[ { "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": 211039, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "75\n\nfame of Huang Daxian in Hong Kong. They have learned about this god from relatives living in Hong Kong, or from the Hong Kong media. However, in Guangdong province the Hong Kong Huang Daxian is frequently identified with another Taoist figure with the same surname but a quite different biography.\" The Hong Kong Huang Daxian, Huang Chuping, was, before his deification, a Taoist hermit living during the Jin dynasty (317-420 A.D.) on Jinhua Mountain in Zhejiang province, where he became an immortal. However, as the first author discovered during a research visit to China in 1985, many Guangdong Taoists believe that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian lived and became an immortal on Mt. Luofu,* in Guangdong province. They believe that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian is the same figure as a Mt. Luofu \"Huang Daxian” known as Huang Yeren (Huang the “wild man”), who lived, according to the sources, roughly during the same period as Huang Chuping.\n\nIn August of 1987, we returned to China to visit the remains of a Huang Daxian temple in the ancestral village of the founder of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian temple.' We also visited Mt. Luofu to learn more about Huang Yeren. We discovered that some people were unaware of the difference between the two Huangs, and that their confusion of the two was due to lack of knowledge about the biography and origins of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian. However, attempts have also been made by people with some awareness of the differences between the two Huangs to merge these two figures: to unite two deified Taoist hermit-saints into one personality on the basis of similarities and supposed historical connections between the two. Evidently this process of the merging of several originally distinct deities into one figure has occurred a number of times in the history of religions, but it is rare that one has the opportunity to witness it firsthand.\"\n\nThe following is an account of the two Huangs, and of our discoveries in China of the confusion or merging of the two figures.\n\nHong Kong's Huang Daxian: Huang Chuping\n\nThe main Huang Daxian temple in Kowloon contains a plaque", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211042, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "78\n\nthere but you, my brother, could not see them.\" Chuping together with Chuqi went over again to have another look. Chuping shouted to the sheep to rise and all the stones turned into tens of thousands of sheep. Chuqi said to his brother, \"You have now attained perfection in the secrets of the Tao. Can I also learn to do that?\" Chuping said, \"Only if you are eager to learn the way will you attain perfection.\" Chuqi then abandoned his wife and children and stayed with his brother to learn the way.\n\nThe passage ends with a reference to medicines perfected by Chuping and states that people who have taken this medicine have also managed to become immortals. Chuping, it is also said, eventually changed his name to Chisong Zi and Chuqi his to Lu Ban.\n\nThe author of this work, Ge Hong (284-364), was a famous Taoist theorist and writer on Chinese medicine. He appears to be the principal source for traditions about Huang Chuping (although paying him no special attention among the many Taoists whose stories he describes). Other, later accounts, such as the Ming dynasty source Huitu Liexian Quanzhuan (Complete illustrated biographies of the saints), differ little from Ge Hong's version.12\n\nMt. Luofu's Huang Daxian: Huang Yeren\n\nHuang Yeren was by tradition a disciple of Ge Hong on Mt. Luofu. Ge Hong had retired there, after an active career of service to the state, to pursue immortality through collecting various herbs and attempting to refine cinnabar into a medicine to produce immortality.3 The Huitu Liexian Quanzhuan describes the life of Huang Yeren as follows:\n\nHuang Yeren was a disciple of Ge Hong. When Hong lived in the mountain and made cinnabar Yeren always would follow him. When Hong was about to ascend to heaven he left a pill between the pillar and the stone [supporting stone of his hut?] at Mt. Luofu. Yeren took it and ate it and became an earthbound saint. Even today [this was written in the Ming dynasty...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211043, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "79\n\nty] there are those who occasionally meet him in the forest. Not long ago there was somebody who traveled through Luofu and had to stay at night among the rocks. He then saw a man without clothes covered only with long hair. Thinking it must be a saint he approached him, saluted twice and asked about the way [Tao]. The man didn't even bother to look at him. He laughed with a sound that shook the trees and answered by chanting the verses: \"When the clouds arrive the hundred thousand mountains move. When the clouds retire the heaven is of but one colour, I repeatedly burst into long laughters. About the deserted mountain, the autumn moon turns white.” It was Yeren.