[ { "id": 205191, "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-1966", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n141\n\nTHE GLASS CURTAIN BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE: A Symposium on the Historical Encounters and the Changing Attitudes of the Peoples of the East and the West. Edited by Raghavan Iyer, with a Foreword by the Dalai Lama. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. xii+356 pages. HK$42.00\n\nThis book, as its subtitle indicates, is a study of the East-vs.-West mentality of both Asians and Europeans in the modern world. The \"Glass Curtain\" refers to this mentality, as it were, \"invisible yet impenetrable.\" As something that divides peoples into opposing sides, it is more subtle, and therefore more difficult to recognize and deal with, than the Iron Curtain, the \"Bamboo Curtain,\" or what have you. The result is lack of mutual understanding and the proliferation of distorted images of other peoples as well as of one's own.\n\nSuch a result, though perhaps inevitable historically, is naturally undesirable, so it is assumed in this book. This is so especially in our day of more extensive intercultural exchanges and more intense international conflicts. Furthermore, it is time to look forward to an emerging world civilization in which Asians and Europeans and other peoples should be more or less equal partners. All those who share this global outlook and cosmopolitan concern should read this book. The book is a tract for the times, a lesson in world citizenship. Though it presents a somber picture at the beginning, the book ends with an optimistic outlook. It appeals throughout to a broader understanding and a deeper sympathy. Although its material is historical (as are most of its essays), its aim is moral. Here lies the book's peculiar character.\n\nThe main purpose of the book is to expose and, hopefully, lift one particular \"curtain of ignorance\" that separates and misleads people about others and about themselves, for the sake of better communication and in the name of a common humanity. In the words of its editor, the book aims at least \"to offer a provisional framework for a frank dialogue between Asians and Europeans on the Glass Curtain that seems to separate them\" (p.312). And he adds, \"the concern for a real dialogue on equal terms is indeed more significant than the anxiety to reach agreement or to find specific solutions\" (p.318). The point is to get the dialogue going. This book should provide a good start.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206627, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES: VARIATIONS ON A THEME\n\n(With special reference to overseas Chinese communities in South East Asia)\n\nKEITH STEVENS*\n\nIndividual Chinese gods are worshipped universally throughout all Chinese communities and areas, or are worshipped only within limited areas such as a village or linked villages. Some are peculiar to linguistic groups such as the Shanghainese or the Cantonese. Three gods from the immense Chinese pantheon have been chosen and their legends, recognition features, the reason for their worship and where possible the area in which they were or still are worshipped have been described in detail below.\n\nThe first deity, worshipped in practically all Chinese communities, is General Yin Ch'iao (**太岁**) more frequently referred to as T'ai Sui (**太岁**). The second, Fa Chu Kung (**法主公**), is a deity to be found only within two or three localised communities in Fukien province and amongst overseas Chinese from these communities. However, he is also to be found in a few temples of other overseas Chinese communities who have adopted him to take advantage of his power. The third deity is Cheng Ho (**郑和**), the explorer of the 15th Century who is worshipped only by limited communities of overseas Chinese in areas where Cheng Ho's fleet called during his explorations.\n\nThese three have been chosen because they are good examples of three different types of Chinese deities. The first, T'ai Sui, is a\n\n* Major Stevens is a serving officer at present with the Ministry of Defence. He has been employed in South East Asia and the Far East and has travelled extensively among the Chinese communities of the region (but of necessity outside China) in his search for images of Chinese gods. The value of his article lies in bringing together material from, as he says, 'two and a half thousand temples' in the region, showing the great variety of images in their various forms and continued devotion to the pantheon of gods. I am glad to have this opportunity of publishing it in the Journal. No attempt has been made to impose a uniform romanization which is here given as presented by the author from the various works consulted, and as in the different dialect forms he encountered in the course of his enquiries. Nor have I changed the terms \"god-shop\" and \"god-carver\" used by Major Stevens because they are colourful, and therefore appropriate to the subject. Ed.\n\nPlates 15-29 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 206643, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n185\n\nthe newly dead. Mara has a cleft head, ear-pressing tufts and protruding eyes. His skirt can be made of leaves and on occasions he has a staff in his right hand.\n\nTHE CULT OF FA CHU KUNG\n\nBackground\n\nThe localised cult of Fa Chu Kung appears to have originated in the areas of An Chi and Ying Ch'uen in Fukien Province and has been carried by emigrants to their new homes in Taiwan and South East Asia. Fa Chu Kung is renowned amongst his devotees for his ability to cure any illness, and is believed to be capable of such potent magic that many Chinese are fearful even to mention his name. In addition it is claimed in some areas that he is able to cause and stop rain at will, and in one Cantonese temple in Kuala Lumpur he is specifically prayed to for confirmation that a marriage in process of being arranged will be successful. A Fukienese temple keeper in Singapore, who was not too fearful to discuss the deity, confided that Fa Chu Kung is the powerful leader of a large group of gods which includes the Northern Emperor Hsuan Tien Ta Ti and has very many disciples. He also claimed that Fa Chu Kung is able to transform himself into anyone or anything and that Chinese spirit mediums can only approach other gods through Fa Chu Kung. Therefore Fa Chu Kung's goodwill and agreement are always necessary before any petition or prayers may be offered to any god apart from the supreme deity, the Jade Emperor.\n\nRecognition Features\n\nFa Chu Kung is more often to be found as a minor deity on an altar dedicated to another god rather than the main deity on an altar or of a temple. His image is very easy to recognise. The basic recognition features are his shiny black face and body, his unkempt hair and slightly protruding eyes; his unsheathed sword is held at the ready in his right hand and a red snake curls round his neck and shoulders and over his left arm. His black feet are bare and are resting on fire wheels, and finally his left hand is making a magical sign. This is made by his whole left hand stretched forward at waist level and pointing vertically with his index and little finger; his thumb and the other two fingers are pressed to the palm. The whole hand is twisted to face the right. Most images have all these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206651, "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": 199, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n193\n\nfrom the Imperial Palace. These Chinese expeditions sailed as far afield as the coast of East Africa, the Maldive Islands, Mogadishu, the Persian Gulf, Aden and Mecca, Siam, Champa, Java, Sumatra and Malacca, visiting more than thirty countries in South East Asia, the Indian Archipelago and the Indian Ocean.\n\nCheng Ho\n\nThe most famous of the admirals to command these expeditions was Ma Cheng-ho, a eunuch from the Imperial Palace and the son of a Chinese Moslem Hadji from Yunnan. The Admiral is remembered either as Cheng Ho or by his title, San Po Kung (2) and not by his family name which was the common Chinese Moslem name Ma ( ). The full title by which he was known after his death was San Pao T'ai Chien (2), the Three Jewelled Eunuch, but this in South East Asia has been shortened to San Pao Kung (ET). Cheng Ho's last expedition in 1430 visited seventeen countries from which tribute had ceased to be received, but after he died in about 1431 all official intercourse between these countries and China ceased.*\n\nWhere or when he was deified is not known. However, amongst the overseas Chinese communities which are mentioned below Cheng Ho is still prayed to for protection, both in everyday life and on short journeys. In the earlier days of the Chinese migrations to South East Asia, he was prayed to by the junk crews of the southern maritime provinces of China and the South Seas. Cheng Ho himself on his voyages is said to have prayed to Tien Fei, the Heavenly Consort (kt), the Chinese seafarers' goddess, who is now normally called Ma Tsu or Tien Hou. What a good example of Chinese toleration Cheng Ho was: or perhaps a good example of the prudent Chinese who takes the opportunity not to offend, and also backs all horses. Here he is, a Mohamedan who prays to Tien Fei for protection and who during one of his voyages erects a tablet in honour of the local Buddha.\n\nImages of Cheng Ho\n\nStatues of Cheng Ho are to be seen in temples in Singapore; in Malaysia in Muar and Malacca; in Sarawak; in Semarang in Java,\n\nSee J. V. G. Mills' edited translation of Ma Huan's Ying-yai Sheng-lan. The overall survey of the Ocean's Shores, Cambridge University Press for The Hakluyt Society, 1970.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207003, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS*\n\nIn my research into Chinese iconography I made a considerable nuisance of myself in three particular two-storey shophouses in the middle of Singapore's Hokkien (Fukienese) area (see plate 1), by questioning the god carvers' every action during the process of carving and repairing images of Chinese gods.\n\nIn Singapore three families are in partial competition, yet from their full order books business would appear to be thriving. Two of the families are Hokkien originating from near Foochow and Amoy respectively and the third is Teochew (Ch'ao chou) from Swatow, all being second or third generation Singaporeans who have never visited their homeland. Into these shophouses are crowded the unmarried longterm employees in addition to the families themselves, notably the apprentices who sleep on campbeds in the shop and eat en famille. One master carver bewailed the shortage of apprentices who in this age of affluence were unwilling to undertake a long and poorly paid apprenticeship.\n\nI have always referred to these craftsmen as god carvers and their shops as godshops. My article \"Three Deities\" in this Journal in 1972 provoked the editorial comment that the term was colourful and as such would be left unedited. My terminology is a far cry from the jargon of the anthropologist and it is my intention to describe, in my own terms, the production of gods in one of these godshops.\n\nThese godshops are ten foot square or ten by twenty foot work-spaces on the ground floor of the shophouses. Here new gods are carved and painted and the old repaired, not only for the island of Singapore but also for places as far north as Thailand and Cambodia, as far east as Borneo and Brunei and as far south as Java. This group of godcarvers is unique in being the only Fukienese and Ch'ao chou specialist carvers still plying their trade save for a few\n\n* Major Stevens' other contributions on the interesting subject of Chinese gods in South-east Asia and Taiwan appeared in Vols. 12-13 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207550, "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-1975", "page_number": 318, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "310\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nof the assistance given to Chang T'ien Shih (*) the First Master of Orthodox Taoist folk-religion, by the Three Jesters when they played their music, attracted and led the evil spirits (as the Pied Piper led the rats) to the spirit boat on which they were shanghaied, whereupon the epidemic immediately ended.\n\nNow we know from many sources, in addition to our own observations, that the rite for expelling pestilence performed by the Fukienese of Taiwan and South East Asia consists of a ceremony at which the spirits of the Wang Yeh encourage the demons of pestilence to board a paper boat which is set fire to and pushed out midstream. These Fukienese pestilence gods, the Wang Yeh (*), an heterodox cult of folk religion, although they are worshipped as one on altars, can be classified into two types. The first is the large group of musicians or scholars, varying from 36 to 360, who in legend died at the whim of an Emperor and were deified; the second group are individual spirit generals bearing family surnames, said to be either blood brothers or close friends. These appear individually or in groups of up to six on altars. Wang Yeh from both groups have identical roles, the prevention of epidemics. Most Chinese with whom I have discussed these Wang Yeh, although they subconsciously realized it existed, had not considered this separation into two groups. They had unconsciously accepted the multitude of blood brothers with their individual surnames as individual musicians or scholars from the large group. Du Bose6, incidentally, heard another legend which described one single Fukienese deity, the Wang Yeh, as a scholar who sacrificed himself and saved the village from a demon-infested public well.\n\nThe Wang Yeh festival of expelling the pestilence demons usually takes place during the fourth month, when sickness is (or was) rife. In South East Asia and in Taiwan individual images of Wang Yeh (seated, unarmed and bearded generals) are taken down to the water's edge during the launching ceremony, and occasionally a wooden image is actually launched aboard a more substantial miniature boat, and wherever it lands a temple is supposed to be built to house the deity, thereby spreading the cult.\n\nChief Marshal T'ien is not the localized cult deity Miss Werle believed him to be. He has appeared not only in Ch'aochow and\n\n6 H. C. du Bose: The Dragon, Image & Demon. Partridge & Co., London, 1886.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207813, "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-1976", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "186\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nWith Pegu one is back to the culture of the early inhabitants of Burma, the Mons. Their original centre was around Thaton, further east than Pegu and this was certainly in existence by the 5th century AD. It was a Mon monk who had converted the Burmese King Anawrahta in the middle of the 11th century to Buddhism, and the king had requested certain relics and texts from king Manuha, who had refused. The result of the refusal was the destruction of the Mon kingdom but its cultural preeminence was recognised in the religion, architecture and art of early Pagan. After the fall of Pagan the Mons reestablished their kingdom, first at Mataram, and then, from 1369 at Pegu (Hanthawaddy or Hamsavati). They were temporarily ruled by the Burmese from 1539-1550 and again from 1551-1740; but Mon independence was due to be short-lived and the last king Binnya Dala was killed in 1747 by Alaungpaya and the Mons, like the Chams in Vietnam, then became a people without a country, though they still exist in large numbers in lower Burma near Moulmein and also in scattered villages in central Thailand.