RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author 70 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 (P'u-hsien), and Avalokitesvara (Kuan-yin). Only certain Buddhas of the Tantric Sect, such as Cundi (Chun-t'i) and Vairocana (P'i-lu-chê-na) are mentioned as "saints from the West"; but even these are given Taoist-sounding titles like tao-jên. In this way, the mainly Taoist framework of the novel is preserved. This amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist deities is highly interesting and may have influenced actual religious practice in China. The practice of worshipping Taoist gods side by side with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas seems to have started after the publication of the novel, for in earlier Taoist literature we find no Buddhist deities mentioned among Taoist gods. For instance, in the Yün-chi ch'i-ch'ien, chüan 103, we find an account of the Taoist pantheon as it was in the eleventh century, which contained no Buddhist deities or fictional gods. But after the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, various Taoist gods mentioned in the novel came to be worshipped together with Buddhist ones. What is more, most of the temples which apparently first adopted such practice were situated in northern Kiangsu, near Hsinghua, the native district of Lu, the author of the novel. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that the novel influenced the composition of the Chinese pantheon and contributed to the amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist gods in popular belief. The amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist gods seems to have been achieved purposely by the author of the Fêng-shên. As a concrete illustration, I propose to describe how Vaisravana (P'i-sha-mên Tien-wang), one of the Four Heavenly Kings in Buddhist belief, and his third son Nata (Na-cha or No-cha), became important characters in this novel. Vaisravana was of course an Indian god, but during the T'ang and Sung periods he became identified with the Chinese general of the T'ang dynasty, Li Ching. But stories about him were disconnected before the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i was compiled. In various prompt-books which existed before the novel, such as the Nan-yu-chi ("Prince Hua-kuang or The Voyage to the South") and the Hsi-yu-chi (“Pilgrimage to the West”, the prototype of the famous novel of the same name) in the Ssu-yu-chi ("The Four Travels"), there were already stories about this god and his son. But in the hands of the author of the Fêng-shen these fragmentary and disconnected stories were reorganized and transformed into a vivid tale which can almost stand on its own as an interesting story apart from the whole * For illustrations of some of these temples, such as the Kuang Fu Monastery in Tai-hsing, Yangchow, and the Tu Tien Temple in Hai-men, Kiangsu, see Père Henri Dore, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, (10 vols., Shanghai, 1913-38), Bk. 9, Pt. 2, in Vol. 6. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author 74 R The historical figure of Li Ching had long been admitted into the Taoist pantheon. He was, in the year 760, enshrined with Chiang T'ai-kung (B★A or Chiang Shang) as one of the ten famous historical generals. In the anonymous work, Li Wei-kung Pieh-chuan (A4), it is said, "When Li Ching was poor, he took a journey in the valleys and stayed in a cottage. When it was mid-night there came a woman who handed him a vase and said, 'Heaven has instructed you to pour down rain ...' and as we know in the Buddhist legends that it is Virupaksha (not Vaisravana) who is the king of the nagas, we understand that even in the T'ang dynasty the popular mind could not properly distinguish the function of these guardians of Mt. Sumeru. In an inscription on a tablet erected in the Temple of Vaisravana in Ning-hwa District (LM), Fukien, dated about 920, we read, P'i-sha-mên (Vaisravana) is a Sanskrit word which means "universal or much hearing" (to-wên SH). He dwells on the north of Mt. Sumeru, in the crystal palace, and is the chief of yakshas,10 From this narrative we see why in so many Chinese records it has become an undeniable fact that yakshas are believed to live at the bottom of the seas with the dragon-kings in marvellous crystal palaces loaded with wonderful treasures. The legends of these two heavenly kings have long been mixed in the popular mind." As Li Ching was such a famous historical hero, the Taoist priests could not forgive themselves if they failed to utilize his prestige. It is said in an anonymous work of the T'ang dynasty, Yuan Hsien Chi (E), that Li Ching was still alive in the epoch of Ta Li (766-779) and became a Taoist immortal, In addition to the book on military strategy attributed to him in the Bibliography of the Hsin T'ang-shu (MEBOXZ), the Taoist priests also ascribed to him some canonical texts dealing 12 • Hsin T'ang-shu (), Ch. 15, Li-yüeh Chih (M), 5. • Ku-chin Shuo-hai (546), Shuo-yüan Pu (R), Vol. chi (2) Also Tsung-shu Chi-ch'êng Ch'u-pien (£). 