\n\nThe key fact about Yeren in this account is that unlike Ge Hong and his wife, who ascended to heaven after ingesting the cinnabar, Huang Yeren somehow failed to achieve this, even with the cinnabar pill left behind for him by Ge Hong. In one version of this story which we heard at Mt. Luofu, there had been only half a pill left, and this accounted for his failure to levitate. (Perhaps this version is designed to deflect the implication that even with a whole pill of cinnabar, Yeren was not sincere enough or worthy enough, and hence could not levitate). We also heard a version of the story in which Yeren was late for the ascension because he was drunk (a version indignantly denied by others in a later conversation).\" In any case, Yeren became immortal but was stuck for some centuries on earth. He seems to have spent his time wandering in the hills, and engaging in the kind of behaviour which gained him the reputation of “the wild man.\" There are no biographical details available which might identify Yeren as an actual historical figure, although it is quite plausible to suppose that at least some Taoist hermits in the Mt. Luofu area were recluses, seldom seen, whose odd behaviour could have contributed to the development of a myth similar to that of Yeren, the wild man.\" In any case, this figure eventually was credited with several healings.\n\n16\n\nIn appears that there was a second historical Huang who became a Taoist hermit at Luofu about 500 years after the time of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211044, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "80\n\nlegendary first Huang Yeren, and who was also eventually referred to as Huang Yeren. This individual, Huang Li, was a prefectural governor at Zhengzhou (present day Huizhou) toward the end of the reign of Dayou (928-943) during the short-lived Southern Han dynasty (918-971).\" Evidently he had retired to Luofu after becoming disenchanted with the regime which he served. The sources relate that he met a Taoist who taught him the art of making cinnabar. Towards the end of the reign of Shaoxing (1131-1162), he was by imperial edict granted the title of Dazhen (the one who obtained immortal status). He is thought to have ascended to heaven near the end of the Song dynasty.\" He is also credited with several healings. The memory of Huang Li as a separate figure in the literary sources has been preserved, and evidently there is still a temple or shrine to Huang Li in Dongguan county.\" But the figure of Huang Yeren at Luofu now includes elements of both the original Huang Yeren and the later Huang (or Wang)20 Li.\n\n21\n\nThe veneration of Huang Yeren at Mt. Luofu seems to have a very long history. The poet Su Dongpo in the 11th century A.D. in a letter to a Taoist friend mentions that he had heard of Huang Yeren at Mt. Luofu.\" The great Guangdong poet Qu Dajun (1630-1696) in his encyclopedic Guangdong Xinyu (New accounts of Guangdong) devotes an entire page to Huang Yeren. Huang, he writes, was the most frequently seen of all the saints of the mountain. A small shrine to him (in the hills to the west of the Chongxu Guan) was, he reports, in ruins.\" The writer Tan Cui, who traveled widely in Guangdong during the reign of Qianlong (1736-1796), noted the presence of a small shrine or temple to Huang Yeren in the 18th century.23 When the main temple on the mountain was destroyed in 1802, the nearby shrine to Huang Yeren evidently suffered the same fate. The present temple, the Chongxu Guan, was built shortly afterwards.\" This temple has recently been restored and renovated (1985/86).\n\nIt appears that prior to the restoration, a statue of Huang Yeren stood in the same room as the statue of Ge Hong.\" This statue has disappeared. (The statue beside Ge Hong is now that of his wife, Bao Gu, famous practitioner of acupuncture). However, there is now (as of early 1987) a separate room for the worship of “Huang Daxian\", containing a new statue of the god. We were told that it\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211045, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "81\n\nwas copied by a craftsman in Guangzhou from a scroll painting supplied by the temple for use as a model. The scroll painting once hung in a reception hall of the main temple. We viewed and photographed this painting (which is not on public display). The inscription on the painting is Chisong Daxian (Red Pine Fairy). The painting is evidently one painter's version of the ancient figure of the Red Pine Fairy, and is similar to another, older picture of this figure.26 The painting does not explicitly refer to Huang Daxian. However, the appearance of the figure, who is holding a handful of herbs that he has collected, and the two deer at his feet, are consistent with a portrayal of Huang Yeren.