\n\nPegu is a day trip out of Rangoon, but as much as the present capital now reflects the condition of contemporary Burma, so Pegu is lost in its past. Its most famous sight is the Shwemawdaw pagoda, centred round a stupa with a broad stepped octagonal base and which is still taller than the Shwedagon in Rangoon. It is in many ways the palladium of Mon culture. Its foundation date is not known, but it was already raised in height by the Mon king Thamala in 825. In the twentieth century it suffered three severe earthquakes, and the present spire effectively dates from 1954 when restoration was completed. A number of ancient Buddha images was found when much of the stupa collapsed in the 1930 earthquake. Not very far from the Shwemawdaw is the spot where the two Hamsa birds alighted, one on the other's back, on a shallow spot in what was then the sea. The Hamsa is the symbol of the Mons and is also of course the mount of Brahma. This site is the Hinthagone, which now boasts a rather horrible modern shrine with vulgar paintings of hamsas but with a good view towards the Shwemawdaw. Hardly less vulgar is the reclining Buddha, the Shwethalyaung, reputed to be largest such image and certainly one of the ugliest. It was originally built in 994 but fell into disrepair and was restored in the 15th century. It was neglected again and became overgrown, to be rediscovered by a railway engineer at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208066, "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-1977", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "UNDER ALTARS \n\n89 \n\nhe tries sufficiently hard enough, all other demons too. His hempen robes, they say, are not the same as those worn by mourners but are, in themselves, a charm having the power to drive away demons. The Local Wealth God also secures the safety, if so petitioned, of those who have witnessed such misfortunes as a suicide, a killing, a funeral or a fatal accident, (all of which release, or involve, roaming spirits). The witness need only visit the temple, offer a prayer and incense to the Local Wealth God for his continued safety to be assured. In some temples he is prayed to by relatives on the 49th day after a death, when green and white paper flowers are thrown over him after being taken from the hair of mourners; a sign that mourning is over. It used to be that only filial sons performed this ritual, but nowadays it has become common for any relative to take part. \n\nThe Local Wealth God, customarily, is only given plain unflavoured boiled rice and though he may be offered ordinary meat, either cooked or uncooked, he is never offered red-dyed sacrificial meat. \n\nThe Five Demons \n\nWe move on now to one of the less frequently seen groups, the Five Demons, (五鬼), which in one Macau temple were known as the Five Demon Spirits (五鬼神). Their full title is \"The Five Demon Lads who change fortune” (五鬼變財). The Five are masters each of one of the five points of the compass. (The Chinese look upon the centre as the fifth direction), and each is separately known by his direction. For example, the one for the East is called the \"Eastern Chia Yi Five Demon Stellar Deity\" (東方甲乙五鬼星君) \n\nFive Demons are feared as injurious spirits who need constant propitiation. When offended, however unwittingly, they must instantly be offered a large and expensive gift, and their forgiveness sought. In one small temple in Macau they were described as the five servants of the Wealth God, and are prayed to both for \"unexpected money”, and also for a good marriage (bringing in a good dowry). \n\nThey are depicted in the Under Altar in a circle as five standing individual images in human likeness, sometimes men and sometimes women, facing inward. They have been seen once circling an oil lamp consisting of a saucer in which a wick lies floating in the oil, \n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "42\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nIn addition there were scraps of cotton, threads, one or two grains of rice, a tiny sac of cotton cloth stuffed with more cotton and several beads and slivers of mica. There were also two dried sea-horses* in the image dedicated in 1871 though there were no signs of any other remains. The strips of paper are not all that usual and are rarely found in Southern Chinese images. Precis translations of the six strips of paper are included later in this note.\n\nThe papers show that five of the seven images were dedicated and placed on altars in the County of Wu Kang (A) in South East Hunan, one hundred miles due north of Kweilin and three hundred and seventy-five miles NNW of Hong Kong, near the Hunanese boundaries with its neighbouring provinces of Kwangsi and Kweichow. The west and south-west of Hunan were not easily accessible until the 1930's due to the dangerous rapids in the upper reaches of the plentiful rivers. Then a system of highways opened up the area. Prior to that, apart from the occasional traveller, traders and, of course, the petty officials sent to such \"punishment\" posts, all that was known of the area came from tales passed on from mouth to mouth. Wu Kang is in rising country, on the edge of an area marked on old maps as the lands of the Thai minority peoples, the Ko Lao (z) and another larger minority people, the Miao (δ). The other two images come from Chi An prefecture () in Kiangsi province, some two hundred and eighty miles due east of Wu Kang. Chi An, an old walled city and a major centre on the north-flowing Kan Chiang, had closer cultural links with central rather than south China.\n\nThe first image (Plate 2), from Wu Kang and dedicated in 1756, is a household deity to protect the home and family and to bring blessings. The slip of paper relates that Worshipper Fu Shih-hsiang, together with his three sons and others from his family, all of Hsin Wu Chang Village, Yen Shan, Lung Chu district of Wu Kang county in Pao Ching prefecture (now Shao Yang), Hunan, on the 4th day of the 7th moon of the 20th year of Ch'ien Lung (1756), offered sacrifices to the gods at the City God temple in Shih Pei.† He also reported to them in writing that he and his whole family\n\n* Seahorses, found as far inland, would have a rarity value, though they are commonly used by Chinese herbalists & pharmacists.\n\n† Chinese characters are to be found on the illustrations of the slips of paper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208492, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "200\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nANCESTRAL IMAGES*\n\nI have been fortunate enough to come across a most interesting book, \"Religious Art in Taiwan\" (in Chinese) by LIU Wen-san.† In it, amongst many other things, LIU describes several 17th Century wooden figures, some 18\" high, which he discovered on the Pescadores. His photographs show images of elderly people, devoid of any colour and ravaged by time. I have translated part of his short article on them as it amplifies my Note on ancestral images.\n\nThe Contemplative CHANG Pai-wan (張百萬)\n\nIn Taiwan, not only temples but also homes have gods and ancestral tablets. Ancestral worship, a major characteristic of Chinese culture, is to show gratitude to the ancestors for bringing us up, and to mould us so that we do not shame them. Some people even have images made of their ancestors. The writer visited the old home of the legendary CHANG Pai-wan, a poor fisherman who lived over 300 years ago, in Pai Sha on the Pescadores.\n\nOne day in a cave CHANG saw large numbers of black bricks and took a few home, only to discover that they were black gold bars. To prevent others from finding out, he took only a few bars home each day until after a month he had moved the lot into his small home.\n\nNow a wealthy man, he bought several hundred acres of land and the long string of bullock carts he owned filed past his home before dawn each day. Unfortunately they also had to pass the home of another rich man, a Mr. WU, who took CHANG to court for disturbing peace. The court case, a stalemate, led WU to suggest to CHANG that they see who was the richer of the two, the richer being the winner. The arrangement was for both WU and CHANG to take their gold to a nearby bay and one by one cast their bars of gold into the sea. Whoever was first to have no more bars left was the loser. CHANG emerged the winner.\n\n* To be read in conjunction with the article at pp. 47-54\n†台灣宗教藝術, 劉文三 (雄獅圖書股份有限公司) 台北 1976", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208870, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "4\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nTemples and monasteries, despite their outward appearance are not always simple, self-contained religious units. Quite frequently they contain a number of major and minor deities, each with its special shrine or altar, hall or building.10 The original major deity may, for one of several reasons, be relegated to a secondary position and a new primary deity installed on the main altar. After some years and changes in abbots or temple keepers, the identity of certain deities, including surprisingly, major gods and goddesses, have been forgotten and, so as not to lose face, their identities are guessed at by temple staff, often wildly inaccurately.\n\nThere are several groups or complexes of folk religion temples in the two territories and to identify the number of individual temples on one particular site apart that is from where it is possible from reading the titles over the entrances-it is necessary to count the number of Earth Gods and Door Guardians in their niches inside the temple on the inside walls, usually opposite each other, facing across the various entrances. A single or pair of these deities is usually found in each individual temple within a complex of temples irrespective of how many entrances there are. The Wen Wu temple (or Man Mo in Cantonese) in Hollywood Road, Hong Kong is an example, with two temples side by side seeming to be one having only one courtyard. The Wen Wu itself, a large traditional temple, is to the east with its Door Official and Earth God sitting side by side in one shrine. In the smaller \"Temple of the Buddha of Light\" on the west, there is only a single image, a lone deity called the \"Door Official Earth God\", a title which amalgamates the titles of the two usual deities.\n\nUrban and rural11 folk religion temples differ in that the former tend to be more sophisticated, always have a keeper and several other staff, cater for worship by individuals at any hour (between 8am and 6pm) and have a wealth of images. Rural temples, in the main also boast keepers, but these are usually absent as they are \"pensioners\",12 very elderly people who spend much of their time asleep, calling on friends or shopping. Devotees visiting a rural temple normally find no one to assist them, and presumably, as this is an accepted facet of rural life, nobody seems to mind. The urban temple keeper on the other hand has to earn his living or recoup his investment of an annual tender, and so he ensures that a member of the staff is permanently in the temple during opening hours to assist in devotions, offer for sale incense, oil, charms and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209036, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nANCESTRAL IMAGES, MORE ANCESTRAL IMAGES, ANCESTRAL IMAGES AGAIN Dr. Hugh Baker, Hong Kong, South China Morning Post Ltd., pp. viii, 162, viii, 164, viii, 186.\n\nThe first volume in this series was reviewed in the Journal by Dr. Marjorie Topley a few years ago. Since then, two more volumes in this popular series have appeared and I have no doubt that they will be reprinted frequently to meet public demand.\n\nThe three books' main asset is their easy style and readability. This is due to the wide observation of the anthropologist - Dr. Baker's own discipline - a good command of Chinese and Cantonese dialect - Dr. Baker is also a teacher of Chinese language and the added benefit of his wide reading in older books which provide a wider background to his stories. \"I have spent hours trapped inside some of the books\", he writes. In addition, there are excellent photographs from his own collection, most of which are reproduced in colour.\n\nThe result is far and away the best and most enlightening introduction to the history and customs of the New Territories. The books show the reader what to look out for, and give him some idea of background and wider connections.\n\nTo my mind each volume is better than the one before. In the third, in particular, Dr. Baker's familiarity with his subject leads to a great ease that, combined with his excellent sense of humour and sense of timing, provides some really entertaining reading. See pages 36-37, 65, 92, 122 (with photograph), 128, 150 to cite only a few examples. But let no one think that this means \"light\" content. I have found many illuminating things in these volumes, and enjoyed stories and situations from life which gave added point to things I have half understood for years. This arises largely from Dr. Baker's eighteen-month stay in Sheung Shui village in the New Territories in the mid 1960s, and his keen observation of the Hong Kong scene in later visits.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209748, "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-1983", "page_number": 7, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nDog Divination from A Dunhuang Manuscript\n\nCAROLE MORGAN\n\n184\n\nAn Ode on Hong Kong Composed by the Major of\n\nCanton in 1845\n\nP. BRUCE\n\n193\n\nRelics of Hong Kong and China in British Army and\n\nRegimental Museums\n\nP. BRUCE\n\n196\n\nAn Imperial Chinese Banner Preserved in Kendal,\n\nEngland\n\nP. BRUCE\n\n202\n\nA Relic of St. Francis Xavier\n\nP. BRUCE\n\n204\n\nA Ch'ing Cannon from Wyndham Street, Hong Kong\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n208\n\nChue Mo Peng, A Fever Reported from Villages in the Hong Kong Region, and Its Cure, Together with\n\nOther Village Remedies for Excess Heat\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n209\n\nThe Kwun Yam Tung Shan Temple of East\n\nKowloon 1840-1940\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n212\n\nA Community Shooting Bungalow Near Chinkiang, Kiangsu, and Its Library About 1905\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n218\n\nAncestral Images: A Bibliographical Note\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\n221\n\nOld Hau Wong Temple, Tai Wai, Sha Tin\n\nP. H. HASE\n\n233\n\nTraditional New Territories Farming: Manuring\n\nP. H. HASE\n\n241\n\nThe Cultivation of the \"Incense Tree\" (Aquilaria\n\nSinensis)\n\nIU KOW-CHOY\n\n247\n\nvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210756, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "90\n\nCHAN WING HOI\n\nDaai Si Wong and Baak Mou Seung, an altar for the dead to receive blessings, an altar for Tin Hau and local earth gods, paper images of Yuk Wong and his underlings, and the festival office. Except for the dead, the spirits noted on the altars were the usual ones found in jiu festivals. Among Tin Hau and her companions were gods of Shek O itself. The Daai Si Wong, a deity related to the underworld like the Baak Mou Seung, had the important role of overseeing the ghosts which came for the offerings.\n\nOn one of the altars, there were 105 spirit tablets of ancestors to whom offerings were to be made. Mr. Lau, the restaurant owner I talked to, did not think this a new feature of the festival. But he associated the spirit tablets with the Chiu Chau and Hoklo newcomers. Those immigrants had left their ancestors at their native places. Because it was not easy to return to these places to sacrifice to them, it was necessary to entertain and make offering to the ancestors through the festival. The indigenous villagers had no need to set up the spirit tablets of their ancestors there. They worshipped their ancestors at home where they had set up their altars. Whatever the validity of the reasoning, what Mr. Lau said suggested that very few of the locals had put up spirit tablets for their deceased relatives in the ritual. More than half of these tablets bore only the characters hin-hau or hin-bei, indicating they represented only either the father or the mother. I think this indicates that the other parent was living, and this must mean that these tablets were set up for the recently deceased rather than ancestors of old. In the case of many jiu festivals in single surname settlements, the spirit tablets of the common ancestors were included on one of the festival altars. Here the ancestors were parents of people who had paid for the privilege of leaving the tablets there.\n\nIn a broader sense the ritual site should also include the other areas delimited by flag posts (faan-gon). There were four of those posts at Shek O, marking out the north, south, east and west corners, I was told. In addition, there were two each at Tai Long Wan and Hok Tsui. We learned from the New Territories that faan-gon posts were indications set up for wandering ghosts to inform them they might enjoy offerings at the jiu. However, responding to my question about the faan-gon posts, a local woman replied that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211634, "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-1989", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "24 \n\nand not even a tablet is permitted. Images of the Jade Emperor seen in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and in South-East Asia are all very similar, portraying him as a bearded, usually gilded, image of an official seated on a throne, with a jade tablet clasped in both hands before his chest (see Plates 2 and 3). His head-dress is not a crown in the western sense, but a classic hat, the mien (mian) the rectangular mortar board cap from which is suspended, front and back, thirteen red cords bearing green, red and blue beads and descending almost to the level of his eyes. Thirteen indicates his supreme rank. This, it should be noted, is the typical standard image of a great number of official deities other than the Jade Emperor, and the only way one can categorically identify his image is to see it on his altar, or to find that it bears an original inscription describing it as the image of the Jade Emperor.\n\nHis image is placed as high on the altar as possible, even to the extent of placing it on as many as three to four tiers; his image, even more than most, must never permit his feet to be touching the ground. In a number of places he is considered to be too holy and too powerful to be portrayed by an image; his title only being recorded on a tablet which occupies the centre of his altar. Images of the Jade Emperor are to be seen not only on the main altars of temples dedicated to him but also, in a small number of instances, on secondary altars in temples dedicated to lesser deities. In Suifu in Szechuan, Graham in 1928 counted nineteen images of the Jade Emperor on altars in the town. The images were placed on the first floor of the temples whereas other gods were normally on the ground floor.\n\n7\n\nGrootaers noted that the cult of Yuh Huang was well represented in the sanctuaries built in high spots in the city of Hsuan Hua (south of Chang Chia Kou [Kalgan] and northwest of Peking). The earliest was dated 1535 AD. Yuh Huang was better known there as Hao T'ien Shang Ti and his image portrayed him as a bearded scholar with a mortar board cap.\n\nIn many folk religion temples in Ch'aochou (Teochew) communities his tablet stands in the front centre of the altar table nearest the main entrance, and in front of the main altar, with only an image of the Third Prince on his altar table standing between the Jade Emperor's tablet and the entrance. The altar of the Jade Emperor is referred to as the T'ien Kung T'an (Tiangong Tan). On his birthday, the 9th of the first lunar month, large sacrificial offerings to T'ien Kung are placed on this special altar", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211635, "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-1989", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "25\n\nwhich is reserved exclusively for the occasion. The offerings must include red pork and two long stems of bamboo in leaf; these are laid out on special tables placed on small stools so that they do not touch the ground and be defiled.