this group, in English, as the 108 Martyrs. They are never portrayed as images and tend to be regarded more as public worthies, folk hero \"ethnic group\" ancestors rather than deities. The tablet is very similar to the ancestral tablet and simply states that it is the 'Tablet to the One Hundred and Eight Brothers'. It is venerated and although the spirits of the brothers are occasionally asked for advice by devotees they are not usually prayed to for major requests or protection, although in Java in one temple the tablet was prayed to by seafarers before they set out on a long journey. Their festival, simple and not in any way lavish, is generally celebrated on the 15th day of the tenth lunar month, though in Singapore it is held on the 3rd of the eighth lunar month.\n\nThe question is, who were the One Hundred and Eight Brothers? Three separate versions of the story of their demise have each been recounted with great solemnity, conviction and confidence by temple keepers in Java, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, and even in a Chinese temple in Bali. In Penang the story centres on a junk-load of Hainanese immigrants heading for South-east Asia which never arrived. One version claims that they were mistaken for pirates and wiped out by the 'French' [sic] navy off Annam or the 'British' off Malaya again having been mistaken for pirates. Another version suggests that they were all drowned during a typhoon off the southern tip of what is now Vietnam, and yet another that they were annihilated by Chinese government forces off the Leizhou peninsular immediately north of Hainan when, again, they were mistaken for pirates.12 The third story is that they were the original immigrants from Fujian province who arrived in Hainan to settle but all died in Hainan from disease or at the hands of the aborigines. A twist to the version heard in Penang claimed that the typhoon which sank the junk in the South China Seas drowned all but one of the one hundred and nine aboard, one small boy being saved after days of drifting on wreckage. He then died in Malaya at a ripe old age.\n\n12\n\nOne hundred and eight is a secret symbolic number used by secret societies, and one of the Triad gangs in British Malaya was known as the 'One Hundred and Eight Society.' with a devotee in Seremban", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215333, "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-2001", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "58\n\nclaiming that the Society used to worship ‘openly' in Hainanese temples before convening a meeting. One hundred and eight is also a Buddhist number, the number of the beads in a rosary, the number of passions and delusions, and the number of tolls of the monastery bell at dawn and dusk. A further connotation of the number 108 is reflected in the number of times temple keepers claimed that the Brothers were the 108 heroes at Liang Shan Po in the classic novel, Shuihu Chuan, 'The Water Margin,' but when pressed, in every case they admitted that this had been no more than a guess.\n\nThe Brothers are also known as:\n\nYibai You Ba Gong 一百有八公\n\nYibai You Xiongdi 一百有八兄弟 and\n\nYibai Lingba Xiongdi Zhonghun 一百零八兄弟忠魂\n\nLu Bode and Ma Yuan are two generals revered in Hainanese temples, often on the same altar, with both bearing the same honorific, the Wave Conquering General, [Fupo Jiangjun13].\n\nThe first general, Lu Bode, subjugated large areas of what today is Guangdong province during the Earlier Han [ca. 120 BC]. A native of Pingzhou, he served with distinction under He Chubing who became the president of the Board of War. In BC 120 he subjugated large portions of what is today Guangdong and Guangxi, and received further honours.\n\nThe second general, Ma Yuan [14BC - AD 49], was also awarded the title of the Wave Conqueror for the pacification of the southern region some hundred years later. Popular in Guangdong province he used also to be particularly honoured in Guangxi where he was revered as a river god, \"The Wave Conquering General - Fupo Jiangjun' and in Hengzhou in Hunan he used to be the main deity in a small temple where he was worshipped as the protective deity at the local river rapids.\n\nMa Yuan, also known as the Vanguard General, Xianfeng14 led a further southern expansion of the Han empire and has been popularly worshipped from about the fifth century AD by Han settlers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215334, "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-2001", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "59\n\nin southern China. Although he is particularly remembered in the south of China as the General who conquered the Yue people [Tonkinese] in about AD 39, the Hainanese in South-east Asia regard him as one of their special heroes with his image on side altars in several Hainanese community temples in Malaysia and Sumatra. Support of such a powerful spirit of a general who symbolised courage and confidence in the comparatively newly conquered south was vital to bolster the spirits of the Chinese settlers and to counter threats from aborigines, the climate and the general misgivings of the migrants so far from the Han homelands of central and northern China. Although this was the original reason for the worship of this deity, in recent centuries it has been lost and, in general, replaced by worship for his magical efficacy in providing satisfactory solutions to daily problems.\n\nHe began his career under the Xin dynasty ruler, the usurper Wang Mang but stimulated by ambition he later took up arms against him. During one campaign when briefing his generals he produced a \"cloth model\" by tracing out the lie of the land in a large tray of rice pointing out the routes and lines of advance his assembled generals should take. He aided Liu Xiu in re-establishing the Han dynasty by defeating the forces loyal to Wang Mang. Ma was then appointed Governor of what is now Gansu province, in the north-west, from where he led an army down to Tonkin to put down the revolt against the Chinese overlords.