\n\nTo summarize: Huang Yeren has been known in the Luofu area, and probably worshipped, since at least the early Song period. There was once a separate shrine to Yeren, and when the temple was rebuilt after being destroyed in the early 1800's, Yeren was moved into the same room as Ge Hong. Now, there is a separate room for Huang \"Daxian\" at the Luofu Chongxu Guan. However, he is now no longer identified as Yeren, but merely as the Red Pine Huang Daxian. We believe that this has something to do with the belief that Huang Yeren is the same figure as the Hong Kong Huang Daxian—or that the differences are unimportant.” However, the biographies of the two Huangs are clearly irreconcilable. Neither Huang Yeren nor the partly overlapping figure of Huang Li bears any resemblance to Huang Chuping. Further, there are no literary traditions that Huang Chuping went anywhere near Luofu, or anywhere other than Jinhua Mountain in Zhejiang province, and we have found no trace of any previous worship of Huang Chuping at Luofu.28 Hence, it is surprising that anyone should want to confuse the two figures. Why has this confusion of the two Huangs occurred? We now turn to the interviews and sources in which Huang Yeren and Huang Chuping have been confused or merged.\n\nIdentifications of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian with Huang Yeren of Mt. Luofu\n\nIn 1985, the first author interviewed Taoists and others in Guangzhou and in Xiqiao, and found that where they had any opinion about the origin of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian, they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211046, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "82\n\nplaced him at Mt. Luofu. The Taoists typically assumed that the Hong Kong Huang was Huang Yeren of Mt. Luofu. There is a simple explanation for this confusion of the two figures: they are all aware of Huang Yeren because he is a famous figure in the history of Taoism at Mt. Luofu; he is a “Daxian” (saint, or deified hermit-fairy), although not often referred to explicitly as Daxian; and they do not know of the Sese Yuan “autobiography\" of Huang Daxian which clearly identifies him as Huang Chuping of Zhejiang province. (Many Hong Kong worshippers are also unaware of these details).\n\nA second type of merging of the two figures is more intriguing: we have discovered several attempts to link the biographies of Huang Chuping and Huang Yeren. In a pamphlet sold outside the main temple at Luofu, describing the various sites of interest to tourists in the region and providing some background information on the history of the area, there are two short articles on Huang Daxian. The first article, titled “Ge [Hong] the holy man and the Hong Kong Huang Daxian,” relates a visit by the author of the article to the Sese Yuan Huang Daxian temple in Kowloon. After describing the temple, the account begins to describe the life of Huang Chuping, using some of the details from the Sese Yuan's \"autobiography\" of Huang Chuping. However, the account omits the miracle of turning the rocks into sheep, and instead relates the following interesting outcome:\n\nIt so happened that the old fairy and refiner of cinnabar Ge Hong was passing by Red Pine Mountain. He saw Chuping tending his sheep. Although Chuping was starving and fatigued this could not hide his wisdom. Ge Hong took him in as his apprentice, and named him Huang Yeren.\n\nThereafter Huang Daxian (Chuping) followed old saint Ge and \"for forty odd years he forgot about the business of this world.\" He followed Ge Hong to Mt. Luofu in Guangdong and gathered herbs and refined cinnabar below the Lion Rock. Huang Chuping also learnt acupuncture from Bao Gu, the wife of his master.\n\n+\n\n29", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211047, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "83\n\nThe second article, titled \"The legend of Huang Daxian,\" opens with a poem in which the story is retold of Ge Hong's ascent to heaven, taking even the dogs with him, and of Huang Yeren's late arrival and subsequent life as an earthbound fairy. After relating two stories of healings by Huang Yeren (stories taken from literary sources about the Luofu Huang Yeren; see n. 16) the article then asserts that\n\nAccording to historical records the Red Pine Huang Daxian of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian temple was a Jin dynasty man from Danxi. His original surname was Huang and his given name Chuping. In his youth when he was tending sheep he was taken by the famous Jin dynasty refiner of cinnabar, old saint Ge Hong, as an apprentice. Ge Hong jokingly named him Huang Yeren. After Ge Hong had ascended to heaven Huang Daxian continued to travel all over practicing kindness and helping the people. He first went to Mt. Xiqiao, and later to Hong Kong.\n\nThese extraordinary attempts to weld the two Huangs into a single figure are not based, as far as we can tell, on any literary sources. The pseudonymous authors, who very likely have had some official connection with Luofu,17 were engaged in what appears to us to be the creative reconstruction of myth.