10 See Ninghwa Hsien-chih ("Annals of the Ninghwa District") of the Ming dynasty, quoted in Ku-chin T'u-shu Chi-ch'êng (4), Shên-1 Tien (R), chüan 54. The essay was composed by Huang T'ao () for Wang Shen-chih (E). 11 In the Ta-Tang San-tsang Ch'ü-ching Shih-hua (ERR), chüan 1, “...A" ("To-day, Vaisravana of the Indra Heaven, the Guardian of the North, will feed Buddhist priests in the Crystal Palace.") 12 Quoted in Chiu Hsiao-shuo (R), 2nd Series, Shanghai, Commercial Press Ltd., 1910. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING 67 ran parallel to the wall of the Legation in which the main gate was situated, and in summer often flooded the road, and at times gave off a horrible stench since many drains ran into it. Meanwhile repairs to the Legation proceeded and Rennie describes, among other things, Colonel Neale doing his accounts, the five hundred Chinese coolies being paid, a temporary strike, and continual trouble over 'squeeze'. The part intended for the members of the Legation to live in was now called 'Legation Court' and Rennie preserved, in translation, an estimate for redecorating the front of these buildings in the Chinese style, the total being one thousand and fifty Mexican dollars. By mid-April the weather was growing hot and on April 26th Parkes, Wyndham, Lt. Gow (in charge of the guard) and Rennie made a trip to the Western Hills in search of a temple which could be adopted as a residence during the extreme heat of the summer. The Russians, who had maintained an ecclesiastical mission in Peking since the Treaty of Kiakhta in 1727, had been in the habit of going to the Western Hills in the summer, and probably gave the newly arrived English this tip. Henceforth this was to become the yearly practice of foreign legations in Peking. Meanwhile the first mail from home arrived on April 27th, having been posted in England on February 26th. In this way Rennie's account is full of interesting detail. For instance just near to the entrance to the Legation there was now a line of Peking carts for hire, just as later there was a rickshaw stand, and more recently pedicabs. From this time onwards Rennie described the arrival of various English visitors who were entertained at the Legation. * Rennie visited it in March, 1861. It was situated in the same street as the newly acquired French Legation, and the members consisted of an Archimandrite together with three ecclesiastical and six lay members. (Rennie, I, 43-4.). This place, known as the Nan-kuan ("Southern Hostel"), was originally a hostel for Russian envoys and, since it had a large compound, it was used by Russian merchants who after 1698 received the privilege of sending a trade caravan to Peking at regular intervals. It was situated near the Mongol market. As a result of the Treaty of Kiakhta (1727) two hundred Russian merchants were allowed to come to Peking every third year to trade, and Russia was permitted to build a church in the grounds of the Nan-kuan, and appoint priests. In addition four Russian students and two tutors were allowed to reside there and were subsidized by the Chinese government to study the Chinese, Mongol and Manchu languages. When the first Russian minister to Peking, Colonel Balluzeck, took up residence there in July 1861, the Nan-kuan became the Russian Legation, and the ecclesiastical mission then joined up with another Russian mission at the Pei-kuan ("Northern Hostel'). See footnote 29 below, } I : J ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 86 J. L. CRANMER-BYNG in the north-east quarter of the city, well away from the new diplomatic quarter.2 All accommodation for foreign embassies was to be concentrated in one area outside the east wall of the city, and about one and a half miles from a newly constructed gate, just near to the old astronomical instruments which can still be seen on top of the east wall. Eventually, after negotiations, the new British Legation was allotted two large houses and two blocks of flats in this new diplomatic quarter. The last christening was performed in the Legation chapel, the books in the small library were taken off their shelves, the flag at the gate was hauled down, and everything was packed.3 Among the more colourful of the closing scenes in the life of the old British Legation should be mentioned the two Commonwealth cricket matches played in the Autumn of 1958 between the Moonrakers, captained by Mr. Duncan Wilson, the British Chargé d'Affaires, and the Woolgatherers captained by the Indian Ambassador, Mr. G. Parthasaratly. The rules governing this diplomatic cricket were many and local but the chief rule of all was that if anyone hit a ball into the grounds of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security next door his whole side was