\n\nThe Jade Emperor's image has been noted on altars in nine temples in Hong Kong and in two in Macau. It is also to be seen on numerous altars throughout South-East Asia and in Taiwan. In Taiwan his image appears alone or with two or three attendants on a number of secondary altars and even on side altars. In Hong Kong he is the main deity in six of the nine temples and is the major deity on a secondary altar in the other three.\n\nThe most fascinating image of the Jade Emperor in Hong Kong is to be seen in the upper level hall of the Monastery of the Ten Thousand Buddhas in Shatin where he is flanked by two of his ministers. In a large number of temples in which he is the main deity the Jade Emperor is supported in this way by the two stellar deities, each in his own secondary altar flanking the main altar with the Jade Emperor. They are the Lord of the Northern Bushel and the Lord of the Southern Bushel, Nanpei Tou (jjdk-1-). There are also a number of images of attendants flanking the image of the Jade Emperor, and on occasions the Civil and Military Judges (Wenwu P'ankuan).\n\nHe is the main deity in a tiny temple near Shaukiwan on Hong Kong island, a tiny image in a small single-room temple occupied by one elderly lady, the temple keeper. The original occupants were refugees from Yunnan province in the early fifties, dead these many years. By the mid-seventies the temple was being kept spotlessly clean by the elderly lady who had been an amah to a long-departed English family. She explained that she had to earn her keep somehow, especially as her husband had already 'long time gone topside'.\n\nIn Penang people will tell you that the small red shrine outside their shop or house is dedicated to the Jade Emperor even though neither his name nor title is recorded anywhere.\n\nSupporting the Supreme Deity is a Board or Ministry of Thirty-Six Ministers, with duties to supervise junior celestial officials and clerks, whose images are rarely to be seen on altars though on temple murals all thirty-six are frequently portrayed. Their role is to control and run", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211637, "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-1989", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "27\n\nOne of the unique features of the cult of the Jade Emperor is the extent to which members of his immediate family also appear on altars. In Taiwan and South-East Asia in Fukienese community temples, some of the daughters of the Jade Emperor are portrayed in image form on altars both with their father and alone, and prayed to in their own right. The Jade Emperor is said to have sons and four, or according to others, seven daughters. Temple keepers, when asked, without exception denied that the sons and daughters were approached by devotees who hoped for indirect but preferential treatment of their requests from the Jade Emperor.\n\nGraham in Suifu noted two statues in Jade Emperor temples portraying his daughters. (Regrettably Graham did not provide characters, simply giving their titles as Yin Fei U Nu and U Giang U Nu (the U Nu probably being Yuh Nu)).\n\nThough his daughters did not become prostitutes in the ordinary sense of the word, many amusing and ribald stories are told about them. The Jade Emperor's seventh daughter, Chang Ch'i-chieh (A) [Chang the seventh sister] chose to marry a woodcutter who, from the description in the legend, must have been not far off mentally defective. He did not even understand what a wife was. She overcame the woodcutter's mother's natural reluctance to see a beautiful and intelligent young woman throwing away her life to marry her idiot son. Ch'i Chieh was a good wife and all went well. However, unfortunately, she came to the notice of a rich and handsome young man who was determined to have her. She arranged to marry him in exchange for a very large bride-price to be paid to the idiot and, being an immortal, she punished the rich man severely on their wedding night. He promptly changed his mind and released her, whereupon she returned to the idiot who was now rich, and bore him a son. She then returned to Heaven having fulfilled the curse, but at the same time, she had punished the wicked and rewarded the filial, if idiot son.\n\nIn one temple only, small images of the mother and two wives of the Jade Emperor stand alone in a small shrine behind the main altar on which stands the image of the Jade Emperor himself. This temple layout in Silat Avenue in Singapore is very rare as the consort of the Jade Emperor, according to several different god carvers, is never portrayed on the altar. However, Graham, in Suifu in Szechuan in 1928, noted an image of the Jade Emperor's mother on the side altar in his temple, called Yuh Huang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211640, "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-1989", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "30\n\non an altar in a folk religion temple in Pongol in northern Singapore.\n\nIn the Feng Shen Yen I, mythical tales known to most Chinese, Yang Chien is described as the nephew of the Jade Emperor. Yang, also known as Erh Lang in some stories and in some temples, was a mythical general fighting for the legendary Shang (Yin) dynasty during the wars of the 12th century BC.\n\nAnother popular romance of the Ming, the Journey to the West, better known as the story of Monkey, tells of the incident when a heavenly being was exiled to Earth for re-incarnation as a punishment for assaulting one of the Jade Emperor's daughters. By mistake he entered the womb of a sow and was born half-man and half-pig and is now best known as Piggy, one of Monkey's assistants.\n\nThe Jade Emperor's festivals are celebrated on his birthday, the 8th and 9th of the first lunar month, and on the 6th of the eleventh lunar month, the anniversary of his ascension. In parts of Taiwan he is also feasted on the 24th of the sixth lunar month, and in South-East Asia on the 6th of the fourth, and fifth of the eighth lunar months. Though it is not a date on which humans especially revere the Jade Emperor, all the gods of Heaven assemble on the 19th of the first lunar month to pay their respects to him.\n\nHe is offered a feast on his birthday which includes duck and chicken, but must include pork. These offerings are placed on a table in the open, before the front entrance to the courtyard, together with candles and the large-size sticks of incense. Two whole sugar canes with leaves intact are especially popular offerings in Fukien communities to celebrate the escape of Fukienese who hid amongst the fields of cane to avoid being killed by an enemy. The survivors offered such canes to the Jade Emperor in thanks and the custom has persisted.\n\nIn general, routine offerings before the altar of the Jade Emperor consist of the standard three sticks of smouldering incense. However, offerings of a vegetarian feast are made to him in Hong Kong on the first day of the lunar new year, accompanied by the burning of spirit money. Not all families perform this ritual, many Hoklo and Hakka families prefer only to offer the basic vegetarian meal.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is usually accompanied on the altar by images of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211647, "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-1989", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "37\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh were revered in Fukien before 1661, the date given for their first arrival in Taiwan. The first images, five in all, bore surnames which have been passed on to individual Pestilence Wang Yeh in all parts of Taiwan. A nineteenth-century missionary, Doolittle,3 noted images of Five Emperors in temples in Fuchou, said to control epidemics and malignant diseases. He understood that the 'idols', much feared by the common people, had several attendants, two of whom were very frequently paraded through the streets, one was the Tall White Devil and the other, the Short Black Devil. These two, Generals Hsieh and Fan, are still commonly seen in Taiwan and South-East Asia but only comparatively rarely are they colocated with the Pestilence Wang Yeh. He went on to describe a ritual involving setting fire to 'spirit boats' floating down the Min river, which were believed to bear diseases and unhealthy influences out to sea. It used to be believed in Taiwan and still is in Singapore, that the Pestilence Wang Yeh themselves could and did spread contagion.\n\nImages of the Pestilence Wang Yeh in temples have in the main been seen in groups of three or five, each bearing an individual surname (see Plate 9). Nowadays they each have only a surname, without any given names and are therefore somewhat more fortunate than the earlier Pestilence Wang Yeh who had neither surname nor given names. It was the practice for migrants to select the Wang Yeh bearing their own surname as their particular protective deity, and although the surnames Chih (李), Wu (武), Wen (温), Su (↡K) and Fan (皖YZ) are common amongst Pestilence Wang Yeh, Li (李*) and Chu (祝) are also quite widespread too. There is little functional difference and though in legend, particularly in South-East Asia, Chih is the main Wang Yeh, \"The Leader of the 108 or 360', Li is a close runner-up for the honour in Taiwan.\n\nDespite the fact that in the Pestilence Wang Yeh temple at Nan K’un Shen near Tainan (claimed to be the oldest Wang Yeh temple in Taiwan) the main deity on the main altar is Li, with the other four, Fan, Chih, Wu and Chu beside him, the Five connected with the Five Protective Spirits of Fukien referred to in the legends below, are Hsu (徐#), Li (李4), Po (舰4), Heng (衡f) and Chu (祝️).\n\nAs one would expect there are individual cults which do not follow standard patterns. One Pestilence Wang Yeh has been referred to by forenames as well as his surname. This also was in Nan K'un Shen where", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211651, "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-1989", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "41\n\nto cure a member of the family before being returned to the temple altar with an offering. This service is available in Wang Yeh temples where the main deity is a Pestilence Wang Yeh and the row of small portable images of Pestilence Wang Yeh on the altar table before the main altar is available for devotees. The individual images can be any one of those available from the altar itself or from the altar table. Which image should be taken is determined by the Pestilence Wang Yeh who reveals his decision through his spirit block response. In a temple on a Singapore housing estate, all five images had been borrowed and the altar was bare apart from the outlines of the bases of the Wang Yeh images in the dust. In a very few homes, an image of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is maintained permanently on the family shrine, having been carved specially for the family at their request.\n\nImages of the Pestilence Wang Yeh's consort have been seen on altars in several temples in Taiwan. In Lukang, in the Shun Yi temple, the main deity, Shun Fu Wang Yeh (**E**) is accompanied by five others, T'ien, Ting, Chu, Ma, and Chin (BT✯54), and his consort Shun Fu Wang Yeh Fujen (KƒÆÂ). All six Wang Yeh are regarded by the temple keeper as Pestilence Wang Yeh, and although the main deity's consort is offered incense by devotees, she is not approached for benefits. Sometimes the consort is simply a small image of a matron and merely known as Fu Jen Ma (AA) without a surname.\n\nIn a number of South-East Asian Chinese rural temples, both corrugated iron structures and shophouses, one or three (and never two unless one has been borrowed by a devotee) Pestilence Wang Yeh images have been noted interspersed between other unconnected deities, often in addition to the main deity, whoever that might be, in no particular order and in no way connected. This again is private enterprise on the part of the temple keeper, often a poor peasant who has taken advantage of a gap in the local requirement for protective deities and who started up his own small temple from which he obtains sufficient petty cash to keep the wolf from the door.\n\nGenerally speaking, the deployment of Wang Yeh temples has followed the progress of the spread of Fukien people within Taiwan and South-East Asia. The most densely deployed areas in Taiwan are the Pescadores and Tainan, and to a lesser extent in the Chia I, Yunlin, and Kaohsiung coastal areas. The origins of these temples are related to the traditional practice of 'Fang Wang Chuan', the setting forth of the Wang Yeh Spirit", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211658, "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-1989", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "48\n\nOne of the more interesting Wang Ch'uan is in the Hai Ling Temple on the Pescadores. In Tainan there are some boats as big as small buses, and at the Ma Tsu temple at Lu Erh near Tainan, there is a multi-storey boat. The captains and crew of the large wooden models are portrayed by small images, the largest being the captain dressed in Ch'ing mandarin robes, seated in an open cabin on the aftercastle overlooking the whole junk. The crew consists of sailors manning the ropes and tiller, and marines with weapons including cannon. The captain (or comptroller) of the Pestilence Wang Yeh junk is sometimes portrayed holding a writing brush and scroll. One such image in Tung Kang is seated on a throne on a small altar table before his large and magnificent boat, smoking a real cigarette which smoulders down to a stub before being replaced by one of the temple staff.\n\nSimilar images make up miniature military units representing the armies of the Pestilence Wang Yeh; some dozen or so soldiers in V formation with a senior officer at the apex (see Plate 12). Such armies of the Pestilence Wang Yeh, to be seen only in Taiwan and not in South-East Asia, consist of tamed and therefore 'good' demons and are portrayed on side altars on a few temples only. One temple keeper explained that the Pestilence Wang Yeh soldiers were all difficult spirits of dead humans who had been beyond reform during purgatory, but who had been invited to join the army of the Wang Yeh on condition that they would obey orders implicitly, and in return they had been promised rehabilitation and even the possibility of rebirth to the human world should they toe the line. They are referred to as depraved or evil spirits (Hsieh shen 邪神).\n\nThe armies are led by generals and marshals under the overall command of the Wang Yeh. The armies referred to as 'The Office of Military Affairs' (Chung Chun Fu), the main defensive forces for the prefecture in the fight against the demonic forces, are represented in some Pestilence Wang Yeh temples by a single seated image of an anonymous general surrounded by a varying number of soldiers in varying robes and uniforms, each small group of six or eight representing subordinate formations and units. In the Wang Yeh temple at Nan K'un Shen the Wang Yeh army is called “The Grand Defender of the Office of Military Affairs (Chung Chun Fu Chen Shou)\".\n\nThe Pestilence Wang Yeh army in the temple at Hsi Yu on the Pescadores consists of a general in charge, (Assistant Regional", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211663, "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-1989", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "53\n\nwere destroyed but at the end of the campaign (ca 1127 BC) Lu was made President of the Celestial Ministry of Epidemics () with his four disciples as his senior departmental officials. The coincidence of the number five, and of them dying from epidemics before their due date of death, suggests that these five might be the precursors to the Five Plague Gods of much later times. Lu is described as having red hair, a blue face, fangs and a third eye, and it is therefore not surprising that god carvers have used this description when making Wang Yeh, and a number of images of the Wang Yeh on altars in Taiwan and South-East Asia have blue faces, red hairs and fangs though none has been seen with a third eye. It was interesting to encounter a Hakka ancestral image on a public altar in northern Taiwan which had a bright blue face. This was explained to be so because the ancestor, a Mr Huang, was a Ta Jen, an alternate form of Wang Yeh, a worthy and not a Pestilence deity; but because many of the temples around had Pestilence Wang Yeh and their faces were blue, red or green, it had been decided that the worthy Mr Huang should have a blue face too.\n\nAccording to the Yeh Wang Yeh legend in Tainan, Yeh himself took part in fund raising to build his cult temple in Fukien province. He disguised himself as an old man and went to Fuchou to buy the wood necessary to build the temple and also sent instructions to the villagers in their dreams that he would like his effigy to be carved in camphor wood to be placed on the roof. This they had carved, and when it was delivered to the site the timbers for the temple's construction arrived without anyone appearing to have carried them there, leaving the villagers only the task of erecting the building.\n\nFishermen in 1795 found an unmanned bamboo raft near the island of Haifeng on which there was a tablet dedicated to Chang, Li and Moh, Three Wang Yeh. They built a shrine on the island dedicated to the three and later the tablets were moved to the present temple at T'ai Hsi in Yunlin county on the west coast of Taiwan.