\n\n30\n\nThis reconstruction has doubtless been at least partly successful. The cultural affairs cadres who met us at the Chongxu Guan had clearly been influenced by such ideas. With some knowledge of the Luofu saints, but little knowledge of the Taoist literature, they related to us a story which managed to incorporate into the biography of \"Huang Daxian” elements of both Huang Chuping, Huang Yeren, and Huang Li.18 They were somewhat confused by the conflicting traditions but, nevertheless, asserted with some confidence that the two Huangs, Chuping and Yeren, were the same.\n\nIt might be thought that the Taoists who serve at the temple would wish to clarify the situation, and to inform visitors that the temple's Huang was Huang Yeren, the disciple of Ge Hong, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211048, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "84\n\nnot at all the same figure as the Hong Kong Huang Daxian. This could easily be done with a small plaque identifying the statue as Huang Yeren. Indeed, a Hong Kong Taoist organization which has provided some funds for the renovation of the temple had asked them to make this clarification. A member of the Sese Yuan had also visited the temple and objected to the claim that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian had originated at Luofu, and was in fact the Luofu saint Huang Yeren. He too had asked the temple to make this clarification. However, up to the time of our visit, they had declined to do this. Why have they declined?\n\nPerhaps, we thought, they expect that Hong Kong tourists may be willing to visit the site where their Huang Daxian became an immortal. The anticipation of this flow of tourists and devotees may explain the placing of the statue in a new “Red Pine Huang Daxian\" room. The new statue also makes the identification with Huang Chuping easier, because the mute tiger, evidently represented at the Yeren altar before the restoration, has disappeared.' (The presence of the tiger, of course, would strongly distinguish Huang Yeren, the wild man, from Huang Chuping, the tender of sheep).\n\n32\n\nHong Kong tourists are indeed coming to Luofu. We observed a tourist bus arriving at the temple from Hong Kong and heard the tour guide, addressing his group by megaphone, refer to the site as the place of origin of Huang Daxian. These Hong Kong tourists, we found, were not at all interested in discussing the possibility that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian did not in fact originate there. One elderly local person whom we interviewed asserted that “the masses wish the two figures to be the same, and so we'll let them be the same.\" Considering the amount of revenue which the Hong Kong tourist trade might generate in the area, this position is not surprising.\n\nIt is quite possible that this confusion or merging of the identities of the two Huangs at Mt. Luofu will not continue indefinitely. The Sese Yuan is, of course, aware of the claims made by the Luofu temple in regard to their \"Huang Daxian”, and at some point they may issue a formal rebuttal of some kind, which would be publicized in the Chinese-language media in Hong Kong (as of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211049, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "85\n\nSeptember, 1987, they had not yet done this). Such a rebuttal would probably reduce to a trickle the number of people interested in visiting Luofu to see \"the place where Huang Daxian became a saint.\" The Luofu temple might eventually be induced to specify more clearly the particular Taoist saint depicted in their Huang Daxian room, which would make it clear to many of the Hong Kong devotees that this is not their Huang Daxian. The merger of the two Huangs at Luofu might turn out to be only a very temporary confusion. However, we believe that we witnessed at Luofu a process which has happened a number of times in the history of religions: the merging of deities with similar characteristics.\n\n—\n\nIf this process ultimately fails at Luofu, it will be because of the unique conditions in Hong Kong: first, the Chinese-language media in Hong Kong are avid reporters of all events of interest to Hong Kong Chinese, and in the realm of religion, their reporting is virtually unfettered by any constraints from religious or political authorities; second, nearly all Chinese in Hong Kong are influenced directly or indirectly by these media; and third, a large organization such as the Sese Yuan will receive respectful treatment in these media, and hence their \"proofs\" that the Luofu Huang is not the Hong Kong Huang would be widely reported, and widely accepted. (The Sese Yuan would be able to mobilize various scholars to support their refutation of the claims of the Luofu temple). If the merging of the two Huangs is ultimately unsuccessful, it will be the result of these unique conditions. In other societies, where electronic media did not exist, where other media were not free, or not widely followed—as when most of the population have been rural and illiterate—and especially where no classical texts existed which might have clearly distinguished the gods, then there were few means of inhibiting the merging of the deities where the conditions for such mergings were favourable.