\n\nMa Yuan, well known in Guangzhou for his great height and bravery as a general, was particularly renowned for his campaign in Annam where he had pacified the country and brought back to Guangzhou city a number of Tonkinese bronze drums which he had melted and cast into statues of horses. Apart from the award of the title 'The Conquering Wave' he had the honour of having his daughter joined in marriage with the heir apparent.\n\nA certain Lady Zhu headed the insurrection against the Chinese in Annam and was captured and sentenced to death. She had been stripped of her finery before execution and was dressed in her barest clothes. Ma Yuan took pity on her and gave her one of his robes to cover her bare limbs which is said to have led to the Tonkinese ladies' custom of wearing trousers and a long covering dress with wide sleeves.\n\nDespite his age he volunteered with his ardour and ferocity", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215335, "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-2001", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "60\n\nundimmed, and taking command of an army, first in face of a threatened invasion by the dreaded Huns of Central Asia, and again later, in AD 48, to pacify the wild aboriginal tribes of Hunan. However, he died during the campaign in Hunan.\n\nReverend Henry15 referred to Fupo Jiangjun, as a Cantonese deity who had temples scattered along the vicinity of the Pearl and West Rivers where he was worshipped by boatmen and travellers. The reason for his popularity apparently was because it was widely believed that Fupo and his army had crossed the range between Hunan and Guangdong, conquering south China, using double-decker troop carrying boats to ferry his troops from the hinterland of Hunan to Guangzhou. The boats had to be portered across the mountains against all odds.\n\n16 Mesny noted that a number of temples in Guangxi honouring Fupo had kept alive the memory of his martial deeds and exploits. A temple on the West River near the great rapids was striking for its perfect preservation. It was kept in repair, wrote Mesny, by boatmen who regarded the deity in some special manner.\n\nIn Taiwan Ma Yuan is the main deity in some half a dozen temples where he is known as Fushun Jiangjun.\n\nc] The Great Emperor, the Plum Blossom Immortal, Mei Xian Dadi ★✩, is a minor Daoist cult Immortal whose image has only been noted on the altars of three temples, all within the Hainanese communities in Kranji, Singapore. His title however appears on the temple deity list together with other deities in five temples in southern Malaysia. Temple keepers agree that the Plum Blossom Immortal was a famous doctor who, according to a god carver, bore the personal name of Zhang Chuang, lived somewhere in China many centuries ago, and is now particularly revered by pregnant women who he protects from malignant forces. He also helps them by ensuring that the babes themselves are small and therefore do not cause any injury to the mother during birth.\n\nImages of the Plum Blossom Immortal have no unique characteristics and vary considerably from temple to temple. Two depict him seated, and at first glance looking somewhat like Guan Gong,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215336, "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-2001", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "dressed in robes and a scholar's tile cap. The eyes are rounder than those of Guan Gong and they have a pink face, though they are sitting holding an open book in the left hand as does Guan Gong. The other versions are, in general, standard seated scholar-officials, with black beards and holding, in one case a seal in his left hand, and in the others a sword or fly switch in his right. In four of the images he is wearing Daoist robes decorated with the bagua signs. In every temple his image is flanked by two anonymous military attendants.\n\nImages of the Plum Blossom Immortal have no unique characteristics and vary considerably from temple to temple. Two depict him seated, and at first glance looking somewhat like Guan Gong, dressed in robes and a scholar's tile cap. The eyes are rounder than those of Guan Gong and they have a pink face, though they are sitting holding an open book in the left hand as does Guan Gong. The other versions are, in general, standard seated scholar-officials, with black beards and holding, in one case a seal in his left hand, and in the others a sword or fly switch in his right. In four of the images he is wearing Daoist robes decorated with the bagua signs. In every temple his image is flanked by two anonymous military attendants.\n\nHis festival is celebrated annually on the 20th of the ninth lunar month and his full title copied off one of the temple notice boards is Shangqing Sanwu Mei Xian Yuan Zhangui dongxian Zhang Dadi 上清三五梅仙院斬鬼洞仙張大帝,\n\nd] The Loyal and Fierce Marquis, Zhonglie Houwang 忠烈侯王, was a secondary image on the main altar in a rural hut-temple in Singapore. He was paired with Wenzhou Houwang 溫州侯王 and sat on an ornamental chair on Wenzhou Houwang's left hand side, holding in his right hand a jade-like sceptre identical with the one Wenzhou Houwang is holding in his right hand [May the State Prosper and the People Enjoy Peace]. Little was known about Zhonglie Houwang apart from a hazy memory from one of the temple elders that he had been a famous village headman many, many years earlier, his personal names now lost in time.\n\ne) A page in a loose-leaf book kept by the temple custodian in a small atap1 Hainanese temple in Lorong Ah Soo in Singapore listed the titles of the five deities [*] and nine minor spirits or aides [#] revered by devotees, some understood to be portrayed in image form on the temple altars whilst the majority were simply known by their titles and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215338, "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-2001", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "63\n\nofficial, sitting in full armour, with a black beard and a light brown face. He was attended by generals Gan and Meng.