[ { "id": 210953, "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-1987", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nOBITUARY: K. M. A. BARNETT\n\nTRANSACTIONS:\n\nJean Chesneaux, China in the Eyes of the French Intellectuals\n\nElizabeth Sinn, Kowloon Walled City: Its Origin and Early History\n\nARTICLES:\n\nAnthony Sweeting, A Middleman for All Seasons: Snapshots of the Significance of Mok Man Cheung and His English Made Easy\n\nLars Ragvald and Graeme Lang, Confused Gods: Huang Daxian (Wong Tai Sin) and Huang Yeren at Mt. Luofu\n\nGraeme Lang and Lars Ragvald, Official and Oral Traditions About Hong Kong's Newest God\n\nDavid W. Mahoney, The British (Protestant) Cemetery at San Pedro, Makati, Manila, Philippines\n\nValery M. Garrett, A Hoklo Wedding\n\nCarl Smith, A Sense of History (Part II)\n\nThe Hong Kong History Project\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nAnthony K. K. Siu, Tam Kung: His Legend and Worship\n\nThe Cannon in the Kowloon Walled City\n\nJames Hayes, Hong Kong's Own Boat People\n\nVisit to the Iwataya Department Store, Fukuoka, Japan\n\nNotes on Temples and Shrines, Hong Kong Island\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nvii\n\nxiii\n\nxv\n\n1\n\n11\n\n30\n\n46\n\n74\n\n93\n\n101\n\n112\n\n117\n\n254\n\n278\n\n279\n\n280\n\n283\n\n285\n\n292\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211038, "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-1987", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "74\n\nCONFUSED GODS: \n\nHUANG DAXIAN (WONG TAI SIN) AND HUANG YEREN \n\nIntroduction \n\nAT MT. LUOFU \n\nLARS RAGVALD AND GRAEME LANG* \n\n2\n\nSince 1984, we have been studying the history of the cult of Huang Daxian (Wong Tai Sin)1 in Hong Kong and in South China. Initially, our primary concern was to explain the rapid growth in popularity of this god in Hong Kong, but we have also searched for the roots of this cult in Guangdong, where the first author in 1985 discovered the ruins of several temples to Huang Daxian built earlier this century. In the course of this research, we have encountered some intriguing variations in beliefs about this god.\n\n3\n\nIn a separate paper, we describe two cases where oral accounts regarding the god Huang Daxian differ sharply from the official accounts published by the Sese Yuan (Sik Sik Yuen), the organization which manages the god's temple in Kowloon.† Both of these oral accounts seem to have been borrowed from other local traditions, a process familiar to students of folklore. Conditions such as those which can be found in Hong Kong may favour this kind of mixing and mingling of traditions, all the more so as there are few traditions about the god Huang Daxian which are widely known.\n\nIn more recent research in China, we have observed further instances of the mingling of traditions about the god Huang Daxian.* Many people in Guangdong province are aware of the\n\nLars Ragvald teaches at the Institute of Oriental Languages at the University of Stockholm, Sweden and Graeme Lang at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University, Canada.\n\n+ Editor's note: \"Official and oral traditions about Hong Kong's newest god”, at pp. 93-99 of this issue of the journal, was originally scheduled for earlier publication. The editor regrets any inconvenience to the authors caused by the delay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211051, "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-1987", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "87\n\nNOTES\n\n“Wong Tai Sin” is the most common transliteration in Hong Kong of the god's name. The pinyin transliteration is Huang Daxian. For Chinese names with a conventional Hong Kong transliteration which differs from the pinyin form, we will begin with the pinyin forms followed by the Hong Kong forms within brackets. For names and places in China, and for subsequent references to Chinese names and terms used in Hong Kong (except for place names such as Hong Kong and Kowloon), only pinyin system will be used.\n\nOn the reasons for the growth in popularity of Huang Daxian in Hong Kong, especially since the late 1940's, see Graeme Lang, and Lars Ragvald, “Upward mobility of a refugee god: Hong Kong's Huang Daxian,\" The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies. Vol, 1, 1988. We have called Huang Daxian the “refugee god” both because his cult was imported into Hong Kong early in this century during a period of persecution of traditional religion in China, and also because the god's success can be attributed in part to the refugees who flooded into the area around the temple in the late 1940's. Key decisions made by the management of the temple were also very important.\n\nOur discoveries regarding the ruined temples to Huang Daxian in Guangdong, and a second visit to these sites in 1987, will be reported in a forthcoming article.