\n\nOther groups of five deities in Taiwan have similar and on occasions identical legends and are believed to be able to control or prevent epidemics. They too are also prayed to for a cure by the sick, and for the maintenance of good health by the hale and hearty. Temple keepers on occasions identify them as Pestilence Wang Yeh though they are not officially referred to as such. These groups include The Five Great Emperors of Fortune (Wu Fu Ta Ti), and the Five Efficacious Lords", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212073, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "OBITUARY\n\nHUGH GIBB\n\nMr Hugh Gibb, a long-term Member of Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, died in August 1990. With the permission of The Daily Telegraph, we reproduce here an obituary which appeared in that newspaper on Friday, August 24, 1990.\n\nHUGH GIBB, who has died aged 75, was a maker of sensitive documentary films, chiefly about Asia, which combined artistic distinction, rigorous research and a strong cultural message.\n\nHis much applauded seven-part series, The Borneo Story, made in the mid-1950s, won a Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival. Another seven-parter, Images of the East shot in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand for BBC television during the 1960s gave a unique record of the old Indo-China, particularly of the monuments at Angkor in Cambodia.\n\nGibb was re-working his Angkor films, in the hope that they would widen sympathy for the Cambodian people and perhaps lead to the neutralisation of the site under UNESCO's aegis, when he was struck down by a sudden illness.\n\nA stickler for detail, Gibb was perhaps the last of the \"one-man\" producers: he did the research, wrote the scripts, filmed, edited, wrote and even spoke the commentaries of his films.\n\nHis style on location was exigent, authoritarian and sometimes irascible, and this discouraged many of his would-be collaborators. Gibb's extreme individualism perhaps accounts for the incomplete state of his later work. Several ambitious films about China, particularly its great waterways, were never finished.\n\nA Lloyd's broker's son, Hugh James Gibb was born in London on March 15, 1915, and educated at Rugby and Oriel College, Oxford. He followed his father into Lloyd's before enlisting in the Royal Artillery on the outbreak of the Second World War.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "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": 212168, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "87\n\nseven died unnatural or early deaths, though the other six would appear to have died peacefully at a reasonable age in their beds. Three would seem to have appeared in human dreams after they had died, and all are prayed to for boons and blessings, protection or guidance,\n\nOut of the twelve examples six have had privately run temples erected in their honour, whilst images of the other six have been placed on secondary or side altars in local community temples.\n\nIt is worth considering the difference between the deified total nonentity and the deified virtual nonentity. The former would be the unnamed immigrant who died several hundred years ago but who is now regarded as the local protective spirit, whilst the latter is the villager, perhaps even a former headman, whose name, though little else, is remembered. He too is now regarded as a local protective spirit.\n\nAlthough we have been examining such deities mainly in the context of Taiwanese and South East Asian Chinese they appear to have existed China-wide. One such virtual nonentity was deified several hundred or more years ago on an island off the northern coast of Shantung Province, with the rural temple altar bearing the images of both the nonentity, Mr Liu, and his wife. R.F. Johnston describes the temple, formerly on the island of Liu-chia Tao, the Island of Mr Liu, off Wei Hai Wei, the former British possession where he was the last Governor, in his book Lion and Dragon in Northern China.\n\nHe explains that no one appears to know who Mr Liu was nor why his image appears on the altar. Liu Kung and Liu Mu Father Liu and Mother Liu were regularly worshipped, especially by sailors. Johnston notes that the curious thing is that the deification of the old couple has taken place without any apparent justification from legend or myth'.\n\nThe images were moved to a new temple built on the mainland during the occupation after the British acquired the island and began to make preparations for the construction of naval works and forts.\n\nThe images of Mr and Mrs Liu portray them as an elderly couple dressed in luxurious robes, he with a long white beard and the cap of the wealthy land owner.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212428, "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": 370, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "347\n\nLai, T.C., CHINESE PAINTING, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press IMAGES OF ASIA series, 1992. 64 pp. Index. Typically succinct and readable, the inimitable T.C. Lai has not merely explained the craft, philosophy, and aesthetics of Chinese painting in 60 pages, he has made it possible for the general reader to gain an easier entry into the mysteries of this genre of brush art.\n\nReardon-Anderson, James, THE STUDY OF CHANGE: CHEMISTRY IN CHINA 1840-1949, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xvi + 434 pp. Appendices. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. This work traces the development of chemistry in China from the Opium War to the end of the Nationalist era. Based on extensive research using Chinese and Japanese sources as well as those in Western languages, this book should be most useful to readers already versed in modern Chinese history and the history of science.\n\nScalapino, Robert A. THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT: PERSPECTIVES ON TWENTIETH-CENTURY ASIA, Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1989. 137 pp. This series of 1988 Edwin O. Reishauer lectures was delivered by a renowned political scientist especializing in Asia. Professor Scalapino traces the evolution of Asian countries in the 20th century, and discusses the trend of development into three different models - the Leninist system, the authoritarian-pluralist system, and the liberal-democratic system.\n\nSo Wai-chor, THE KUOMINTANG LEFT IN THE NATIONAL REVOLUTION 1924-1931, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press East Asian Historical Monographs, 1991. 290 pp. Notes. Glossary. Index, Bibliography. In this work Dr So distinguishes the Leftist members of the Kuomintang before 1927 from those after the purge. The leading protagonists of this group, Ch'en Kung-po and Wang Ching-wei, long reviled as traitors by their contemporaries because they collaborated with the Japanese, have been carefully scrutinized.\n\nTraver, Harold and Jon Vagg, editors, CRIME AND JUSTICE IN HONG KONG, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991. 216 pp. References. Index. In these essays, nine scholars in Hong Kong and abroad examine the institutions and attributes of crime in Hong Kong through studying changes in the territory's economy, society, and politics. Institutions scrutinized include delinquency, victimization,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213023, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "70\n\nidentification of the readers with the cast in the stones, either for political or social purposes. The only question is whether these could really have integrative impact on the readers.\n\nFace And News Reporting\n\nThe processes of \"deciding what's news\" go on and on as daily routines in the newsrooms of the People's Daily. It is interesting to see how editors and reporters have come up with pictures of the athletes and their country in the concern of face, how collective face(s) have been sprinkled in news reports or editorials supposed to cover the four big events. However, whether this has been the result of conscious or subconscious efforts of the news makers remains unknown and without the scope of the present study. Nevertheless, this paper sheds light upon one aspect of news making: that of stereotyping in international news reporting.\n\nMany studies have previously contrasted stereotypes of different countries by a single newspaper or generally by the press in a country, Stagner and Rossbacher's studies are good examples. In the former, the images of the USA and USSR are compared and the author found two different sets of images each of special characteristics. In the latter, Rossbacher examined the style of Soviet papers and found that it was of an excessive enthusiasm by using solemn words and hyperbolas. But for the \"enemy\", it was of an “accusatory-derogatory\" flavour, displaying hostility to the West.\n\nIn this paper, the image of China in the press looked good. It was a country with honour, a government with influence, her strength was seen in the good performance of her athletes, the People's Daily said. If it could not be concluded whether these were stereotypes or not and whether these stereotypes remained to be so in the press in these countries, it could be safely said that these stereotypes or images presented by the press were pro-state if not pro-government. This seemed to coincide with previous studies.\n\nIn a research project quoted by Edelstein, newspapers from East and West Germany were compared. It was found that although 'the emphasis in the news in the West sample was the reverse of that in the East sample, similar results were found in favourableness toward their own and unfavourableness about other systems' (Edelstein, 1982: 85). In works concerning the media coverage of sports, the results are also alike. Only", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213394, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "204\n\nHunter, Jane, The Gospel of Gentility, American Women Missionaries in Turn-of the Century China, New Haven Yale University Press, 1984\n\nHunter, W C. The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton, London Kegan Paul, 1882 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing)\n\nHunter, William, Bits of Old China, London K Paul, French, 1885\n\nHutchison, James Lafayette, China Hand, Boston and New York Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1936\n\nHutchison, Paul, ed. A Guide to Important Missionary Stations in Eastern China Lying Along the Main Routes of Travel, Shanghai Mission Book Company, 1920\n\nHyatt, Irwin T, Jr, Our Ordered Lives Confess. Three 19th Century Missionaries in East Shantung, Cambridge (Mass). Harvard University Press, 1976\n\nIchiko, Chuzo, Political and Institutional Reform, Cambridge History of China, vol II, 375-415\n\nInglis, Brian, The Opium War, London Hodder and Stoughton, 1976\n\nInternational Mission Council, Christian Education in China, A Study Made by an Education Commission Representing the Mission Boards and Societies Conducting Work in China, New York, 1922\n\nIsaacs, Harold Robert. Images of Asia, New York and London. Harper and Row, 1972\n\nJesuits, Letters from Missions, The Travels of Several Learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus translated from the French in 1713, London printed for R Gosling, 1714\n\n1\n\nJohnston, Alan James, The Footprints of the Pheasant in the Snow, Portland Me Johnston, 1976, 1978\n\nJohnston, R. F, From Peking to Mandalay, London John Murray, 1903 (Taipei Reprint Ch'eng-wen Publishing)\n\nTwilight in the Forbidden City, London Victor Gollancz, 1934 (Hong Kong Reprint Oxford University Press)\n\nJones, Francis Clifford, Shanghai and Tientsin, With Special Reference to Foreign interests, London Oxford University Press, 1940\n\nKemp, Emily Georgina (b 1860), The Face of China. Travels in Eastern, Northern, Central and Western China, with Some Accounts of New School, Universities, Missions, New York Duffield and Co. 1909\n\nChinese Mettle, London and New York Hodder and Stoughton, 1921", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213614, "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-1995", "page_number": 210, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "183\n\nones, having sprung up through private enterprise. Others, like a large newly completed temple in Tampenis New Town, were a complete surprise.\n\nBack in the early sixties I came across a deity who intrigued me because he did not appear to be worshipped elsewhere, and had an unusual multi-coloured striped face. He was known as the Great Emperor of the Seven Stars [the Northern Dipper], Qixing Dadi.\n\nThe temple was a basha hut with an attap roof in a humble and impoverished village on the road across the north east of the island towards Changi. The villagers were unable to tell me anything about the deity apart from it being a powerful stellar god, feared and carefully propitiated. I returned to the village a number of times and always came away disappointed. Nothing seemed to be known about his background and legend. Then, in the early seventies I again tried to find the temple but this time neither the village nor the temple remained and no one seemed to know where the temple had gone to.\n\nIn 1993 I was once more fortunate to revisit the Republic for a short visit and driving my hire car from the airport lost my way in the welter of new roads and found myself in Tampenis New Town. There ahead of me in the midst of the blocks of flats was a new and comparatively large popular religion temple. I parked and entered wondering just what I might find and was amazed to see a row of some nine separate altars facing me, all with two or three images on them with a large Pestilence Wangye shrine in the centre. I began to make notes and sketch in the detail when, at the first altar at stage right, was my old friend, Qixing Dadi.\n\nIt transpired that each altar was occupied by deities from nine separate temples from the area around the New Town, all of which had been demolished over the years to make way for modern development. The ending, however, for me anyway, is sad. Having re-found the Great Emperor and sought out the temple staff, no one again was able to help with his legend. A visiting devotee offered to help and over the next few months wrote several times explaining the progress or lack of it ending with the report that the old man who might have known more had died a matter of months earlier.\n\nSo here we have a minor cult, almost certainly brought to Singapore\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213618, "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-1995", "page_number": 214, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "187\n\nTWO GROUPS OF CHINESE DEITIES RARELY SEEN ON CHINESE ALTARS\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nImages of Chinese deities on altars either stand alone, with their aides and assistants where applicable, or in groups of two, three, five, eight, ten, eighteen as dictated by their legend or custom. There are many such groups, most of which are to be seen on a number of temples. However, two groups, though quite frequently referred to in scripture and legend have only been noted once. The first, the Six Patriarchs of Buddhism, stand on three altars, side by side, in a secondary hall of a popular religion temple run by Ch'aochou devotees in Chonburi, a city just south of Bangkok. The second, the Taoist Seven True Ones (of the Northern School), the disciples, enlightened ones, of Wang Chung-yang can be seen in a separate side hall dedicated to them of a temple at the base of Hua Shan in Shensi province.\n\nThe Patriarchs of Buddhism, Tsu\n\nThere are two separate groups of Buddhist patriarchs, those of the West, that is, with Indian and Hindu origins, and those of the East, that is, Chinese. Indian patriarchs of Western Buddhism totalled twenty-eight, a few of whom were still revered in mainland Chinese temples during the earlier part of this century.\n\nThe Chinese patriarchs of Eastern Buddhism, a total of six, the Tung-tsu Liu(1), belong to a relatively late stage in the development of Buddhism in China of which one, the last and Sixth, Liu Tsu, is still regarded as a major deity in his own right by the Cantonese. However, images of Liu Tsu, together with the other five Patriarchs are to be seen in Chonburi, in a large combined Buddhist-Taoist temple.\n\nThe first patriarch of Chinese Buddhism is Bodhidharma who was also the 28th and last Patriarch of Indian Buddhism. He left India when already an old man and in about AD 520 after travelling for about three years he reached Canton bringing with him the sacred alms bowl of the Indian Patriarchate. He died some ten years later and, according to different schools of thought, is buried either near Loyang or near...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213906, "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-1996", "page_number": 258, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "232\n\nDuring the many dynastic changes since its foundation its existence has been chequered by a number of misfortunes. Hung Wu, the first emperor of the Ming, rebuilt its shattered walls and refurbished its many rooms. It was fit and proper that the main building should be in Peking, but Hung Wu, unable to forget that Nanking had become the capital of his choice, also built and endowed a sister institution in that city. With the advent of the Manchu dynasty in 1644 this last foundation ceased to exist.\n\nOur story now turns to backstage of a temporary side street Ch'aochou opera theatre in Singapore's Chinatown. The mat shed theatre over a framework of bamboo was a standard construction seen from time to time when a side street would be taken over and the theatre erected for a few days whilst virtually non-stop opera would be performed and relayed by an external tannoy system to ensure that everyone within earshot, and not just the audience sitting on stools and benches before the stage, would not miss a note.