\n\nThe Marquis, the Kind and Merciful, Virtuous and Brave Commander-in-Chief who Pacified the Mountains and Rivers [*]\n\n玉封耀武威德仁慈綏鎮河山義勇都督候王\n\nGeneral Gan\", Commander of the Left [#]\n\n左指揮甘大將\n\nGeneral Meng, Commander of the Right [#]\n\n右指揮蒙大將\n\nDoor Guardian in charge of 1,000 Buildings, of the Left [#]\n\n左千門官\n\nHousehold Guardian in charge of 100 Households, of the Right [#]\n\n右百戶官\n\nCelestial and Terrestrial Soldiers, Yin [Darkness] Soldiers and Yang [Light] Soldiers [#]\n\n天兵,地兵,陰兵,陽兵\n\n[*] Names on lists of deities in Hainanese temples usually claimed to be one or other of the images on one of the altars but whose details, corroboration and in most cases not seen elsewhere, include:\n\nShengzhi Taizi Prince of the Holy Decree [Singapore]\n\nXiannu er niang The Second Maiden of the Immortal Women [Seletar: Singapore]\n\nZhengxun Furen The Upright and Auspicious Matron [Singapore]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215339, "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-2001", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "64\n\n5: Shared with other Han Ethnic Groups\n\n[though regarded by Hainanese as Unique Hainanese Deities]\n\na] Madame Xian, Xian Tai Furen ★★↑ is a deity whose image has only been noted on two altars in Hainanese folk religion temples, within fifteen miles of each other, in southern Malaysia, in Rengam and Kluang. The image is of a standard matron, and in both temples it stands alongside images of Tian Hou, the patron deity of seafarers, and Shuiwei Shengmu.\n\nMadame Xian was the wife of Feng Bao, an official of the Liang dynasty who became prefect of Gaoliang and who died at the age of 44 in AD 558. Before her marriage, she had been schooled at home by an extraordinary teacher who not only taught her secret practices but also military strategy and tactics. Despite having trained and commanded troops in battle, she also frequently showed her alter ego trying to persuade her relatives, and in particular her brother, to be kind and considerate. Her brother was markedly different from her. He used the skills she had imparted to him to attack neighbouring areas, causing great misery and hardship, and though it took time, she eventually managed to persuade him to stop causing trouble to others. The peace that then reigned brought many over to her side, and her exploits came to the notice of Feng Rong, the prefect of Gangzhou, who arranged for her to marry his son, Feng Bao.\n\nAlthough Feng Bao, as prefect of Gaoliang, was fair and strict, his orders were still not being carried out, and Madame Xian, now his wife of some years, first warned her husband's subordinates and then drafted orders which stated that anyone who committed a crime, even blood relations of officials, would be punished severely. From then on, laws were applied with great fairness, and criminals were deterred.\n\nA few days later, Li did rebel and sent an army under General Dou Shi to take over power in the capital. Madame Xian pondered that if her husband joined battle against Dou Shi, there would be bitter fighting and many casualties. She realized that Dou Shi was a poor general who was locked in combat with the emperor's forces and would be unable to assist Li Qianshi in Gaozhou; therefore, she and her husband should devise a way to defeat Li by strategy. She told her husband that he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215341, "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-2001", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "66\n\nthe imperial troops defending Lingnan area. Madame Xian sent Feng Sheng to help them but as the rebel general and Feng Sheng were old friends, Feng Sheng delayed his attack on the rebels, Madame Xian was furious and had Feng Sheng cast into gaol. She then despatched Feng An but found it necessary for herself to don armour and lead the troops against the rebels. Within a couple of months it was all over. The rebels surrendered. The Sui emperor pardoned Feng Sheng and appointed him to be the Governor of Luzhou, and at the same time appointed Feng Huai to be Governor of Guangzhou and at the same time appointed Feng Huai to be Governor of Guangzhou and Feng An as Governor of Gaozhou. He also appointed Feng Bao, Madame Xian's long deceased husband, the posthumous Area Commander-in-Chief of Guangzhou and Marquis of Jiaoguo so that he could appoint Madame Xian as Duchess of Jiaoguo. He also granted her the seal of her title to enable her to administer six prefectures. The empress presented Madame Xian with a tiara, jewellery and robes which Madame Xian placed in a chest in the main hall to display them to the family as a reward for three generations of loyalty and filial piety. She then advised the future generations to continue to do their duty.\n\nIn AD 591 a number of places rebelled against the dynasty due to the corruption and tyranny of the Area Commander-in-chief of Panyou. Madame Xian proposed that she should arbitrate, and listed the crimes of the Area Commander-in-Chief to the emperor and peace was restored.\n\nShe died at the age of 89 and was granted the posthumous title of Huguo Shengmu and given a state funeral. She was buried in Tianbai county, commonly known as Gaoling where a temple was raised in her honour leading to today's cult.\n\nb] A deity who, though not Hainanese, is revered by them in several temples in South-east Asia, is the Lord of the White Horse, Baima Laoshi Gong, possibly better known simply as Laoshi Gong. He has only been noted in three temples, in Singapore and Malaysia, though an image of him did appear on sale in a Kowloon curio shop some years ago. He is the main deity in two of the three temples, both on the west coast of central Malaysia, one north of Klang and the other to the south.