\n\nConclusion\n\nWe have already suggested that the merging of the two Huangs at Mt. Luofu may not continue for very long. The continued existence of literary sources which clearly distinguish the two figures is particularly important. Also important is the ease with which the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211050, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "86\n\ndifferences between the two figures could be demonstrated to potential worshippers in Hong Kong through the modern mass media, and the likelihood that the Sese Yuan will want to keep them separate. However, it is clear that there are also factors which favour a merger: the interest of the Luofu temple in attracting a flow of Hong Kong tourists and devotees, and in further aggrandizing their site; the ignorance of most Hong Kong worshippers about the literary sources or even about the actual biography of the figure whom they worship as Huang Daxian; the continuing decline in the tension between the political system in Hong Kong and the political system in China (a situation which may change, however, as 1997 approaches); the common language and culture of the populations of Hong Kong and of Guangdong province, facilitating travel and pilgrimages into Guangdong province; and the clear desire of many Hong Kong citizens to visit shrines and historic sites, especially those with great cultural significance, in their \"home province.\" If the Sese Yuan takes no decisive action to refute the claim of the Luofu \"Huang Daxian” shrine, then the merger of the two figures may eventually become so well established that it would be difficult for the Sese Yuan to completely separate them again. Further, the Sese Yuan has virtually no ability to influence those citizens of Guangdong province who have become acquainted with “Huang Daxian” as a result of his fame in Hong Kong, but who have even less knowledge of his origins than the Hong Kong worshippers. Many have already in their own minds confused or merged the two Huangs. As traditional religious worship spreads in China, as it has under the policies currently in effect with regard to religion, the number of devotees of the Luofu Huang may eventually surpass even those of the Hong Kong Huang, all the more so as it will be many years before citizens of Guangdong province can easily visit the Huang Daxian temple in Kowloon. In short, it is too soon to predict the final outcome of the blending of these two figures which we were so fascinated to observe at Mt. Luofu.\n\nPlates 8-16 at the rear of the volume illustrate this article.", "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": 211053, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "89\n\nNorthern Vietnam) he asked to be relieved of office and left the capital for Guangzhou. In 327 he settled in the Zhuming cave of Mt. Luofu where he busied himself collecting medicinal herbs and refining cinnabar. His extensive writings include several important treatises on Taoism and Chinese medicine. (Source: Zongjiao Cidian [Dictionary of religion], Shanghai, Cishu Chubanshe (Lexiographical publishing company), 1981, pp. 997-998; see also Jin Shu [The Book of Jin], volume 72, Zhonghua Shuju). Needham calls him \"the greatest alchemist in Chinese history\" (Science and Civilization in China, vol. II, Cambridge University Press, 1956, p. 437).\n\n14 The story that Huang Yeren was late for the levitation because he was drunk, we heard from a young official of a local Taoist organization whom we interviewed in Guangzhou on August 27, 1987. Cultural affairs cadres whom we interviewed at the main temple on Mt. Luofu on August 28, 1987 indignantly denied this story. The young official also related the story that Huang Yeren (Huang the wild man) had originally been called Huang \"also [in Cantonese “yah”] man” (in many Luofu folk-tales the Yeren is said to appear in the shape of an animal). Later the character for \"also\" (in Mandarin “ye”) had been substituted by that for \"wild\" (in Mandarin also \"ye\"). We have not found any documentary sources which confirm this information.\n\n19 Michel, Soymié, \"Le Lo-feou chan\", 1954. Bulletin de l'école française d'Extrême-orient, Tome XLVIII (ler semestre), 1954, pp. 1-137, raises another possibility (see pp. 109-110): that the Yeren tradition is based on contacts in ancient times, possibly including periodic trading exchanges, between people of the plains of Guangdong and aborigines living on or near the mountain. In the eyes of the plainsmen, the aborigines would appear strange in many respects, especially in speech and appearance. Stories derived from these contacts might have become the basis for the Yeren legend. Supporting this interpretation, Soymié notes, is the fact that Yeren was thought to be able to appear as a man or a woman, a young person or an old person, and that Yeren is in fact a category of \"strange person apparitions” rather than a single figure. Clearly, once such a flexible figure had become established in the popular imagination, sightings of almost anything on the mountain could feed into the growing folklore about Yeren.