\n\nThe old man in charge of backstage, surrounded by crates containing the robes, head-dresses, beards and other accoutrements for the players, had his own special easy chair, a folding canvas camp chair, alongside the portable altar or shrine suspended from a lateral bamboo facing forward. The two images of deities had been removed and placed on a folding table together with standard offerings beneath the shrine.\n\nThe interior of the red portable shrine was concealed by two hanging red curtains, some two foot wide and the same in height, denying any view of the contents. The two deities, virtually identical images of youths swathed in red robes and wearing red embroidered trousers, were articulated to permit the robes to be slipped over the arms before being buttoned up the front.\n\nOn closer examination the three characters embroidered on the front top of the red curtains hanging before the shrine described it as the Han Lin Academy. This title in such an unexpected place is extraordinary. The old man was at first unwilling to explain its significance and then under a little pressure confirmed that he did not know. Nor did any of the cast. Can any reader cast light on the reason for this title being given to a backstage shrine?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214009, "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-1997", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "44\n\nthe news to Tsung-pao.\n\nAt this point the commander of the Liao army arrogantly demanded that the Sung forces surrender. Miss Mu, angered by the enemy commander's comment about the Sung general dallying with her and being afraid to fight, fired a single arrow which took the helmet off the enemy commander's head. She then fired a second arrow at his left eye but he had already turned to flee and it struck his armour instead. Her popularity and prestige soared and the Liao Khitan forces' morale plummeted. Miss Mu led her force to victory whilst Yang the Fifth killed one of the Liao commanders and Yang Tsung-pao another, leading their forces in a rolling battle which lasted all of twenty-four hours. The defeated Liao Khitan fled, broken, back north leaving the field to the Sung. Peace reigned for the first time for decades and lasted for the following ten years.\n\nFinally, we have the tales told in temples, individual stories told not only by temple custodians and devotees about members of the Yang family with the father, Yang Yeh, the main character, but also by professional tea-house story tellers. One might expect versions of the lives of the Yang family as related by temple staff and devotees would reflect the religious traditional tales of story tellers and theatrical stories. As will be seen this is not always so.\n\nYang Yeh, his wife, daughters and sons were deified for their heroism and loyalty to the Sung dynasty. Images of Yang Yeh, alone or with his wife, the Lady Yü, Yü Lao T'ai-chun, also known as Yang Ling-p'o, and with one or more of his seven [eight] sons, can be seen in two temples near the Great Wall in northern China as well as on Fukienese community altars in Taiwan and South-east Asia. Yang Yeh, when portrayed on altars, is also known as The Holy Prince of the Yang Family 楊老令公.\n\nIn the majority of Singaporean and Taiwanese temples the staff were quite clear in their own minds that the two major deities of the cult are Yang Yeh, the powerful general and father of the family, and his Fifth Son. Confusion over definitive identifications of images on altars has arisen out of this almost universal belief. The reason for the popularity in temples of the Fifth Son, rather than the greater hero, the Sixth Son, is almost certainly due to the Fifth's religious background.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214013, "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-1997", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "47\n\ntime included the Father and Mother, had been stolen and whilst only one of the original images of the Seven Sons has been recovered, new large images have been made of the others; meanwhile, large images of the two parents are awaiting donations before being carved. Handsome murals on the walls of the main hall of this same temple depict scenes from the lives of the Yang family, including one of Yang Yeh's wife being presented at court. An image of a subordinate general who served under the Yang's stands on a separate side altar though his name and details have now long been forgotten.\n\nIn a temple complex in Ang Mo Kio in Singapore, recently relocated there by the State following the demolition of the original temple to make way for a new housing estate, the main altar contains images of the father and his seven sons, with the sons referred to as Marshal Yang 楊元帥, Yang the Second 楊二帥, Yang the Third 楊三帥 etc., or as Yang Erh Shih and Yang San Shih, etc. The temple keeper at first was uncertain whether the image of the father and the First Son were present but eventually decided that there were sufficient images to assume that they were.\n\nTwo cult temples in northern China, one at Ku Pei K'ou in Hopei, some sixty or so miles north-north east of Peking and another across the Yellow River from Pao-te in northern Shensi, are both close to the Great Wall just inside China. Both temples have images not only of the father and mother but also of the eight sons, the two daughters and the wives of two of the sons.\n\nImages of the First, Second and Third Sons' have not been noted individually on their own altars in southern Chinese communities; however, images of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Sons have all been identified by temple keepers, individually or in groups of Seven, with details listed below.\n\nThe Fourth son, Yang Yen-hui and Yang Ssu Lang, Yang Ssu Yeh, as Yang Chi-yeh-di Ssu-tzu, Lif, known as Yang the Fourth, is also referred to as the Fourth son of Yang Chi-yeh. He is the main deity in a temple in Taipei where the only image of this son, alone, has been noted and where he is generally known as The Fourth Commissioner of Chin-hu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214107, "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-1997", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "144\n\ncollected history of the enclave.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nBrito, R. de S.: 1962, Imagens de Macau Agencia General do Ultramar, Lisboa\n\nDuncan, C.: 1987, \"Development of Macau's City Landscape\" in Macau, City of Commerce and Culture R.D. Cremer, ed. UEA Press, Hong Kong\n\nHong Kong Museum of Art: 1996, Views of the Pearl River Delta Urban Council of Hong Kong, Hong Kong\n\nHurley, R.C.: 1898, Tourist Guide to Canton and Macau Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company, Taipei, reprinted 1973\n\nPires, B.V.: 1987, \"Origins and Early History of Macau\" in Macau, City of Commerce and Culture R. D. Cremer, ed. UEA Press, Hong Kong\n\nPrescott J.A.: 1993, editor Macaensis Momentum Hewell Publications, Macau\n\nSeurre, J.: 1996, “Macau 1996: the Die is Cast\" China Perspectives No. 4, March/April\n\nWang W.J.: 1997 “Is There a Plaza in Chinese Public Space\" in Proceedings of The Second International Symposium on Asia Pacific Architecture: The Making of Public Places, Hawaii\n\nWoodward, C.: 1992, Barcelona Manchester University Press, Manchester", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214265, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "86\n\npray to him for the blessing of a son. However, in Cholon [Saigon] his image, seen in several temples are known as Tzu-wei Ta-ti but identified as T'ai-sui, the god of the planet Jupiter and of Time, though in the major Jade Emperor temple in Cholon images of both T'ai Sui with his bell and Tzu-wei astride his lion stand side by side.\n\nHis standard image in Cantonese communities portrays him as a clean-shaven youth with large round protruding eyes, astride or sitting side-saddle on a reclining mythical beast, possibly a stylised lion. He is holding a seal aloft in his right hand, a talisman bearing the inscription \"The Star looks Straight On\" R. He also has a unique feature, a flag pole behind him on to which is fixed a sheathed sword. The youth holds a conch shell in his left hand and is dressed in only trousers and a cape which hangs round his neck and down his back. He is wearing shoes and has neck-length hair which is held in place by a tiara from which two objects, like insects' feelers, protrude upwards.\n\nIn yet another tale, an extraordinary and complicated legend, an emperor had eighteen robes specially embroidered for the Eighteen Lohan. These were being delivered by a trusted minister who reached their palace in the Western Heavens only to find seventeen Lohan. He sought the eighteenth and found him dead in the kitchen crawling with big fat lice. As this Lohan was the god of the star Tzu-wei and this star represented the emperor of China, the minister knew immediately that the emperor had died since his departure and the spirit of the dead Lohan had been incarnated as the new emperor. The minister was puzzled - what he should do? Finally, he placed the cape around the body of the dead Lohan and returned to Earth bearing a box from the other Lohan which would, they assured him, prove that he had accomplished his mission. When, after months of travel, he reached home, the new emperor opened the box and out flew a crane up into the sky and back to the stars. Artists customarily depict this in their portrait of Tzu-wei.\n\n39] Lei Shen The Spirit of Thunder\n\nLei Shen is portrayed and named as such in only one of the two temples, the Pi-yun Ssu. The problem is that Lei Shen, as such, has been noted on remarkably few altars. Lei Kung, the God of Thunder is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214479, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 337, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "306\n\npaper cutting recalling the story of his life. Many of the papers and photographs, which have been placed by the Royal Asiatic Society with the Government Public Records Office on permanent loan, could be of interest to RAS members who are undertaking research in relevant fields.\n\nAmong the maps of the Pacific region are some of Japan and Shanghai, one dated 1919. There is also an unusual map (undated) of Shanghai (3 feet x 2 feet 3 inches) which has a 'border' consisting of a large number of small pictures. On the map is printed, 'In this map we have tried to depict for you the history, customs and points of interest in this cosmopolitan city of Shanghai.'\n\nMany of Mr Graham's photographs concern the Shanghai Gas Company. They include group pictures of the staff, both Chinese and Westerners, at farewell parties, group gatherings and the like. In all these pictures no women are present. Most images were taken in the early 1930s, when Arnold Graham, as a young man, was Assistant Secretary. There is one photograph of a smaller group, again of both Westerners and Chinese, where some Chinese men are wearing cheung saams. This is interesting because it was taken in October 1950, one year after the People's Republic Government came to power. There is just one photograph of a group which includes both men and women. This was taken in London in 1957. All are Europeans. It was probably a reunion.\n\nThere is also an album containing a number of snaps of life in Shanghai and China, in the 1930s, and during the Sino-Japanese war. There are also a number of family photographs depicting the lifestyle of Europeans in the Far East between the two World Wars.\n\nWhat did Arnold Graham do in his spare time? He was a keen cricketer and a Shanghai Interporter. There are a number of photographs, of varying sizes, of cricket teams: such as Hong Kong versus Malaya, at Singapore in 1926. There is a picture of the teams, 'Hankow versus Shanghai circa 1930.' There are some pictures taken with people sitting in front of pavilions. Most of the photographs consist entirely of Europeans. In a few pictures, however, there are one or two Chinese who could have been groundsmen. The papers in the box include a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214542, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 400, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "369\n\nANOTHER DILEMMA FOR TODAY'S YOUTH IN\n\nCHINA\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch\n\nDuring a recent RAS [HK BR] tour of the Museum of the Humen People's Resistance against the British in the Opium War [1840-1842] at Humen [Bocca Tigris], a small town about sixty miles south-east of Canton on the east coast of the Pearl River, we entered the old temple dedicated to the Northern Emperor [Bei Di] in the grounds of the Museum.\n\nThe main altars of the temple were not in any way unusual in that it had the central altar with the image of the Northern Emperor, Bei Di, and two flanking side altars, one dedicated to Lü Dongbin, the doctor in the group of the Eight Immortals and the second dedicated to Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. However, there were two further glass cabinets, identical with the form of the main altar, one on either side wall. Against the wall, stage left, was an image of Lin Zexu,\n\nthe Imperial Commissioner despatched by the Emperor to Guangdong province in 1839 with instructions to stamp out the opium trade. His destruction of the stocks of opium held by British, American and other foreign traders led to the so-called Opium War [in British parlance, the First China War].\n\nThe cabinet against the temple wall, stage right, contained three images of Chinese officials involved in the War. They were Admiral Guan; The Governor of the Two Guangs and a General Chen who, captured by the British, is now remembered as the prisoner taken by his captives, together with his loyal horse, to Hong Kong where he died. Before both side cabinets, which had baldachin and silken hangings in front of the altar tables bearing honorifics as do temple altars virtually everywhere, were altar tables with red spirit tablets bearing their honorific titles, as well as offerings of fruit, bottles of wine and incense pots.\n\nWhat proved so interesting was the indecision manifest amongst Chinese visitors who, having not hesitated to bow and offer incense before the images of the three main deities, Bei Di, Lü Dongbin and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214797, "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-1999", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "177\n\nquite the reverse. Richard Coyne (1999) has recently pointed to the romantic stream in digital narratives, which implicates them in notions of utopia through the discourse of the 'global village and the electronic cottage', the return to a tribal stage of freedom and a Golden Age equality, the ideal of preindustrial arts and crafts. It may well be, as Coyne argues, that such 'digital narratives', whether romantic or rationalist, necessarily provide spaces of interpretation rather than referring to contextual realities beyond language.\n\nPerhaps as part of a general tendency in anthropology away from getting dirty hands by doing fieldwork in local sites, my more recent research has tended towards a great interest in the power of the Internet, and its World Wide Web, to forge new ties of community between Hmong in France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, French Guyana, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China (Tapp 1999). Of course the Hmong voices represented on the Internet are the voices of those most in the position of being able to represent themselves in this way; that is, the most educated, most literate, and those with computer access. Yet these representations of themselves, both those aimed purely at other Hmong and those aimed at others, are of considerable interest for the way they so often speak directly of the losses and separations suffered by the Hmong community as a whole, and the need to reunite and re-bond, the memories of particular households and the life in Laos or Thailand, or an ancestral home in China. Evans (1998) also draws attention to the power of these nationalist images of homeland among groups of overseas Hmong refugees from Laos.29 These are moving, and deeply felt, images, and they are not necessarily emanating from those Hmong with a particular political agenda, or even from those Hmong who individually left Laos themselves, but often from members of the younger generations, college students who cannot themselves recollect such pasts or places.\n\n20\n\nCoupled with the facts of overseas Hmong tourism to South East Asia and China, return family visits and the emergence of small-scale transnational businesses, we must I think see these Internet representations, these uses of the Internet together with other forms of telecommunication, as directly contributing to the formation of a new kind of Hmong identity and Hmong community, on a global scale, the kind of identity which more nearly approximates our understanding of a nationality or national group, perforce without a state or sovereign", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214824, "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-1999", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "205\n\nphilosophy and ethics among the Chinese\", p.298.\n\n2 A convenient modern summary of all Chinese religions, past and present, is provided by D. Howard Smith in his Chinese Religions (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968). Useful summaries are also contained in the relevant sections of Trevor Ling's A History of Religion: East and West; An Introduction and Interpretation (London, Macmillan, 1968).