\n\nApart from in the two temples in Malaysia, other temple keepers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215343, "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-2001", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "68\n\nLaoshi Gong has a unique image. He is portrayed as a general sitting on a folding camp stool, in the process of drawing his sword from its scabbard with his right hand. The sword is partially withdrawn from its scabbard which is hanging on his left side and clasped by the left hand. His helmet has a large pointed spike on top [like the German pickelhaube], and he has four flags protruding from the rack in which they are secured across his back, above his shoulders indicating his rank. The camp stool is an interesting feature. It is a typical folding stool, with a full tiger skin carefully arranged, draped over the back of the stool, the whole image and stool with skin being carved from one block.\n\nLin Fu Taishi Gong, is usually simply referred to as Taishi Gong or Taishi Ye. He is a minor deity in two temples, one in the Hainanese temple, off Balestier Road in Singapore where he was referred to as Lin Fu Xiangye, Prime Minister Lin, with his annual festival celebrated on the double eighth. The other is a Hokkien temple in Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, where he is a minor deity having been placed there by members of the small Hainanese community. He is also known in Ampang as Marshal Lin, Lin Fu Yuanshuai or Lin Fu Dashi, and, during the annual festival of the major Hokkien deity Nine Emperors, is represented by his incense urn when carried in procession with three other deities. They are all accompanied by spirit mediums who are possessed by these deities, including Lin Fu Dashi. In both of these temples he is renowned for his ability to cure [internal] diseases and, especially in Ampang, he is also prayed to for wealth and good business. Temple custodians identified the deity as one of their clan ancestors, Lin Xiyuan who, according to biographies, was born in Fujian during the Ming, and died in about AD 1561. He became an official who argued long and hard against the power of the palace eunuchs, and was renowned for the help he provided to the populace during a major famine. Amongst his many achievements were his successes in the field of education in Guangdong province, and the use of a military force to destroy a band of robbers. He is also claimed to have pacified a number of outlaws. During the troubles in Annam he organised a pacification force, built up an intelligence network only to find that he was not required to act, either by the emperor or by the situation. He was dismissed, accused of usurping his authority and returned to his home where he wrote poetry and Confucian dissertations. He studied for many years and wrote source books for\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215344, "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-2001", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "69\n\nexamination candidates, he also became an entrepreneur in and around the port of Xiamen [Amoy] at a time when taking part in foreign trade was illegal. He owned a fleet of cargo junks known as 'ferryboats' in order to circumvent the law. His supercargoes contracted business for him, in particular in South-east Asia, and he became sufficiently wealthy to ignore the law forbidding trade with foreigners and contacts with local coastal pirates.\n\nd] The Saintly Lord of the Dragon's Tail, Longwei Shenggong\n\nhas only been seen on the altar in two temples both Hainanese and both in Singapore where he is said to be prayed to for protection and general benefits. However, several devotees claimed that a medium had discovered that Longwei Shenggong should be specifically approached by those whose parents are thought to be suffering in Hell as the deity had proved to have contacts and had even succeeded in being their saviour.\n\nHe appears to have no personal and unique legend. His image portrays him as a standard seated mandarin with a wispy black beard but no unique characteristics, and is either the main deity on a secondary altar or a minor deity on the secondary altar, co-located with Shuiwei Shengmu in one temple, and in another he was accompanied by his consort, Longwei Furen AA.\n\ne] An image of Hai Rui, another minister banished to Hainan, has only once been noted on a temple altar, a side altar in a small coastal temple in Singapore dedicated to the Nine Emperors, and run by and for Chaozhou Chinese. His image, which depicts him as a standard seated mandarin without any unique characteristics, is attended by aides. Hai Rui, also known in temples as Hai Rui Gong was a Ming official whose reputation as a just and impartial magistrate was based on his belief that laws should be enforced at all levels irrespective of rank or blood, and his criticisms of extortion and abuse of public revenue made his name a slogan for immeasurable honesty for later generations. He is the hero of a lengthy novel 'The Story of the Scarlet Robe' in twenty volumes. Hai Rui was born in Qiongzhou [Kiungchou] in Hainan and died a natural death at the capital, Nanjing in 1587. His tomb is in the western suburb of the northern port of Haikou, at Pintian on his native Hainan where he is still revered and offered supplicatory prayers by devotees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215346, "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-2001", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "71\n\nobvious to any Chinese with an ounce of nous. Two years later he wrote a play, Hai Rui Dismissed, purporting to be about Hai Rui. This was seen as a covert attack on Mao Zedong's purge of Marshal Peng Dehuai who had openly blamed Mao for the 1959 famine. The purge of the Peking hierarchy led by Yao Wenyuan, a Communist political writer in 1965 [who was later one of the Gang of Four], is usually seen as the overture to the Cultural Revolution in China, Hai Rui being used as a symbol for Peng Dehuai, Mao's fallen rival.