RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CONTENTS PRESIDENT'S REPORT TREASURER's Report THE LIBRARY: and the Library Rules TRANSACTIONS OF THE BRANCH : I Page 1 9 13 16 A Hong Kong Spirit-Medium Temple-JOHN T. MYERS Merchant Organisations in Late Imperial China: Patterns of Change and Development-WELLINGTON K. K. CHAN 28 China's Economic Planning and Changing Geography—CHIAO-MIN HSIEH 43 ∞ NOA 48 61 71 88 ARTICLES: Incident between the Hong Merchants and the Super-cargoes of the British East India Company in Canton, 1811—J. L. Cranmer-BYNG The Great Plague of Hong Kong-E. G. PRYOR Notes on Chiuchow Opera-Helga Werle Condition of the European Working Class in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong-HENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE The Employment of Foreign Military Talent: Chinese Tradition and Late Ch'ing Practice-RICHARD J. SMITH 113 The Pacific Oyster Industry in Hong Kong-BRIAN MORTON AND P. S. WONG Captive Surgeon in Hong Kong: the Story of the British Military Hospital, Hong Kong 1942-1945- DONALD C. Bowie NOTES AND QUERIES: ... The Pottery Kilns at Wun Yiu, Tai Po-J. W. HAYES The Noon Day Gun-CARL T. SMITH The German Congregation in Hong Kong until 1914-CARL T. SMITH 139 150 291 292 292 295 Boat People's Ceremonies observed from Island House, Tai Po-D. AKERS JONES 300 The RAS Photographic Survey in Hong Kong—H. A. RYDINGS 311 Chief Marshal T'ien, patron of the stage, of musicians and wrestlers-East and South East China-K. G. STEVENS 303 Chang Yu-tang and an old Hanging Scroll from Cheung Chau-FRANCIS S. Y. SHAM AND JAMES Hayes Hung Hom: an Early Industrial Village in Old British Kowloon-Carl T. SMITH AND JAMES HAYES Typhoon Preparations in 1903 BOOK REVIEWS 318 324 327 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d NOTES AND QUERIES 303 CHIEF MARSHAL T’IEN, PATRON OF THE STAGE, OF MUSICIANS AND WRESTLERS-EAST AND SOUTH EAST CHINA Miss Werle in her fascinating article1 on Swatow horizontal stick puppets referred to Chief Marshal T'ien (###)* patron of Fukienese and Ch'aochow actors and musicians, and quoted from Werner's2 extract from Doré's translation of the Han dynasty classic Shan Hai Ching (1), which partly explains T'ien's deification. Marshal T'ien appears on altars as a tablet bearing his titles, or as a lone image on the small, portable altar found backstage of most Fukienese or Ch'aowchow travelling operas and theatres in Taiwan and South East Asia, or less frequently with attendants who only appear on temple altars. His image is easily recognised by one unique characteristic: one or two crabs painted on his face. He is also unusual, though not unique, in having a small dog under one of his feet or beside him. This animal, called the 'Dragon Dog' (#14) is normally black, though white and piebald have been seen. It is comically dressed in a theatrical jacket with trousers of red, yellow and green and is often represented kneeling and carrying a small, wrapped package said to be T'ien's official seal (Plate 19). T'ien himself generally is depicted as a teenager, seated, with protruding eyes and a tightly rolled scroll in his right hand. His left hand is raised waist height with one finger or two fingers together, pointing vertically in a theatrical manner (Plate 20). His robes are shiny, golden and heavily decorated, and occasionally he has two long pheasant tail feathers protruding from the top of the head trailing down behind him. The crab may be painted around his mouth, across his forehead or both. In the early part of this century a French priest on the Yangtze plain, Père Doré, described the three musician brothers T'ien as *It is difficult to translate To Yuan Shuai meaning fully: literally it means 'the marshal of the Capital'. 1JHKBRAS, 13, (1973), pp. 73-84. 2E. T. C. Werner: A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, pp. 125, 322 & 574. 3Père Doré: Récherches sur les superstitions en Chine (Zikawei 1961) Vol. IX, p. 188, and Vol. XI, p. 1,004. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 304 NOTES AND QUERIES patrons of musicians and sketched them without either crab decorations or the dog. The main brother was shown holding a fan in each hand whilst the other two stood beside him with two attendants. Later in this Note, you will see that one of Chief Marshal T'ien's titles is Wu Tai Yuan Shuai. Père Doré described Wu Tai separately and sketched him as a young man with green twigs behind the ears, a large crab on his forehead, a tiny Taoist crown on his bald head and dressed in loose-fitting robes. Wu Tai, according to Doré, was accompanied by two male and two female attendants. This would appear to be the southern provinces' temple version which Doré did not realize was a manifestation of Marshal T'ien. There are, as one would expect, many variations in characteristics in Ch'aochow and Fukienese carvings. For instance, occasionally he is represented as bald, or the front of his hair is shaven in Ch'ing fashion making him half-bald; in others he has a long queue or two long pigtails; sometimes he wears a military helmet or a scholar's cap, and in some images he has a black cock under his other foot. In several places he is represented as a youth standing on one foot with both arms raised in a dramatic, theatrical stance, and in others he is standing stolidly, with both feet together holding one or two swords. A sketch of T'ien To Yuan Shuai by a Singaporean Fukienese god carver depicted him with a red face, staring eyes and dressed in scholar's robes. (Plate 21). An actor, one of a company of Ch'aochow players in Bangkok, explained that they only had a tablet in their portable shrine, and that their image with only one crab painted on his forehead, was permanently in a temple. He told me that the single crab on the forehead meant that T'ien was the patron of actors, whereas others with the crab on the mouth represented the middle brother of the T'ien trio who is only prayed to for good health. In one sighting in Ipoh, in North Malaya, Marshal T'ien was wearing armour, carried a sword and bell, but was barefoot and had a crab painted on his mouth. He was known to the temple priests to have been a vegetarian monk from Ch'aochow, insane as a child who had cured himself and is now worshipped for a similar cure by parents of the mentally sick. (Plate 22). Above his image on a small backstage altar of a Foochow opera troupe in Singapore, was the carved inscription ‘Ministry of Wind ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d NOTES AND QUERIES 305 and Fire of the Ninth Heaven' (AARAX). The character for fire () was written upside down and though he was unable to explain why, a senior actor claimed that in this title it was always written in this way. It is possible to group the images of Marshal T'ien into two types, the civil and military, the former without a sword or swords. In the latter he is unconnected with the theatre and is a potent God of epidemics and a demon dispeller, and as a soldier he frequently carries a bell and wears armour. We have only the Bangkok Chinese actor's unsubstantiated claim that this epidemic deity is the middle brother of the three, although in Singapore and in Taiwan the sword carrying, armour-wearing version also bore the same title as the actor's patron. As a general rule Marshal T'ien has eight attendants: two boxers, two jugglers or dancers, two wrestlers and two musicians (one male and one female normally surnamed Cheng). His main festival is celebrated on the sixteenth of the sixth lunar month, although his birthday is also celebrated in one or two places on the twenty-third of the eighth lunar month. Chief Marshal T'ien's titles He is known by many titles, the following being the most common: a) T'ien To Yuan Shuai (田都元帥) b) San T'ien To Yuan Shuai (三田都元帥) c) San T'ien To Ch'ien Sui (三田都千歲) T'ien, the Chief Marshal The Chief Marshal, Tien the third (brother) The Imperial Prince, Tien the third (brother) d) To Yuan Shuai (*) The Chief Marshal e) T'ien Kung Yuan Shuai (田公元帥) Duke T'ien, the Marshal f) T'ien Hsiang Kung (田相公) T'ien the Minister g) Chen Hua San T'ien To Yuan Shuai (探花三田都元帥) The Graduate T’ien* * Chen Hua (T'an Hua) - the third level of Imperial graduate in the chin shih or doctoral examination at the Capital. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d NOTES AND QUERIES 306 h) Feng Huo Yuan T'ien Yuan Shuai (風火院田 元帥) i) Wu Tai Yuan Shuai (五代元帥) j) Chung Lich Ta Yuan Shuai (忠烈大元帥) k) Lei Hai-ch'ing (†) Various Sightings Tien the Marshal of the Wind and Fire Ministry Marshal of the Five Dynasties The Great and Loyal Marshal See Werner's story below. I have never seen nor heard this title in any temple in Taiwan and South East Asia, nor in any book on these places. In Anking on the Yangtze in the thirties, the three gods of the actor's guild were T’ien (□) To (†) and Kuo (#)* In 1971 there were at least five temples dedicated to Chief Marshal T’ien and the three Tien brothers in Taiwan. One of these was in Taipei and one in Changhua (title 'c' in the list above) and another in Taipei, one in Tainan and one in Yunlin (title ‘a' above). According to a Penang (Malaysia) temple keeper and a Hsinchu (Taiwan) devotee, prior to 1949 the cult centre of this Taoist heterodox (*) cult used to be at Ch'uanchow (*), Fukien. Legends Numerous legends surround Chief Marshal T'ien. One basic story has already been recounted by Miss Werle. Variations and other stories include another recounted by Werner who, like Père Doré, failed to connect Marshal T'ien with Wu Tai Yuan Shuai, Marshal of the Five Dynasties (5#†) whom he calls the 'God of the Musicians'. Werner continued, "this god had his origin in a practical joke played by his school fellows on a young scholar who lived in the time of the Five Dynasties (907-60 AD). Whilst he was taking a siesta they drew a picture of a crab on his forehead and stuck two willow branches (sometimes represented as pheasant's tail feathers) behind his ears. When he awoke he was so chagrined that he 4 Shryock: The Temples of Anking: Libraire Orientaliste: Paris 1931, p. 163. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 308 NOTES AND QUERIES find that for a joke, which he would be unable to explain to his friends, she had painted a crab in indelible ink around his mouth. The prince got away with it the first time by telling his friends that he had painted it himself for amateur theatricals. However, when next she painted one on his forehead, he was at a loss as to how to explain it away and never again demanded the company of the businessman's wife. Having examined Chief Marshal T'ien in some detail, let us move on to a Swatow articulated figure with which it is closely connected. At the back of a bamboo temporary stage of a travelling Ch'aochow opera company in Singapore there was a small shrine (Plate 23) on one of the crates used for transporting the actor's robes. This shrine contained Marshal Tien seated well back, under a plaque bearing the title Han Lin Yuan (✯✯E) (The Han Lin Academy*). Before it, between a doll's size wicker chair and a bamboo pot of incense sticks, was a seated articulated puppet (Plate 24) dressed in a short-sleeved jacket and knee-length trousers. He was known as Chi Hsiang Ko (**) (Lucky Brother) and, as one of the actors explained, he is a three-year-old child, another form of Marshal T'ien, who when seen outside the bounds of the theatre is an extremely potent fertility deity and who, when on a permanent altar in a temple, is also prayed to for luck. This articulated image of a child deity can be seen in several temples, (one especially attractive one—rather surprisingly nude—being in a cave temple near Tanjong Rambutan in Perak), all worshipped by the childless of the Ch'aochow communities for sons and daughters. One temple keeper, possibly with tongue in cheek, said that Chi Hsiang is the brother of Kuan Yin, who in one of her forms is the 'Giver of Sons'***. The Three Jesters In his articles on three prominent puppets Schipper explains that the 'Jesters' who stand out amongst the total of 72 puppet heads and 36 bodies of the Fukienese puppet theatres, are the three gods of marionettes. He continued that puppet plays are connected * The Chinese nation's highest academic institution during Imperial times. SK. M. Schipper: 'The Divine Jester', Academica Sinica 21:1961, pp. 81-94. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d NOTES AND QUERIES 309 with Taoist exorcisms and are performed at wedding ceremonies to obtain from Heaven the happy union, using the ritual of a local Taoist folk religion heterodox cult of the Three Ladies' (三娘). The 'Three Jesters' are called by the puppeteers the "Three Brothers' (三兄弟) or, individually, the Great, Second and Third Wang Yeh.