\n\n3 Arthur H. Smith, The Uplift of China (London, Church Missionary Society, 1908 and revised new edition 1914). Both are used in this paragraph, pp.83-4 and 41 respectively.\n\n4 Hu Shih, The Chinese Renaissance (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1934), p.79.\n\n5 Smith, op.cit., 1908, p.84. Professor Latourette adds one more element: \"The average Chinese has long been and still is an animist, a Buddhist, a Confucianist and a Taoist with no sense of incongruity or inconsistency\", he wrote, in the first edition of his survey The Chinese, Their History and Culture (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1934), Vol.II, p.125.\n\n6 However, this \"intertwining\", as Smith called it, did not extend to the temples and monasteries of the three religions. As the 19th century English missionary cleric Archdeacon Moule observed, they were each characterized by a different atmosphere and possessed a different significance, which he summarized as follows: \"Confucian and ancestral temples generally are for the commemoration and reverence and cultus of the great departed. Buddhist and Taoist temples and monasteries are open for the worship singly or in company of the people generally, addressed to images representing deities of living and present power\". Ven. Arthur Evans Moule, The Chinese People, A Handbook on China (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1914), p.212. Rev. F.W.S. O'Neill, The Quest for God in China (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1925), p.33.\n\n7 This was a truly enormous field of endeavour, as practically every woman in every household in China and its Dependencies would have recourse to Taoist magic in one form or another to ward off evil from the home. The propensity was so marked that it could extend to converts to Christianity who, used to pasting up protective words and phrases, could include “Emmanuel” and “Trust in God” above the doorways and windows where hitherto Taoist charms had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214828, "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-1999", "page_number": 243, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "209\n\nto find there is an image of the great Ch'ing emperor Ch'ien Lung (reigned 1735-1798) on the altar!\n\nMy own experiences in Hong Kong have highlighted this feature of Chinese religious life. Examples that come to light include the many images washed-up from the sea and placed in temples or shrines (Shaukiwan and Ngau Chi Wan, East Kowloon), the Kwun Yam image in the Tai Ping Shan temple to that goddess, and the Kwun Yam image that started the Kwun Yam Temple at Tung Shan, east Kowloon. These examples, readily multiplied here and elsewhere, amount to \"cults of numberless description\".\n\n30 There is much relevant background in the long chapter on Chinese religion in\n\nVol. II of Latourette, op.cit., especially at pp. 124-132, 139-140, and 162-167.\n\n31 See Hong Kong Standard [ ] February 1986, with photographs, for a recent example at Shun Fung Village (Fui Sha Wai), Yuen Long, occasioned by the tree in question having to be felled to make way for the construction of the Light Rail System.\n\n32 William John Townsend, Robert Morrison, The Pioneer of Chinese Missions (London, Partridge & Co., n.d. but my copy presented in 1892), pp.266-267. John Crawford also singles out the women for special mention in the journal of his embassy to Siam and Cochin China in 1821-22, where he cites from the Manuscript of Monsieur Chaigneau, \"The religion of Cochin China is, with little difference, the same as that of China. The lower orders, the women, the ignorant, follow the worship of Buddha; while persons of rank, and men of letters, are of the sect of Confucius”. See John Crawford (with an Introduction by David K.Wyatt) Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China (Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1987), p.500, fn.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "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": 215081, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "134\n\nQuadrants of the 28 Heavenly Constellations, the image of Chen Wu [Xuan Wu], as Lord of the North, was usually to be seen on altars, usually in Daoist monastery or temple entrance halls, together with the Azure Dragon [Qing Long] of the East, the Vermilion Bird [Zhu Qiao] of the South and the White Tiger [Bai Hu] of the West, where they were the guardians.\n\nAlthough Tai Sui is the Minister of Time, another major deity, Fu Xi, has been credited not only with the establishment of kingly rule, of marriage laws, but also the computation of time by inventing a form of calendar using a knotted cord. The Eight Trigrams [bagua] are attributed to him as well as the development of a system of fortune telling using these trigrams which has governed the lives of a great many Chinese ever since.\n\nYang Ren\n\nThere is ambiguity over the rôles of the two deities, Yin Jiao and Yang Ren. In the very early days, before the emergence of the concept of the stems, the twelve branches were represented by images of the deities of the year with all twelve portrayed on altars in temples, especially in northern China where they were regarded as an entity commanded by Yang Ren. Later, when the Sixty Spirits of Taisui, that is the sixty cyclic deities, replaced the Twelve, they too were commanded by Yang Ren - or by Yin Jiao depending on local legend. According to the Fengshen Yanyi Yang Ren is the Jiazi Taisui [the first of the sixty combinations] and is known as Jiazi Taisui Zhengshen.\n\nXIE. [see photograph 4: with small hands emerging from the eye sockets] whilst Yin Jiao, as we have seen above, was identified in the same historical novel as the President of the Ministry of Time. Though we have accepted Yin Jiao as the President of the Ministry and Yang Ren being the identity of the primary Taisui, the picture is far from conclusive.\n\nThe Ten Stems and Twelve Branches have been represented in human form in a number of temples but, as far as can be ascertained, none has been connected with the Lord of Time, Taisui. One of two side walls of the main hall of a temple near Pingyang in Shanxi province representing the Lord of the Northern Dipper, Zhen Wu, contains 13th century frescoes depicting ten figures. These represent five of the Ten", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215082, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "135\n\nCelestial Stems, in the form of the Five Planetary deities, and the other five their counterparts according to the Five Elements. As an example we shall look at just one of the Five Planetary deities, the first stem, Jia, together with its counterpart humanised form the element Wood. The individual Planetary deity portrayed, Jia, is carrying a dish of peaches and is identified as Jupiter. This is the same deity as the one seen elsewhere with the small arms and hands emerging from the eye-sockets. A second wall dedicated to the Lord of the Southern Dipper, Nan Dou Xingjun, depicts the other Five Planetary deities and their counterparts.\n\nReverence of, and Ritual and Sacrifice to Taisui\n\nEach of the sixty Taisui is a guardian of the individual year, and is regarded as the deity in charge of his particular year responsible for the happiness of mankind, and for births and deaths during that year. Chinese place their offerings on the altar before or under the image of Taisui bearing their cyclic year-date of their birth. When such cyclical characters are used they are interpreted from a chart held by the temple keeper who is able to read off the year. In the City God temple in Yau Ma Ti in Jiulong, each of the sixty images which stand in serried rows down a side wall, is an identifiable deity but without its individual name or title being displayed. In Chinese folk religion temples in both Cambodia and Thailand, Taisui is presented with offerings 30 days after the safe birth of a child to ensure that a full life span is pre-ordained. In several of the Macau temples, slips of red paper have been pasted above each of the sixty images identifying the year and title of each of the Taisui. In other places, a number of characters on the front face of the base of each image identify which year of the sixty-year cycle the particular image represents, and in two temples at least, presumably for simplicity's sake, the number of the year is clearly written in ordinary characters.\n\nIn Hong Kong and South-east Asia, devotees place placatory offerings of spirit money under the image which bears the two characters for their year of birth of the sixty in the cycle, together with an oral request for a good year. Such piles of paper spirit money are a sure identification of the Taisui cult. These wads of \"hell\" paper money, either printed notes on the Bank of Hell25 or gold paper \"ingots\"26 [sheets representing offerings of precious metal], are placed beneath", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215102, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "155\n\nIMAGES ON CHINESE POPULAR RELIGION\n\nALTARS\n\nOF THE HEROES\n\nINVOLVED IN THE SUPPRESSION\n\nOF\n\nTHE AN LUSHAN REBELLION [AD 755 - 763]\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nChina suffered a major internal political upheaval between 755 and 763 when General An Lushan led a rebellion against the Tang emperor. It took some seven years for it to be decisively suppressed by government forces.\n\nFrom some records it would appear that An Lushan was half Turkish and half Soghdian, the son of a Soghdian officer and known as Rokhshan before he took the Chinese name of An Lushan. Recent histories written by foreigners only rarely refer to An Lushan prior to his command of a punitive expedition against the Khitan in 736. This campaign was a failure to such an extent that his superior general considered having him executed. Within ten years, however, he became one of the most powerful of the generals, ruling most of the north-east of what was then China, and in particular holding the governorship of three frontier cities, Pinglu, Fanyang and Hedong, along the northern borders of present day Hebei and Shanxi provinces. This meant that he commanded the best and largest armies of the Empire.\n\nProfessor Giles' provided An Lushan's biography in some detail, and although very dated it is still of great interest:\n\nAn Lu-shan died in AD 757. He was born in Luk-chak, of Turkic descent, whose original name had been K'ang. [Presumably Giles was quoting Chinese sources when he related that]... An Lu-shan's mother had been a witch who had prayed for a son on the Ya-lao mountains and at his birth, a halo was seen around the house, and the beasts of the fields cried aloud. The authorities sent to have the child put to death, but he was successfully concealed by his mother. His father died young and his mother re-married, a man named An;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215106, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "159\n\nMeanwhile, General An's army was facing the threat of yet more foreign forces coming to the aid of the new emperor and the armies of Guo Ziyi. These were mainly Uighur and during the summer of 757 after the two Chinese capitals had been captured by the Uighurs, one of the cities, Luoyang, suffered several days of carnage and plunder. An was assassinated, some say by his son, Qingxu, others by a fellow rebel early in 757, but all agree that he was succeeded by his son who was in his turn murdered by his general, Shi Siming. Shi Siming was also a native of Liuchak, of Turkic descent, who had co-operated with An Lushan in his campaign against the Kitans. After the death of An Qingxu, he proclaimed himself emperor Yingtian Huangdi of the Great Yan dynasty.\n\nIn the east, severe fighting had been going on; but, owing to the valour displayed by the garrisons at Pingyuan and Chang Shan, the progress of the rebels in the direction of Shandong was checked. Nor were they more successful in their attempts to invade the Yangzi region. In the direction of Anhui, they were confronted by the stronghold of Suiyang,\n\nof which we will learn more later; and in the direction of Hubei, their advance was blocked by the city of Nanyang, both of these cities held out stubbornly. Shi Siming was in his turn murdered by his own son, who proclaimed himself emperor and reigned for a matter of months before he too was overthrown and put to death, thereby ending the four-year-old rebel dynasty. The rebellion had lost its impetus and festered on with intermittent battles until 763. Even during the last years, the outcome was far from certain. It was ultimately quelled and the dynasty regained the throne, but not before the emperor and his son and heir had both disappeared from the scene in death. This epic story is well known to all Chinese, having been related down the centuries throughout China by village tea-house storytellers.\n\nNow that we have a picture of the Rebellion, let us focus on the emperor Tang Ming Huang and the eight generals who took part in the suppression of the An Lushan rebellion and have become local, regional, and even nation-wide popular religion cult deities with their images, euhemerized heroes revered on a number of altars. Although images of leaders of various rebellions down the centuries have become popular religion cult deities, no image has been seen on altars of An Lushan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215107, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "160\n\nThe Emperor\n\nTang Ming Huang was the third son of the fifth emperor of the Tang. His personal name was Li Longji [AD 685-761], though popularly known as the Third Son, San Lang. He is now the patron of actors and professional musicians, worshipped backstage by Fukienese devotees in Taiwan and several places in South-east Asia. Prior to 1949 he was also revered throughout northern China as the patron of actors, actresses and musicians, with incense burnt before his altar prior to every performance [Photograph 1].\n\nHe succeeded his father who abdicated in his favour in 713, and ruled the country fairly. The first part of his reign approximated that of his great-grandfather, Tai Zong, in prosperity and glory. He began by economising and by 740 the country was reasonably prosperous. Being a man of the arts he surrounded himself by a brilliant court, welcoming such men as the poet Li Bo. It quickly became the most glorious period of Tang culture. He loved song and dance and he had built within his palace an area known as the Pear Orchard, Liyuan, to bring together the best actors and actresses, dancers and singers in all China. The title, Liyuan, later became a common designation for anyone who sang, acted or danced professionally.\n\nMany myths are particularly centred on Tang Ming Huang - and stories about him abound describing him as a very sociable man, fond of music and drama, with men and maidservants being trained as actors and musicians for whom he composed tunes. He also founded a school of dramatic art.\n\nThere are at least six temples in Taiwan dedicated to this deity, in Taipei, Taichung, Changhua and Kaohsiung where his festival is celebrated on or about the 24th of the sixth lunar month.\n\nAs a deity he is known by a number of titles, including Ming Huang Dadi 明皇大帝; Lao Lang Ming Huang 老郎明皇; Lao Lang 老郎; and in Beijing Xi Shen, the God of Happiness. In Sichuan, however, his images were simply referred to as the Bodhisattva Prince, Taizi Pusa and, as elsewhere, were worshipped backstage, principally to prevent actors and actresses from bursting out into uncontrolled laughter or forgetting their lines. He is the patron in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215108, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "161\n\nand the Fulu particular of two opera companies, the Xipi Pai and Erhuang Pai [or Fi Pai], the latter, the northern school, being especially dedicated to woodwinds3. In legend he is said to have had an emotional reunion with the soul of his dead concubine, Yang Guifei, in the palace of Guanghan on the Moon.\n\n4\n\nA tablet on a minor altar at the rear of a secondary hall in the temple of the City God in Hsinchu in northern Taiwan refers to him as Tang Xuan Zong, whilst his usual title in Taiwanese temples of the Lord of the Western Qin, Xi Qin WangyeE is not usually understood beyond Taiwan. There is no image, whereas in the Ma Tsu temple in Taipei a side altar is dedicated to him and his image, portraying him as a standard scholar-official with a black beard, is flanked by two very elderly male aides.\n\nIn South-east Asia images of the emperor have been seen in temples in Seremban and Ipoh in Malaysia, and in Singapore, in some of which he is simply referred to as Zunzhu Mingwang, the Lord Prince Ming, 尊主明王,\n\nAn image seen on the only altar in a side hall of the temple on Miaofeng Shan in Beijing's Western Hills and identified as Tang Ming Huang, is better known in the temple as the God of Happiness, Xi Shen [Photograph 2]. He is referred to as Liyuan Shen, and is portrayed as a smiling figure with beard and moustache, standing with his hands in a theatrical pose. His modern image is dressed in imperial yellow robes decorated with a large dragon and the whole body of the image is swathed in a red robe placed there by devotees.