\n\nIn a Hainanese community temple dedicated to the Jade Emperor near Bukit Mertajam in northern Malaysia two images flanked the main deity, on his left hand his Fourth Daughter and on his right Luo Yanhua, about whom nothing more is known other than she is claimed to be a unique Hainanese deity. Her image has not been seen or recorded anywhere else, hand, and aide to the Fourth Daughter.\n\nAlthough Lishan Laomu is primarily a Chaozhou local folk religion cult goddess she is also worshipped widely in Hainanese temples where she is regarded as a Hainanese cult. Lishan Laomu is her more popular title rather than Lishan Shengmu, though considering the ambiguities in legend, title and the initial character, it is open to question whether we might have more than one deity here. Three different characters for Li, all homophones, have been noted. The first means black, the second pear, and the third black horse. The first is the more popular version in central Malaysia and Hong Kong. The second appears to be the character preferred by the Hainanese, and the third has only been encountered in Taiwanese temples. She was referred to in a Saigon Hainanese temple as either Yimei Niangniang 懿美娘娘 or Yide Niangniang 懿德娘娘.\n\nAn elderly lady temple keeper in Kowloon approached the deity and \"introduced\" me to Lishan Shengmu as ‘a foreigner who wished to disperse the mists of his ignorance.' She told me that Miss Fan, a Daoist nun, had been summoned by Tian Hou to Heaven to be trained to become an Immortal and is now a caring spirit known as Lishan Shengmu, the Saintly Mother [or Matron] Lishan.\n\nIn an interesting but typical misconception an odd title of a deity was noted in a temple in Lincoln Road in Singapore where the custodian who claimed to be Hainanese also claimed that all the deities were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215347, "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-2001", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "72\n\nuniquely Hainanese. In practice of the seventeen only one was Hainanese and that bore the odd title. It was Li San Shengmu, literally the Saintly Mother Li the third. This is obviously Li Shan, misheard with the 'san' assumed to be the 'Third'.\n\nThe most widespread claim is that Lishan Shengmu or Lishan Laomu24 was a ferocious lady general of the Tang dynasty known for her love of fighting, and is now a popular character in Chaozhou plays. However, to many Chinese she is better known by the maiden name of Fan Li-shan as merely the wife and mother of two famous generals, Xue. Several stories told about her contain in addition to common factors, others involving unconnected genuine historical heroes, some from entirely different eras. The composite story of the best known legends about Miss Fan25 begins with her warrior father giving her a 'sword to execute Immortals' and a 'whip to beat the spirits' and after she had completed her military training and prior to her going off to help General Xue Dingshan26 to pacify the west. In one version she joined up with him, served and fought alongside winning his trust and favour. In another Xue met and fought her on the battlefield. She defeated him but, because he was a handsome general, and with a bit of persuasion, she married him. A photocopied broadsheet distributed by the temple keeper in a small immigrant settlement shrine above Kowloon claimed that the Lishan cult had been popular in central China, and that her story, described in the 'Conquest of the West,' ostensibly written by Xue Dingshan himself, explained that she had been the wife of Xue, later transformed into an Immortal as a reward for her miracles and achievements.\n\nThere is also a Lishan Laomu who is also a definitive goddess appearing in the great novel The Journey to the West, the story of the fantastic journey made by Xuanzang, together with Sun, the Monkey, Sha the monk and Pigsy. In part of the story it appears likely that Lishan was Monkey's elder sister, a courtesy title rather than a blood relationship. She, together with her three daughters, all Bodhisattvas, named Truth, Love and Pity, transformed themselves into beautiful women in order to tempt the Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang and his entourage of Monkey, Pigsy and Sha with their beauty. She changed herself into a widow and proposed to Xuanzang who rejected her. She and her daughters teased Pigsy, who after many adventures found that they were merely figments of his imagination. This goddess would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215348, "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-2001", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "73\n\nseem to be in no way connected with the wife and mother of the Tang dynasty generals.\n\nAlthough her image is popular in South-east Asia where it is to be found as the main deity on secondary altars in both Chaozhou and Hainanese temples, it has also been noted in Taiwan, and in Hong Kong in four temples and a further one in Macau. She is the main deity in one Hong Kong temple, and the main deity on secondary altars in the other three and in Macau.\n\nShe is accompanied in many instances by two anonymous aides or maids, though in a Hainanese temple in Malate in Manila they are known as Li Laoxian Gu #t, and in Medan in Sumatra in a Hainanese temple by two guardian generals, General of the Iron Ox, Tieniu Jiangjun and the General of the Bronze Ox, Tongniu Jiangjun. [see below 6 a]\n\nWeng Zhong is yet another deity regarded by Hainanese as uniquely theirs even though his image was noted in several places across central China during the late 19th century. Weng Zhong lived during the Tang and is only known for one remarkable incident. He was suddenly showered with gold. He was born in Gansu province and was a poverty-stricken scholar who lived alone - however, his windfall, the cause of which has never been explained, has led him to be regarded by some devotees to revere him as a God of Wealth. His image has been seen in a temple near Haikou in northern Hainan, simply portraying him as a scholar, standing, dressed in his robes and holding a tablet in both hands before his chest. His full name was Weng Zhongru 翁仲儒.