* Schipper then explained that he and his informants had made many conjectures in order to identify the Three Jesters. He believed tradition links the Three Brothers (Three Jesters) with the Three Tien Brothers and thus with Tien To Yuan Shuai, and this seemed to him to be better founded than other conjectures. He continued that the identity of T'ien is extremely confused, and claimed that T'ien is reputed to be the master of T'ang Emperor Ming Huang (唐明皇) and to have taught the actresses of the Peach Garden (梨园), popularly believed to be the first academy of the theatre. Iconography, he said, represents T'ien the puppet as the 'laughing lad', similar to T’ien To Yuan Shuai. Schipper observed that when the plays are of the northern Fukienese type, the Three Jesters are identified with T'ang Ming Huang, the patron of the theatre of North China. When the play is Southern Fukienese or Ch'aochow, T'ien To Yuan Shuai (Chief Marshal T'ien) is the patron, and the Three Jesters are identified with him. The T'ang Emperor is also often referred to in Taiwan and South East Asia, where he is also accepted as the God of Actors bearing the title of the Imperial Prince or King of the Western Ch'in (Hsi Ch'in Wang Yeh, 西秦王爷) or Hsi Ch'in Lao Wang Yeh (西秦老王爷), or, on Taipei and Keelung altars just as Hsi Ch'in Wang (西秦王). (He is called the King of the Western Ch'in because of his exile in Szechuan, in Western China). His image is more colloquially referred to as The Young Gentleman (小哥) and less respectfully as The Old Boy (老郎). Schipper agreed all this might seem highly incongruous, but, he continued, the tradition which links the 'Three Brothers' (The Jesters) with Tien To Yuan Shuai (Chief Marshal T'ien) seems, as we said earlier, better founded than others. Wang Yeh Schipper has linked the Three Jesters with the Fukienese epidemic gods by the title of Wang Yeh. He also noted the legend * More often than not Wang Yeh (Imperial Princes) in Fukienese communities are epidemic deities. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 310 NOTES AND QUERIES of 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. Now 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. The 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. Chief Marshal T'ien is not the localized cult deity Miss Werle believed him to be. He has appeared not only in Ch'aochow and 6 H. C. du Bose: The Dragon, Image & Demon. Partridge & Co., London, 1886. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 228 p. 10. Kani, Hiroaki, A General Survey of the Boat People in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1967, p. 22. p. 12. Leland, Charles G., Pidgin-English Sing-song, or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect, London, 1876, p. 4. p. 14. Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, London, 1936, p. 120. 16. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol I, pp. 253-254. p. 16. Lin Yutang, My Country, p. 121. p. 17. Percell, Victor, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 2nd edn., London, 1965, pp. 17-18. p. 18. Staunton, Sir George T., Ta Tsing Leu Lee: Being the Fundamental Laws, and a Selection from the Supplementary Statutes, of the Penal Code of China, London, 1810, pp. 543-544. p. 22. 'Notes and Queries', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol XI, 1971, pp. 204-209. p. 22. Annual Departmental Report by the District Commissioner, New Territories for the Financial Year 1959-60, Hong Kong, 1960, p. 33. p. 24. Annual Departmental Report by the District Commissioner, New Territories for the Financial Year 1951-2, Hong Kong, 1952, pp. 5-6. p. 25. Sayer, G. R., Hong Kong 1862-1919. Years of Discretion, Hong Kong, 1975, p. 97. p. 26. Teng Ssu-yü 'Chinese influence on the Western Examination System', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol VII, 1943, p. 305. p. 33. #AŢ✶ Shanghai, 1947, p. 1086. p. 34. Yang, C. K., Religion in Chinese Society, California, 1961, p. 155. p. 38. Backhouse, E. And Bland, J. O. P., Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking, London, 1914, p. 325. p. 40. Williams, S. Wells, The Middle Kingdom, New York, 1913, Vol II, P. 435. p. 41. Smith, Arthur H., Chinese Characteristics, London, 1900, pp. 234-235. p. 42. Williams, S. Wells, Middle Kingdom, Vol II, p. 451. p. 44. McAleavy, Henry, The Modern History of China, London, 1968, p. 87. p. 44. Chow, Carl, Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom, London, 1941, p. 116. p. 45. Werner, B. T. C., Myths and Legends of China, London, 1922, p. 162. p. 46. De Groot, Religious System, Vol V, p. 532. p. 58. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol I, pp. 268-269. p. 58. Stevens, K. G., Chief Marshal T'ien', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol XV, 1975, p. 305, ================================================================================