\n\nDisappointingly, there appears to be no image of the Concubine Yang on any altars. However, a modern [1996] tableau in an old temple, now converted into a theme-park, depicts in a series of life-size plaster images scenes ranging from the Tang Ming Huang's first sight of the Concubine Yang bathing, progressing through stages of his infatuation though ending before her death and his overthrow. This can be seen on a low hill overlooking the bend in the Yellow River at the south-western tip of Shanxi province, at a place known as Yang Guifei's pool. The main altar has the Tang Ming Huang and the Concubine sitting with her pouring wine for him. Before the altar stand three incense pots, a container holding fortune spills and plastic fruit as an offering and before", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215112, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "165\n\nIn 755, during the revolt of An Lushan, Guo helped defend the capital, and in 760 he was despatched to recover territory from Central Asian barbarians and finally, three years after the Turfans [Uighurs] had captured the capital, Guo raised an army and drove them out, more by cunning than military force. The disasters which broke out during the declining years of the Tang Ming Huang emperor were suppressed chiefly by the vigour and determination with which Guo wrested province after province from the hands of the insurgents. He spent a considerable part of his life in warfare and was uniformly successful.\n\nHis images in temples in Northern and Central China usually portrayed him as an old mandarin, with a parted beard, both halves held separately in each of his hands, and with a tiered hat. Occasionally his image depicted him as an old man, sitting, with a long white beard and a white robe, carrying a ruyi sceptre engraved with the four characters for 'Everything shall be as You Desire'. According to one sect, the Jin Dan H., Guo is said to have founded the sect in collaboration with Lü Dongbin, the doctor of renown and one of the Eight Immortals. His image on altars in Sichuan was referred to as Cifu Tianguan14 where he was regarded as a God of Wealth.\n\nNo images of Guo have been noted on temple altars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau or South-east Asia, though a temple in Haikang in Tainan county bears the hall title of Fenyang Dian and contains on its main altar not an image of him but one of a local provincial cult deity, Guangze Zunwang, the patron of the Guo clan.\n\nBoth Mesny and Timothy RichardR claim that Guo Ziyi was a follower of Nestorian Christianity, Mesny even claiming that Guo's name was carved on the famous Nestorian tablet at Xi'an.\n\nWe move on to images of the two major deified heroes of the era on temple altars who have had their historic figures embellished by tea-house story-tellers down the centuries include:\n\nZhang Xun✯ and Xu Yuan,F are heroes of renown and unique deities whose images have been seen on temple altars in Zhejiang, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia [Photographs 6 and 7]. Both are protective deities worshipped particularly by the southern Fukienese, both within Fujian province and in southern Fukienese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215116, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "169\n\nthe hills. In temples in and around Hsintien and Mucha Wang Gong is revered as the protective deity (with the pair being revered in a few places but still known as Wang Gong) with his [their] annual festival celebrated on the 10th day of the fourth lunar month, but largely without the great majority of devotees realizing the original identity of the deities. Wang Gong A is also referred to as Weng Gong and Huang Gong A, both of which are almost certainly erroneous titles due to mistaken homophones.\n\nIn and around Hangzhou they are known together as Er Da Ming Huang [The Two (Generals) of Tang emperor Ming Huang]. A fierce image of Zhang, with his mouth wide open used to stand on a minor altar in a small temple near Donghu, a city some sixty miles upstream from Hangzhou. Devotees there believed that pain could be cured merely by touching the abdomen of the image whilst throwing a few coppers into its mouth. Two large images of Zhang and Xu in an old temple some fifteen miles east of Hangzhou, destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, have been replaced with modern images with the image makers being guided by the elderly from memory. This temple stands out in the countryside with the nearest village some half a mile away and with the catchment area for contributions for the rebuilding extending some ten miles in all directions. The refurbished temple has yet [early 1994] to have the two dozen aides flanking the side of the main hall completed, though the images of their main deities and their consorts have been finished. They are regarded as the local protective deities.\n\nIn 1963 in Hong Kong, in a Chaozhou community squatter-shack temple on Lion Rock hillside above Kowloon [now long demolished], the two deities, represented on a framed paper icon on the main altar as two relaxed, seated mandarins in floral robes, were first identified as \"The Two Loyal Dukes\" or \"the Two Loyal Saintly Lords\". The two deities were later identified by several devotees as Wang Zhang Ek and Wang Xu Elf. The two mandarins, with long black beards, were identical and were prayed to as the patron deities and protectors of Chaozhou people.\n\nIn 1927 Goodrich in Beijing recorded seeing images of “two famous generals of the Tang dynasty, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan” in the Dongyue Temple to the east of the city.13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215119, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "172\n\nof\n\n17\n\nGuo Ziyi, born in Wenzhou in Zhejiang province ca. AD 700 and only deified many years after he had fled from Guo's service [Illustration 8].\n\nGuo, after a dream, became suspicious of Wen's powers to perform miracles, and Wen, realizing the danger he was in, fled and became a butcher. When a heavenly messenger revealed to Wen the evil of taking life, he gave up slaughtering animals and entered a monastery. Later, he moved to a temple dedicated to Tai Shan, the Lord of the Underworld, where he became the senior medium and communicated with the souls of the dead. He was renowned for his ability to bring rain and help devotees stricken by drought.\n\nEpilogue\n\nThese nine individuals, an omnipotent Chinese emperor, and a hero, and general, believed to have been the emperor's personal physician; a powerful victorious general with immense progeny; a garrison commander and the city mandarin who died in defence of an imperial stronghold; and four minor soldiers, referred to as generals who also died for the emperor, have been deified with their images placed on popular religion temple altars within limited areas of south-east China and Taiwan, their legends being eagerly retold by temple custodians and devotees.\n\nThe Rebellion has held Chinese imaginations for centuries - mainly, it would appear, because of the story of the fall of the emperor's concubine bringing to its listeners a mixture of sadness and anger at the weakness of character shown by the emperor.\n\nA Chinese Biographical Dictionary published in 1898 in London by Bernard Quaritch\n\n2 In Hunan province and the Yangzi valley in general, Lao Lang, the patron of the theatre, of musicians and actors, has been identified in a number of places as a deified human named Zhuang Zong. He was said to be the patron of Peking opera but only of such groups touring central China. His image in Hunan portrayed him as a clean-shaven, white-faced young man without any special", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "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": 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": 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": 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": 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": 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": 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": 215410, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "136\n\nIn imitation of a real altarpiece the Dormition of Mary is followed higher up by an image above a rose window representing the Assumpta, or the Assumption of Mary into heaven, a favourite theme of Iberian retables, often combined with the theme of the Dormition. Above her there is a high relief of the Trinity with a Golgotha group at the summit. These images are quite typical of the iconography of contemporary retables and follow the sometimes-convoluted theological arguments of the Christian art of the period.\n\nAs the intricacies of the Late Gothic style gave way to the Italian Renaissance, the artistic potency of retable-façades persisted under different forms, dimensions and styles, and in different places. It spread to Southern Spain after the Reconquista, where it developed its own Renaissance characteristics. Later, mainly in a Mannerist style, it appeared in Portugal. Finally some of the most amazing examples of the genre sprouted in Spanish colonies in Mexico and Peru in a Baroque and Rococo style, sometimes displaying the artistry, or otherwise, of indigenous craftsmen.\n\nAlthough such structures are not usually found in Portuguese colonies, there are nonetheless unusual developments in the decoration of some Jesuit church façades in Portuguese India, which can give insights to later developments in their Macao church. The study of these Indian examples is also useful in another respect. Instead of studying the Macao church in isolation, as is usually done, a comparison with these and a selected number of buildings in India can help us obtain a more coherent chronological and stylistic perspective for the façade of Madre de Deus.\n\nTo trace back some of these developments in Jesuit architecture the city of Goa, today known as Velha Goa, is an obvious starting point because of its importance within the Portuguese empire in Asia. In fact, soon after Afonso de Albuquerque captured it from Yusuf Adil Khan in 1510, it came to be considered by the Portuguese as the capital of the whole Portuguese Empire in the East. It eventually became not only the seat of the vice-royalty, but equally of a huge Bishopric, which encompassed the entire region from the Cape of Good Hope to China. In the seventeenth century it counted some seventy religious establishments, including thirty-one churches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215427, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "153\n\nTrue, the originality and beauty of carvings and images constituted an aesthetic experience aimed at everyone in the city. But one cannot help thinking that this complex text, with its erudite cross-referencing, was partly conceived with the more literate and bookish administrative and literati class in mind. After all, attracting the upper and educated classes had recently evolved as a novel Jesuit method of missionization that had borne rich fruit for Matteo Ricci and his confreres in the Chinese mainland.\n\nOne of the Chinese inscriptions states: 'The Holy Mother tramples on the dragon's head,' a reference to the Book of Genesis (Fig. 19). Both the left and the right scrolls have carved inscriptions in relief (as opposed to those explaining the dragon, which are incised), consisting of six large vertical characters. Like those on the dragon, they explain the two images spreading horizontally across the scroll inside a frame. The ones on the left, before the claws of another strange monster, with tail, short antlers, a snout, large bat's wings, breasts and shot through with an arrow, read: \"The Devil tempts mankind to do evil things\" (Fig. 20).\n\nOn the right we read: 'Remember Death and do not sin,' a kind of memento mori epigram at the bony feet of a grimacing skeleton also shot through with an arrow (Fig. 19).\n\nMain Image\n\nReferences to the Devil, who tempts humanity to sin (whose wages is death), form part of the complicated iconography of the façade. Directly or indirectly the entire iconographic programme revolves around its titular image depicting the Assumption of Mary (Fig. 21).\n\nIt is the largest bronze in the frontispiece, measuring practically six feet in height, and like all the bronzes of the façade of rather shallow 3-D casting and flat at the base. It is surrounded by reliefs of music-playing and incense-burning angels, amongst the finest in colonial religious imagery by East Asian artists (Fig. 22). The Assumption is combined with an Infant Salvator Mundi in the attic above, and with the Dove of the Holy Spirit in the pediment (Fig. 23).\n\nThe Virgin's Assumption in bodily form into heaven is one of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215429, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "155\n\nimpressions and variations of this image circulated at the time in Europe; 26 the Jesuit fathers had actually been instrumental in introducing similar prints to the East. Apart from prints, Charles Boxer, amongst others, has remarked how the Portuguese had carried retablos with them to Japan.27 It therefore seems equally plausible that related altarpieces might have been present in the minds of the artists of the façade.\n\nBesides the mentioned attributes, the unknown programmer of the decoration also incorporated themes from St John's Book of Revelation 12.1 and 12.3 (John 12.2 was by now conveniently glossed over in artistic representations of the theme), as well as from other sources.\n\nSuch a sophisticated and theological knowledge of Marian themes reveals the mind of a programmer ingenious enough to merit a few words. Although the identity of its author is unknown, Carlo Spinola, the architect of Madre de Deus and the artist Giovanni Nicolao, director of the art school in Japan, come immediately to mind. But I think one should also consider Dom Diogo Correa Valente as another possible candidate for authorship, mainly on account of the contents of his library in the College of St. Paul.28\n\nThe Jesuit Diogo Valente was the learned but controversial Bishop of Japan resident at the College of São Paulo from 1619 to 1624, years when the façade was probably being redesigned and its construction begun. In 1624 Dom Diogo had to leave for Goa in a hurry under the shadow of the violent quarrels that agitated Macao because members of his own order had apparently partisanly elected him as Bishop of the city. But he returned again as Bishop in 1630 and so remained until his death three years later. When he was buried in the chancel of the church of Madre de Deus the decoration of the frontispiece must have been in progress. However, this is a question that can only be settled by future research.\n\nSymbolic Meaning\n\nThe interpretation of symbols relating to Mary (and the other images) is a fascinating but complex subject that cannot be discussed in detail here. However, it is worth considering some of those adorning the façade to get a sense of their poetic and mystical quality.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215431, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "157\n\nOther Images\n\nA salutation in St. Alfonso's Office praises the palma patientiae and the cedrus castitatis. This allusion to both cedar and palm trees derives from Ecclesiasticus, 24, 17-18. When it comes to the date palms of the second storey, it is very much a part of the stock-in-trade immaculist symbols, particularly dear to southern Spanish poets and painters and also known from early prints, all praising Mary's Immaculate Conception. But these may equally refer to the triumph of the Society of Jesus, with the canonisation of its main protagonists, Sts. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier in 1622 and the recent beatification of Francis Borgia and Luis Gonzaga.\n\nIn the fourth storey or attic The Child Jesus raises his right hand and holds an empty left hand forward. The latter undoubtedly held the lost orb mentioned in the 1644 Annua. It is a pose and attribute typical of the kind of devotional religious image known as an infant Salvator Mundi, that is, Infant Jesus Saviour of the World. The type of \"Menino Jesus\" as Salvator Mundi was well disseminated in Portuguese colonies in the East during the seventeenth-century, as a large number of Indo-Portuguese and Chinese ivory statuettes, usually nude, tend to confirm. Here the Child Jesus is framed by reliefs of angels displaying the Arma Christi, or symbols of Christ's suffering on the Cross. According to Christian theology, the ironically named arma are the “weapons” Christ used in his earthly battle against evil in order to redeem humankind. They were profoundly mystical symbols popularised in devotional literature and images since Medieval times in Europe.\n\nThe pediment is decorated with the large bronze of the Holy Spirit, originally gilded and emerging from rays, with four stars framing it. Next to it are square slabs of the sun and moon, with which the iconography of the main image of the Assumption is finally brought to full completion.\n\nThe dove of the Holy Spirit hovers over both Mother and Child with wings far outspread in an image that seems uncannily like a visual illustration of the Holy Spirit in the opening lines of John Milton's Paradise Lost. As bronze sculpture it is impressive enough today; with its original gilding it must have appeared awe-inspiring to the citizens of Macao and to seventeenth-century and later visitors before the fire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215970, "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-2002", "page_number": 269, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "203\n\npropagating the Christian message. Later in May, 1861, Legge joined Chalmers and six others, including two Chinese evangelists, meeting Ch'ea and then touring the area. During this period they examined and accepted 101 applicants for baptism, performing the rites oftentimes in the vicinity of the local temples where they also preached.56\n\nWhat deserves further attention, however, is the ways in which Ch'ea himself pursued these kind of \"Christian duties\" when left to work on his own during this period of Sino-British conflict.