\n\n6: Images of Aides to deities\n\na] As we have seen the Iron Ox General, Tie’niu Jiangjun 铁牛将军 is a tamed demonic spirit and guardian of the major deity Lishan Shengmu. He has only been noted once, paired with her other tamed demonic spirit guardian, the Bronze Ox General, Tongniu Jiangjun 銅牛将军, on the main altar in a specifically Hainanese community temple in Jalan Rindu in Singapore, now long pulled down for urban development. This may, of course, be an entirely Chaozhou cult but revered also by the Hainanese devotees of the local community and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215349, "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-2001", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "74\n\nperhaps taken over within their own ethnic temple.\n\nThe Iron-ox General is a black-skinned demonic figure dressed in pantaloons and anklets, standing, with a tiger skin draped around his waist, and with a bolero covering his shoulders. He has a narrow plain coronet, and is holding a heavy chain in his left hand and an axe raised above his head in his right.\n\nThe Iron-ox and Bronze-ox were both live oxen transformed by Lishan Shengmu into human, albeit demonic form, to be her guardians and to protect the gateway to her mountain. They have powers in their own right which include, it is claimed, the prevention of natural disasters, and in particular flooding.27\n\nb] In Fujian province prior to 1949 it was not uncommon to see the Eight Youths, young boys running round the procession when the palanquin containing the image of the deity was being borne around his parish. The boys were regarded in most places as the incarnate soldiery of the spirit armies of the deities. In others they were underworld generals whose exorcising dance was performed to rid the vicinity of demons. In Taiwan groups of young men regularly meet in certain temples and practice exorcist drills which they then perform for the public during annual ceremonies. Their other function is to act as bodyguards to the major deity in their temple when he is taken out in his carrying chair to process around the town. These youths are known in Taiwan as the Eight Underworld Generals A#. They are skilled in martial arts, have their faces painted in specific patterns using a number of bright colours, somewhat similar to the actors in Peking opera but generally regarded as demonic faces, and are dressed in a uniform of jacket and trousers and in a few temples, according to one temple keeper, they wear red bands, similar to those worn by the Boxers of the 1900 Rebellion, identifying which unit they belong to. The markings and forms of these youths tend to be identical with the Ba Jia Jiang, the statues lining the walls of Underworld temples in Taiwan. Such statues have also been noted in several Hainanese temples in South-east Asia where the group of Eight is known as Ba Ban Gong A, The \"Eight Bosses\". Whereas the total, Eight, would appear to be somewhat immaterial to most devotees and temple keepers, in Singapore the Eight represented the large number of gaolers in each of eight of the Ten Courts of the Underworld responsible for purging\n\n28", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215350, "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-2001", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "75\n\nsouls (that is the Second to the Ninth as the First and Tenth Courts are basically administrative.)\n\nc] Yinya Ya Shuai\n\nThe Silver Tooth Vice-marshal, P, has been noted only in one temple, a popular religion rural shrine in a Hainanese community in Paya Lebar in Singapore now long gone due to urbanisation. It is a unique image, a stark and fierce black-faced soldier holding two magic “swords\" (whips) one in each hand and sitting astride a mythical animal, possibly a Qilin. He is portrayed as demonic and may well be an aide to a major deity, the main deity on the altar being Lei Zu. He was not venerated in his own right, though devotees did place incense before his, and every other image in the temple.\n\nThe Silver Tooth Vice-Marshal is co-located in several Hainanese temples with the White Tooth General, Baiya Zhongjiang, who is also a minor deity, an assistant and escorting-general to Doutian Yuanshuai (Lei Zu) and also known as Baiya Jiangjun. His image has been noted only in Singapore and Seremban on folk religion altars where he is portrayed standing on one foot, with his right foot raised behind as if running, and holding a flag bearing the character, ling [By Order] in his left hand. He has a stark white face. His image in a Hainanese community temple in Payar Lebar Crescent, now long removed for a housing development scheme, was referred to together with the Silver-Tooth Vice-Marshal as one of the pair of deputies to the main deity on the altar, Doutian Fushuai. In another temple, he was co-located on a Hainanese community altar with Wantian Zhushuai who was less starkly white-faced. His image, primarily revered in Henghua Hokkien communities in Singapore and Malaysia, was portrayed as the main deity in the Under Altar at the side wall of the main hall of the Nine Carps Temple [Jiuli Xian] in Singapore as a seated scholar dressed in a white robe and scholar official's cap, holding a triangular flag in his right hand and a red globe in his left.\n\nThe temple custodian knew nothing of the origins or legends of either the White Tooth Marshal or the Silver Tooth Vice Marshal.