RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 94 associated with the organization after interviewing the surviving founders in the 1960's, and there is no reason to question its veracity. Where, then, did the old lady's account come from? First, it should be noted that few people who visit the temple are even aware of the name of the private organization which has managed the temple for the past 60 years (Chin, et al., 1977:29). Fewer still will have read the temple's history, written in Chinese in glossy brochures which are provided mainly to the members, government officials, and other dignitaries on ceremonial occasions. Hence, it is not surprising that details of the founding of the temple are not widely known even among devotees of the god. How then do worshippers account for the temple's origins? In this particular case, the informant appears to have adopted a miracle story which is not uncommon in the Hong Kong area: the recovery from the sea of a god's statue. The statue of Pak Tai in the temple of Cheung Chau island, near Hong Kong, for instance, was allegedly found by fishermen floating in the sea off Guangdong, and became the object of worship (Savidge, 1977:82), displacing other statues of the god. Another instance has been related by adherents of the Kuan-yin temple near Tai Ping Shan Street on Hong Kong Island, in which the statue of the goddess displayed in the temple was “carved from a block of wood floating in the sea and, according to the local story, giving off mysterious golden rays” (Topley and Hayes, 1966:126). The main icon in the Tin Hau temple at Shek Tong Tsui on Hong Kong Island was also said to have been recovered from the sea (Hayes, 1966:89). This kind of story is superficially similar to the “drifted deities” worshipped by fishermen in the Noto Peninsula area of Japan (Ogura, 1980). Many worshippers in Hong Kong will have heard this kind of story about a god's statue being recovered from the sea. When many years have passed, it is difficult for some people to remember which god's statue was found in the water. One's favourite god may then become the subject of the story. Another case we have discovered suggests that the process of transfer can occur quite rapidly. In 1966, in a paper on temples on Hong Kong Island, Topley related the account given her by a Cantonese lady of the life of the Taoist hermit worshipped in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 99 REFERENCES Allen, Barbara, and William L. Montell 1981 From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Local Historical Research. Nashville: The American Association For State and Local History. Chin, Margaret, et al. 1977 Religion and Organization: A Study of the Temple of Wong Tai Sin. Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University. Day, Clarence Burton 1969 Chinese Peasant Cults. (2nd edition) Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Co. Hayes, James 1966 "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. Lang, Graeme, and Lars Ragvald 1988 "Upward Mobility of a Refugee God: Hong Kong's Huang Daxian”. Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies. vol. 1, 54-87. Loomis, C. Grant 1948 White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend. Cambridge, Mass.: The Mediaeval Academy of America. Ogura, Manabu 1980 Drifted Deities in the Noto Peninsula. In Studies in Japanese Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson, pp. 133-44. New York: Arno Press. ================================================================================