\n\n16 Some stories of healings by Yeren are contained in Luofushan Fengwuzhi (Records of Mt. Luofu scenery), Guangdong Lüyou Chubanshe (Tourist affairs publishing co., 1984). This source also records the tradition that the cave of Yeren was guarded by a mute tiger. The chapter in which the healings are recorded is titled, \"The earth-bound fairy riding on a mute tiger.\"\n\n17 Source: Nanhan Shu (The book of Southern Han), Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe, 1981 (reprint), volume 17. This story was also related to Ragvald by scholars of the provincial Wenshi Guan (Research institute of culture and history) whom the first author interviewed in Guangzhou, September, 1987.\n\n18 These details are in notes provided to the first author by the Wenshi Guan scholars (see previous footnote), and were evidently taken by them from an addition to the Nanhan Shu, titled Nanhan Shu Kao Yi (Collating the variants), volume 17.\n\n19 We have not yet been able to verify the exact location of the temple, which apparently is called Huangxianweng miao (The temple of old saint Huang). There may be several other Huang Li temples in this region.\n\n20 According to Nanhan Shu Kao Yi (volume 17) his original name may have been Wang rather than Huang. Evidently he changed his surname to Huang (in Canton...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211054, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "90\n\nese pronounced exactly like Wang) after becoming a hermit at Mt. Luofu. Thus the foundation for a subsequent merger of the two \"Yerens” was created. According to Soymie, \"Le Lo-feouchan\", pp. 110-111, another immortal of the mountain, Wang Tijing, was also occasionally referred to as Huang Yeren. Today, however, he seems to be totally disconnected from the \"Yeren\" figure,\n\n21 Su Dongpo Ji [collected works of Su Dongpo], Shanghai, Shangwu Yinshu Guan (Commercial Press), 1933, Vol. 2, p. 58. In this volume there are numerous references (poems as well as letters and essays) to Luofu. Su Dongpo was exiled to Huizhou from the Song capital, and went to Luofu Mountain soon after (in 1094) arriving in Huizhou (this probably indicates the fame of Luofu among men of letters and politicians). What attracted him, no doubt, was the name of Ge Hong. Su is said to have spent about two years (of his four years in Huizhou) in Luofu. (Source: Luofushan Fengwuzhi, p. 105).\n\n22 Guangdong Xinyu, Hong Kong, Zhonghua Shuju (Chung Hwa Book Company), 1975 (reprint), pp. 729-730.\n\n23\n\nThe reference is in Tan Cui's work Chuting Baizhu Lu (Records of precious pearls from Chuting [old name of Guangzhou], reprinted in October 1982 by Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe). This work contains a rather detailed account of Luofu Mountain and most (possibly all) of the temples which existed in the mountain in the 18th century.\n\n24 According to the Luofushan Fengwuzhi, the original temple at Luofu was built in 405 A.D., and was called Ge Hong Ci. Later in the early Tang, a large one called Ge Xian Ci was built. Another source (Lingnan Gu Jin Lu or Records of old and present Lingnan [Guangdong], edited by Xu Xu, well-known Guangzhou-based scholar, Hong Kong, Shanghai Book Company, 1984) states that a small temple was built at Luofu in 742 A.D., called Ge Xian Ci. During the Song dynasty, a Taoist temple was built, called the Duxu Guan, later renamed the Chongxu Guan. The deities worshipped in the central shrine of the temple (they have superseded Ge Hong, perhaps from as early as the Southern Han dynasty) are the three gods residing in the 35th (San Qing Tian) of the 36 heavens (Tianbao Jun, Taishang Daojun and Taishang Laojun). They are the mightiest among the \"shenxians\" (the fairies and saints [immortals]). They are normally understood by worshippers to be the Jade Emperor and his two closest officials.\n\n25 We learned this from the interviews at Luofu, especially from an interview with Mr. Zhang Zongquan, the presiding Taoist at a smaller temple, the Jiutian Guan (devoted to Beidi, the \"northern emperor\"), on the plain near the mountain several kilometres from the main temple. Mr. Zhang had been an officer in the anti-Japanese forces of the area in the 1930's. The provincial Fengwuzhi (Guangdong Fengwuzhi, Guangzhou, Huacheng Chubanshe, 1985, p. 151) also mentions worship of Ge Hong together with worship of Huang Yeren and the mute tiger often mentioned in folk-tales. This account refers to the situation prior to the restoration.\n\n26 See the picture of the Red Pine Fairy in Zhongguo Shenhua Chuanshuo Cidian (Dictionary of Chinese myths and legends), Shanghai, Cishu Chubanshe (Lexiographical publishing company), 1985, p. 185.\n\n21 One Taoist whom we interviewed (see note 25) dismissed the importance of the differences in the biographies of the two Huangs with the remark that the spirit of Huang Chuping entered (or could enter) into the person of the later Huang Yeren. He was the only one we met who explicitly used this strategy to rationalize the merger of the two Huangs into one figure at the Chongxu Guan. It is possible that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 } ]