\n\n7: Deified Locals\n\na] Two separate women have been individually revered on altars", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215351, "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-2001", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "76\n\nwithin their memorial temples in Hainan. They may or may not be regarded as deities as details are not available, and may perhaps be simply ladies honoured for a specific reason.\n\nThe first is Huang Dao po [characters not available], who is said to have lived during the 14th century in Hainan and was proficient at cotton spinning. She travelled to central China where she taught the art of spinning to local women. There was [and may still be] a memorial temple to her in Qiongzhou in Hainan but once more, without any details.\n\nThe second is Taihua Furen\n\nA) who has only been noted\n\nonce. Her tablet has been seen on an altar in Hainan, and apart from it being the spirit of a human, who is again said to have lived during the 14th century, again nothing further is known.\n\nb] Liang Qinzhong, a Hainanese boy of seventeen, was struck and killed by lightning in a small kampong in Tanglin in Singapore in 1963. Shortly after it happened the ladies of the Hainanese community in the kampong in which Liang had lived attributed remarkable events to his spirit, and whenever they prayed before his tablet their wishes were fulfilled2. Quite quickly a cult developed and devotees came from all around. An attap hut shrine, dedicated to Shuiwei Shengniang, was altered to make way for a secondary altar on to which was placed the tablet dedicated to Liang Taiye, together with a portrait image of the youth. Above the image of Liang hung a sketch of him dressed in scholar's robes with a flash of lightning entering his breast. He was believed to have obtained power [ling] from the bolt, and continued to answer devotee's pleas to their satisfaction. One of the walls of the attap hut was hung with framed testimonials, many bearing a photograph of the person who had been helped by the deity. His festival was held annually on his birthday, the 12th of the seventh lunar month. This cult disappeared from Tanglin once the kampong had been demolished during the early seventies to make way for a new housing estate.\n\n8: Unidentified Images believed to be uniquely Hainanese\n\nThere have been a number of deities, noted either on lists of the gods within a temple or on the front face of their socle which remain unidentified. These include:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215352, "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-2001", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "77\n\na] Changhua Laoye Shen\n\nIt\n\nseen in Singapore on a Hainanese wayyang street theatre altar connected in some way with the major China-wide deity Hua Guang Dadi.\n\nb] As with small folk religion temples in all southern Chinese communities there are very minor deities on their altars about whom nothing is known. The following stand on a side altar in a small Hainanese temple on the Tampines Road in Singapore and are largely ignored though they are prayed to by a few devotees, more in passing rather than specifically for protection:\n\nmain deity: The Marquis of the Heaven of the Buddhas, Fo Tian Houwang\n\nSoldier astride a red horse, wearing green and gilt armour, with a pink face, black beard and a sword raised in his right hand.\n\nflanked by: Shata Zunwang Qi Guan\n\nand\n\nSoldier astride a white horse, with green-gilt robes, black beard, brown face and sword raised in his right hand.\n\nYongmeng Yatou Wang San Guan\n\nSoldier astride a black horse, with green-gilt robes over his armour, black bearded and a sword raised in his right hand.\n\nConclusion\n\nThere are some seventy to eighty major Han Chinese folk religion deities to be found in every part of China, and Hainan is no exception. However, in Hainan as in every local community, be it province, county, town or village, and even ethnic group, there are also local deified heroes and worthies not seen beyond their immediate area.\n\nTaken all in all, the range of deities on Hainanese altars is much the same as in all the other southern Chinese Han ethnic group temples. Hainanese communities, however, do have a number of uniquely Hainanese cult deities both on Hainan island as well as within Hainanese communities in south-east Asia. Although their legends are unique to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215353, "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-2001", "page_number": 130, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "78\n\nHainan island as well as within Hainanese communities in south-east Asia. Although their legends are unique to Hainanese they are similar in style and format to those told in other ethnic groups.\n\nSadly, most of the rural temples on Hainan island itself have little left of their original images following the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. It is fortunate that we do still have several Hainanese communities in south-east Asia where little has changed over the past century. However, intermarriage between Hainanese devotees and those of other Han ethnic groups has meant that to identify cults as uniquely Hainanese has become that much more difficult.\n\nNOTES\n\n1\n\n2\n\nPopular or folk religion is an amalgam of Buddhist, Daoist and local beliefs ignored by Confucianists, Buddhists and Daoists as well as by the majority of educated Chinese.\n\nHengwa is sometimes referred to as the Puxian sub-group.\n\nHokkien is the Fujian linguistic group word for Fujian people as well as their language. Minnan is the area of southern Fujian province from which many immigrants to Taiwan and South-east Asia originated and is a linguistic sub-group of Hokkien.\n\n4 Buddhist and Daoist images on such altars have not been included in this article, even though a number have been seen on folk religion altars in Hainanese temples, as they are all revered China-wide.