\n\nThere are undoubtedly many intriguing stories about Huang Daxian which could be collected by researchers in Guangdong province. For instance, one story connecting Huang Daxian to legends about the founding of Guangzhou was related to the first author by the manager of a local company near Guangzhou, who as a child had played in an old Huang Daxian temple in the Fangcun area (on which, see the first author's forthcoming paper). According to this story, Huang Chuping of the Jin dynasty had found the way (Tao) and become a saint at Mt. Luofu. He then, it is said, shouted at five pieces of hard rock turning them into five fairy-sheep and also ordered five fairies dressed in red, yellow, blue, white and black respectively to drive the sheep. This unlikely flock descended in the midst of Guangzhou. Huang Daxian then chanted, \"I wish that Guangzhou from now on shall enjoy bumper harvests, timely wind and rain, be prosperous and at peace, and never suffer famine or disaster”. This tale was related as explaining the origin of the old names Wuyang Cheng (City of the five sheep) and Suicheng (Ear of grain city). The story is clearly modeled on the old (documented) tales of the five saints on ram-back who brought the five ears of grain to Guangzhou. It is not clear where the manager got his story, but it may have been stimulated by an obscure phrase on one of the pillars of the main gate of the old Fangcun Huang Daxian temple. In any case, we expect that there are many such tales which remain to be uncovered. The versatile Huang Daxian, with his several incarnations and his ability to absorb stories from other traditions, may continue to surprise students of his cult for years to come. In the present paper, however, we focus only on his merger with another Taoist figure at Mt. Luofu.\n\n5 Several cases of apparently similar confusion or merging of legendary Taoist figures on the basis of similar surnames have been documented in S.H. Wong. “A study of Huang Ta-hsien [Daxian].” The Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, XVI, 1985, pp. 223-239.\n\nMt. Luofu, some 100 kilometres northeast of Guangzhou, is historically the most important site in the history of Taoist worship and practice in Guangdong province.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211057, "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-1987", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "93\n\nOFFICIAL AND ORAL TRADITIONS ABOUT HONG KONG'S NEWEST GOD\n\nGRAEME LANG AND LARS RAGVALD\n\nSince the 1940's an ancient Taoist immortal now known as 'Wong Tai Sin' has become one of the most popular gods in Hong Kong. In researching the social history of the god's major temple in Kowloon, (see Lang and Ragvald, 1988) we encountered two types of stories about the god and his temple. The first type, the official history published by the group which manages the temple, is grounded in certain obscure classical texts. The second type of story is the oral traditions circulating among believers. We were surprised to discover cases where there was little or no connection between official and oral accounts. Two cases are described to illustrate how motifs of story elements from other sources had been drawn into the oral versions. We will also try to explain the occasional wide disparities between official and oral accounts.\n\n2\n\nIn the first case, the authors were interviewing an elderly Cantonese lady to probe her knowledge of the history of the major Wong Tai Sin temple in Kowloon. She had seemed likely to be a good subject. Like the founders of the temple she was formerly in the herbal medicine business, and had operated a shop in Guangzhou (Canton) before moving to Kowloon, where she lived for a time near the Wong Tai Sin temple. She related to us that the original statue of Wong Tai Sin had been miraculously washed into the Pearl River during a natural disaster which severely damaged the temple in Guangdong. The statue was swept down the river to Hong Kong, and then miraculously recovered from the sea and made the object of worship. This oral legend is quite different from the official account published by the organization which has managed the temple since 1921. This official account holds that the original image of the god was a picture, rather than a statue; that it was brought down from Guangdong by the founders of the temple in 1915 and placed in a small shrine on Hong Kong Island, and that it was subsequently transported to Kowloon when the temple was moved there in 1921. There is no statue of the god at the modern temple. This official account was written by persons", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211063, "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-1987", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "99\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAllen, Barbara, and William L. Montell\n\n1981 From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Local Historical Research. Nashville: The American Association For State and Local History.\n\nChin, Margaret, et al.\n\n1977 Religion and Organization: A Study of the Temple of Wong Tai Sin. Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University.\n\nDay, Clarence Burton\n\n1969 Chinese Peasant Cults. (2nd edition) Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Co.\n\nHayes, James\n\n1966 \"Chinese Temples in the Local Setting\". In Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, pp. 86-95. Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\nLang, Graeme, and Lars Ragvald\n\n1988 \"Upward Mobility of a Refugee God: Hong Kong's Huang Daxian”. Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies. vol. 1, 54-87.\n\nLoomis, C. Grant\n\n1948 White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend. Cambridge, Mass.: The Mediaeval Academy of America.\n\nOgura, Manabu\n\n1980 Drifted Deities in the Noto Peninsula. In Studies in Japanese Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson, pp. 133-44. New York: Arno Press.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 } ]