\n\n57\n\nAlready by the time he returned to Hong Kong in May 1857, Ch'ea had developed his own pattern of a Christian form of life. This was largely based on his own feel for how to proceed, even though he had previously been instructed for six weeks in Hong Kong (during the period from May to June, 1856). Consequently, he did choose not to respond to his Catholic maternal uncle who \"advised me to worship my ancestors,\" choosing instead to face \"men's reproach or persecution\" rather than follow \"the doctrines of the Papists.\" Here it is evident that the Scottish Dissenter Protestant leanings of Legge and Ho, who had adopted them, had influenced Ch'ea. Also, when some educated men, possibly other local gentry not in the civil service, urged Ch'ea to \"be revenged for [the] hostility on the part of the officials,\" Ch'ea refused, saying that \"the disciples of Jesus do not strive with men.\" Clearly this emanated from his reading of the Shengjing and the Dissenter attitudes Legge and Ho had taught him, but stood in stark contrast to the military intrusions of the British in the area of Canton. As might be expected, images of the early Christian apostles in the New Testament and probably stories from the colporteurs and missionaries who passed through Poklo moved Ch'ea to itinerate outside the Poklo city walls. As he described his tours in 1857, he first headed west, then north, and finally east, preaching the message of the Christian religion he had learned to anyone willing to hear.58\n\nUnder these situations Ch'ea seemed to move largely out of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215996, "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-2002", "page_number": 295, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "229\n\nrecollections, Jonathan Spence's depiction of Hong Xiùquan's madness in God's Chinese Son, and the argument of Robert P. Weller where he suggests the Taiping king's responses did maintain an appearance of sensibility to those in 19th century Guangxi and Guangdong (Resistance, Chaos, and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994)).\n\n38. No recognition of this kind of cultural logic is explained or addressed in any direct manner within any of the materials published about Ch'ea. Wherever Legge hints at this kind of problem in his 1861 \"Journal of a Missionary Tour,\" the new editors of the EMMC/MM in London (Legge's father-in-law having died in 1858) consistently deleted it from his original text.\n\n39. This rarely mentioned factor in late Qing political movements is hardly given the attention it rightly deserves, but has been recently readdressed in Frank Dikkötter's study, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1992), especially the section on \"Race As Type (1793-1895)\", pp. 31-60.\n\n40. Advocated in Paul A. Cohen's evaluation of historical writing about China as the appropriate new direction for academic studies. See his Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).\n\n41. Illustrations from the text are explained with translations and notes below each image, appearing in Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963, third printing, 1977), consisting of nine plates (seven with scenarios) between pages 140 and 141.\n\n42. The book title was also translated by Christian missionaries who exposed the content of the volume in a tamer manner as Death Blow to Corrupt Doctrines. See Paul Cohen, China and Christianity, pp. 277-281.\n\n43. Whether or not these exact images were being employed in the ideological opposition to Ch'ea's conversion is not certain. In fact, Legge himself possessed one copy of Bixie shilu only later in his life, possessing it only after 1884 when he received an \"LLD\" from Edinburgh University. The copy he received in Oxford originally was owned by Alexander Wylie, if the signatures on the cover portray the story. This same copy was later donated to the Bodleian Library by \"H. Corbett\", and is a text without pictures (Ms. chin. d. 23).\n\n44. This is the argument of An Pingqiu and Zhang Péihéng, editors of Zhōngguó jinshu dàguān (A Complete Introduction to [the History of] Chinese Censored Books) (Shanghai: Cultural Pub. Co., 1990), esp. pp. 102-144, and also illustrated with extensive detail in Okamoto Sae's new publication, Shindai kinsho no kenkyu (The Prohibited Books in the Qing Dynasty) (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1996), where she discusses the kinds of books censored, the contents of these volumes, the authors and their fates.\n\n45. And so the Taiping in their own demonology cast the Manchurians into the role of demon devils in response to these intergenerational racist oppressions. Spence notes the presence of the demonology, but does not point out the connection with the previous imperial tactics oppressing intellectuals (God's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216029, "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-2002", "page_number": 328, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "262\n\nWar in 218 AD between two of the Three Kingdoms [San Guo], between Sun Quan of Wu and Liu Bei of Shu, led amongst other things to the capture of the city of Qingzhou. One of Liu Bei's generals, Guan Yu, hurried south to defend the city but was ambushed, captured and decapitated by Sun Quan after he refused to change sides. Guan was later deified as is now the immensely popular deity, the Patron of Uniformed Bodies and is known as the God of Loyalty, Guan Di. Thus, the founder of Zhenjiang had the distinction of slaying the consequent Patron deity of Soldiers, Firemen and Detectives and the second most popular god on Chinese popular religion altars.\n\nIn the first years of the 6th century AD the first emperor of the Liang dynasty, Wu Di, who was renowned for his support of Buddhism and the Buddhist clergy, visited Zhenjiang. He had been visited by a divine monk in a dream who urged Wu Di to institute a great fast in order to rescue all sentient beings from the miseries of their existence. The Emperor ordered a new monastery to be built at Tse Hsin [Zexin], known today as Jin Shan to accommodate the Congress held in AD 507, and for centuries within the monastery there was a building known as the Hall of Liang Wang. This tradition is at odds with the date usually given for the founding of the monastery - AD 317.\n\nOur next story involves a deified hero who had nothing to do with Zhenjiang in life but, for some unknown reason, his cult would appear to have become centralised along the Grand Canal and especially at Zhenjiang. He is a canonised hero of the Tang dynasty, but one of a pair whose images elsewhere appear together on popular religion temple altars. These two euhemerised heroes, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan, ***, have been seen on altars in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia. These two protective deities are known individually as the Venerable King of Peaceful Pacification, Wen'an Zunwang ✰✰ E [Zhang Xun] and the Venerable King of Military Pacification, Wu'an Zunwang ✯✯ [Xu Yuan] though they will\n\n+\n\nbe referred to hereafter simply as Zhang and Xu.\n\nThe most common history of the two heroes as related by a great number of temple keepers describes how Zhang and Xu, loyalists during the reign of Tang Ming Huang, opposed the rebellion led by An Lushan. They died heroically in AD 757 during the civil war defending the provincial city of Suiyang in Henan province which fell to the enemy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216040, "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-2002", "page_number": 339, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "273\n\nsince sought his assistance to calm storms. In yet another legend Yan Gong is claimed to have saved the life of the first emperor of the Ming during a crossing of the Yangzi; and Werner, after relating a complicated story about the presence of a mythical creature being found, noted that Ming Hong Wu, having realized that he had been saved by a spirit called Yan, bestowed the title of Marshal of the Metropolis upon him and ordered a temple to be built in his honour.\n\nImages of Yan Gong have been only noted on altars in the area of Nanchang in Jiangxi, and in the southern maritime provinces of China including Taiwan and Hong Kong, but not within Chinese communities in South-east Asia.\n\nJiang Shen, literally the spirit of the river, is the generic title for a nameless deity on the Yangzi about whom little is known. She is said to have taken on human form and been bathing in the nude when she was stranded by the low tide. A fisherman caught and raped her, and died! The image of the deity seen in the temple near Wuhan on the Yangzi was that of a fish.\n\nJin Shan Si\n\nThe Song emperor Zhen Cong [998-1022] first gave the name of Longyou Dao, the Island of the Imperial Swim, to Jin Shan island after he had had a dream that he had been swimming in the Yangzi from it and then some ten years later gave permission to the monastery on the island to take the name Longyou Chan Si, which indicates that the temple was of the Buddhist Amitabha School of Meditation. It was restored to prominence and imperial patronage in about 1323 following several annual religious congresses.\n\nVisitors nowadays see a hillock, Jin Shan, Gold or Golden Hill, on which the temple stands with its tall octagonal pagoda with galleries marking each of the seven storeys outlined against the sky. This pagoda crowns the buildings and dominates the River and for a small gratuity permission to ascend the spiral staircase may be obtained. Today's pagoda, known as the Cishou Ta, was built in 1900, though according to historical texts there used to be two pagodas. These stood one at each end of the temple, and were first built during the Tang, though reconstructed several times down the centuries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216258, "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-2003", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "ship. His final seagoing appointment was in command of the experimental deep diving ship HMS Reclaim. After retiring from the Royal Navy in 1972, he joined the secretariat staff of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland administering the 1,800 or so Rotary Clubs in GB&I from which he retired as Secretary to the Association in 1996 (michaelgillam@compuserve.com)\n\nJames Hayes, Ph.D., (London), Hon. D.Litt. (Hong Kong), spent his working life as an Administrative Officer in Hong Kong. He is a noted scholar and local historian and has contributed prolifically to the Journal. Among his books are The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Country (Hamden, Archon Books, 1977) and the memoir of his Hong Kong service, Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People 1953-1987 (Hong Kong University Press, 1996). His most recent book, a volume in OUP's Images of Asia series entitled South China Village Culture, was published in 2001. Dr Hayes is a Past-President and former Hon Editor of HKBRAS (mouseh1@bigpond.com).\n\nDavid Mahoney, is an active member of the Friends of HKBRAS. He joined the Crown Lands Office of the Public Works Department, Hong Kong Government, 1964, and moved to Swire Properties in 1973 where he spent the next 20 years looking after Taikoo Shing and Taikoo Place. A keen collector of medals, he has just celebrated 50 years of membership of the Orders & Medals Research Society. Specialising in awards to Britons who served in China, Mr Mahoney addressed HKBRAS on the subject in 2000. Having previously served on the committees of various societies, his only remaining commitment is to the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, an organisation which locates, identifies, records and restores European cemeteries in India, Pakistan and South East Asia (davidwmahoney@aol.com).\n\nLan Li, Ph.D., is an anthropologist working at Queen's University Belfast as a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Anthropological Studies. She also lectures in Chinese Culture and Society at the Institute of LifelongLearning was corrected to Institute of Lifelong Learning. Her research interests are Chinese popular religion, history, politics, and ethnic minorities. She was a co-organiser of the international conference on 'The Career and Legacy of Sir Robert Hart,' which took place in Belfast between 26 and 27 September 2003 (lan.li@gub.ac.uk).\n\nxvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216259, "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-2003", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "Roderick O'Brien, LL.B. (Adelaide), M.A. (Hong Kong), Postgraduate Certificate in Ethics (Griffith), has been a life member of HKBRAS since 1976. He is an Australian lawyer, and currently teaches international law at the Northwest Institute of Politics and Law in Xian, China, where he lives. He travels widely in China.\n\nJonathan Parkinson, was born in Trinidad in 1939 and educated in England. He started his maritime career in the shipping business in Sarawak between 1960 and 1964, and thereafter was based in the Bahamas, South Africa, Belgium and the U.S.A. He retired to Johannesburg in 1987 where he spends many hours a week happily engaged in aspects of Naval research (jmp@iafrica.com).\n\nKeith Stevens, B.A., was born in 1926 on Merseyside, Great Britain where he lived until he enlisted in the Royal Navy during World War II. He later transferred into the Indian Army and then in 1948 joined the British Army as a career soldier. He read Chinese at both London and Hong Kong Universities, before going onto a second career with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office serving, altogether, more than 25 years in the Far East. He first became interested in Chinese iconography in 1948 and has been compiling a Who's Who of Chinese deities for more than 30 years. He has visited around 3,500 temples in Mainland China, Taiwan, the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions, and across South-East Asia, gathering material. His personal collection includes more than 1,000 images (statues) of Chinese deities, 30,000 photographs of temples and their images, and he has documented the legends and folk law surrounding approximately 2,500 gods. In addition he has written prolifically on modern Chinese history. His publications include Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons and Chinese Mythological Gods (chgods@btopenworld.com).\n\nElizabeth Kenworthy Teather, Ph.D. (Lond.), LRSM, FRGS, was previously Senior Lecturer in the School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England, Australia. She was Scholar in Residence in the David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University (1995-97, 1999-2000 and 2001-02). She now lives in Canberra, Australia, where she is enjoying the delights of the University of the Third Age (courses on the Silk Route in 2003 and Chinese History in 2004). A summary of her research into deathspace \n\nxviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216509, "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-2003", "page_number": 268, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "220\n\nBuddha. After all, the Greeks had settled here even earlier, in the third century BCE. Other examples, before being blown up in 2001, were the huge images of Buddha carved out of the cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with their moulded mud and stucco draperies. Alexander's forays and settlements to lands well to the east of his Macedonian homeland remind us that several of the cities that Tucker describes were far more ancient than the Silk Road. Babylon, which fell to Alexander in 331 BCE, had already by then been the Middle East's most magnificent city for over fifteen hundred years. The earliest city to occupy the site of Chang'an was in existence before 1000 BCE.\n\nTucker manages to convey a huge sweep of history and geography. You will need time to read this book as, if you merely dip into it, you will lose the interconnecting threads, which are the crux of his thesis, i.e. that, throughout fifteen hundred years, numerous cultures met along the Silk Road and nourished each other's creative spirits. You will need to read it at a table because it is too heavy to read on your knees. And you will need an atlas alongside it that has maps showing some realms not often shown on a single spread. Your maps will need to show the geographical proximity of the towering mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush with the drainage basins of the Aral Sea to their west and north and with the upper tributaries of the Indus to their east and south. The passes connecting these regions beckoned both Alexander and, nearly two thousand years later, Tamerlane, both intent on conquering and settling the north of the Indian subcontinent. You will need a single map to show the vast latitudinal spread of the great grasslands, deserts and semi-deserts from Turkey to northern China over which the nomads galloped. It was along these northernmost routes of the Silk Road that the Mongols charged on their terrifying way to Vienna, besieging it in 1241 and only withdrawing because they had to travel back, unexpectedly but unavoidably, all the way to Karakorum to appoint a new Grand Khan. The Silk Road saw many such events that were turning points in history, such as when in 1218 the governor of a city in what is now Kazakhstan killed an envoy of Ghengis Khan, suspecting that he was a spy, an action that precipitated the wrath of the Khan, and \"was to propel the world into an abyss, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the deaths of millions of people from the Danube to the Sea of Japan' (p.221) - because Ghengis Khan's horsemen set out to avenge this insult, inflicting terrible retribution on all in their path.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]