\n\n5 Ma Zu is primarily the Fujian community title for Tian Hou.\n\n7\n\nBoth Third and Fourth are deities that have been noted on Hainan island and within Hainanese overseas communities.\n\nAn entirely different deity, the Saintly Matron of Wenzhou, Wenzhou Shengmu would appear not to be connected in any way with Wenzhou Houwang. Nor has she been noted on altars within the overseas southern Chinese communities. She has only been noted by William Mesny who saw an image of her in Zhejiang province in 1896 [doubtless connected with the local coastal city of Wenzhou], and suggested that as her surname appeared to have been Lin she may well be Tian Hou, the patron goddess of seafarers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215354, "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-2001", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "79\n\nگر\n\nA common saying and not specifically linked with this deity.\n\nIt was explained that there are three Laoye [San Laoye] of whom Da Laoye is the senior.\n\n\"Wilmott WE: The Political Structure of the Chinese Community in Cambodia. The Athlone Press: London 1970.\n\n13\n\nThe phrase 'shuiwer' in Cantonese is a slang expression [slow water] for 'business is slow.'\n\nThe important fact was that all 108 had either reached their prescribed time of death and were therefore deified as saints [shen] by the Jade Emperor OR they died their violent death before their due date and were roaming ghosts who had to be pacified and placated. Here we have some devotees regarding them as spirits and asking advice and others who look upon them as dark spirits who require propitiatory offerings and no more.\n\nMa Yuan was the second general to be awarded the title of the Fupo, Wave Conqueror for the pacification of the southern region. The first was Lu Bode who, during the Earlier Han (ca. 120 BC), had subjugated large areas of what today is Guangdong province.\n\nXianfeng is a title which has been noted in connection with three entirely unconnected deities.\n\n* Henry BC: The Cross and the Dragon: Canton: 1883.\n\n10\n\n$7\n\nMeesny, William: Tungking: Noronha: Hong Kong: 1884,\n\nZhonglic was a common posthumous title used during the early Qing.\n\n12\n\natap is the generic name for the wooden-sided huts with the dried-leaf roof so common in Singapore and Malaysian rural areas until the 1970s. Atap consists of the dried leaves of the nipa palm.\n\n19 lit. Office Keepers.\n\n20 This is the only title which has been noted elsewhere though probably not identical with the Hainanese deity. General Gan is one of the Eight Bodyguard Generals, known as The Day Patrolling General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215355, "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-2001", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "80\n\n21 This is present day Maoming in western Guangdong province, not too far from the Liaozhou peninsula leading down to Hainan.\n\n22 A city in south eastern Guangdong province, half way between the Liaozhou peninsula and the Pearl River.\n\n23 Note that there are two different deities, Longwei Shenggong worshipped by the Hainanese and Longwei Shengwang worshipped by the Chaozhou people. The latter is, to all intents and purposes, a local Earth God.\n\n24\n\n25 Laomu, Old Mother [or Elderly Matron], is a title often mentioned in popular stories. In Xue Dingshan's Campaign to the West Laomu was Fan Lihua's teacher who, in eight years, taught her the art of moving mountains and raising armies from a handful of beans.\n\nAn elderly Chaozhou man in a Kowloon temple confided that Lishan [‘Fan Lihua' he called her] is a fictional character to support the story of the two generals Xue, and that much of their legends have little or no historical basis.\n\n26 Xue Dingshan's father, Xue Rengui, also a general, was an early Tang hero who not only also led an expedition to the west, he also served in the Korean campaign of Tang Tai Cong. Xue Dingshan, otherwise known as Xue Gang, is claimed to have saved the life of his emperor and is now a Fukienese cult deity, the face of whose image is characterised by extraordinary and colourful decorations.\n\n27 William Mesny relates that recumbent iron images of oxen were believed to be a protection from floods when these images were placed along the banks of river courses and lakes likely to overflow. He noticed several along the banks of the Grand Canal in 1874 and was told that they had been placed there by Liu Bowen Mesny's Chinese Miscellany: Vol. IV: Shanghai: 11 February 1905.\n\n28 As in Taipan, the Senior Boss.\n\n29 The shrine and its images disappeared, doubtless into a high rise flat, though it could have gone the way of so many minor cults and disappeared due, perhaps, to the aged temple keeper's demise.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215359, "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-2001", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Three goddesses on the main altar in a Hainanese temple in Rengam, Johore southern Malaysia. The main deity in the centre is Tianhou Yuanjun, stage left is Shuiwei Shengmu 聖母 and stage right, Xian Tai Furen 先太夫人.\n\n84", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215360, "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-2001", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "A tablet on a side altar in a Hainanese temple in Seremban, Malaysia, dedicated to the 108 Brothers.\n\n85", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215365, "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-2001", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Lin Fu Taishi Gong, is usually simply referred to as Taishi Gong or Taishi Ye. Here he is a minor deity in the Hainanese temple in Cantonment Road in Singapore where he was referred to as Lin Fu Xiangye, Prime Minister Lin.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]