out. Finally, in September 1959, the staff moved to their new quarters and thus after nearly one hundred years of continuous occupation the existence of the old British Legation in Peking came to an end. From an historical and sentimental point of view its loss was sad. But from a realistic point of view which 20 This was built on a site which had been granted to Russia as far back as the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). As a result of fighting between Russian settlers on the frontier between Siberia and Manchuria about a hundred Russian prisoners were brought to Peking in the period 1683-5. They were formed into a company, given a place of residence in the northeast corner of Peking, close to the Lama Temple, and intermarried with Chinese and Manchus. They retained their Greek Orthodox faith and were allowed to have their own priests. See Michel N. Pavlovsky, Chinese-Russian Relations (New York, 1949) 145-164. It was to this place, known as the Pei-kuan ("Northern Hostel") that the members of the Russian ecclesiastical mission transferred in 1861. 30 Unfortunately the imposing Royal Coat of Arms which dignified the gateway of the old Legation was too large to fit properly into the new Legation buildings. Mr. Michael Stewart, the Chargé d'Affaires at the time of the move, arranged with Sir Robert Black, the Governor of Hong Kong, that the Coat of Arms should be sent to Government House in Hong Kong. It is now fixed onto the wall at the far end of the long ballroom of Government House, which it dominates by the brilliance of its colours, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE 43 as a humble amateur I appeal humbly to the professionals for assistance; and, much less humbly, to other amateurs to take over the gathering of data on Hong Kong before the Chinese.* By Hong Kong, I mean that southern part of the district now known as Po On,1 previously known as San On,122 and still earlier included within Tung Kwun,31 or partly within Tung Kwun and partly within Kwai Shin,60 which today comprises the Colony and leased territory of Hong Kong. By Chinese, I mean such of the inhabitants (and ancestors of the inhabitants) of that territory as would not have been described in a contemporary official document by one of the terms used for non-Chinese, i.e. I Ti Jung Man.67 If this definition appears negative it cannot be helped, since Chinese literature itself does not, until modern times, contain any word which corresponds to our word "Chinese", but has always had several terms for what might be called "Non-Chinese". Although one Chinese-type grave, said to date from the Han151 Dynasty, has been found in New Kowloon, and although one small Buddhist temple has behind it the foundation of a previous structure said to date from the Tsin158 Dynasty, there is no evidence of Chinese settlement before the end of the Tang.139 Up to and including the Tang Dynasty all the inhabitants, and up to the Yuan Dynasty most of the inhabitants of what is now the Colony and leased territory of Hong Kong are described, if described at all, as Man.88 The two Chinese clans with the longest records of continuous local residence (the Tang44 of Kam Tin,56 Lung Yeuk Tau7 and Ping Shan; and the Man of San Tin125 and Cha Hang11) go back indisputably to early Sung;132 and their traditions, to which I shall be referring again, speak of two other clans (Mo5 and Chan17) having been before them. The oldest building, except the temple previously mentioned, of which there is evidence, is the fort of Tuen Mun141 built in the Nan Han99 (Canton) Dynasty in A.D. 958. Another document refers to the appointment of a military commander of Tuen Mun in A.D. 954. I cannot be assailed if I say "Anything before A.D. 900 is, for this territory, before the Chinese." The Frame. The natural question to be asked is "Before the Chinese, who?" Before I attempt to answer this question, there *All local place names are given in the Cantonese pronunciation. Notes giving Chinese characters and romanization in the Barnett-Chao system are given at the end of the article.—Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 126 JAMES HAYES in Chinese territory. The village elders retained much of their authority, though I am not yet in a position to assess the degree to which they were recognised, and to that extent supported, by the British administration.27 Two of my informants recall that stealing crops in their villages was a matter for the village elders. If the offender was an outsider the elders would take him back to his own village and expect his own leaders to deal with him. Failing an agreeable settlement the offender would be taken to the nearest police station. For a long time, it seems, the realities of local power lay with the elders. It is significant that as late as 1895 Eitel was able to write:28 "The Chinese people in town are at the present day under the sway of their own head men (the Tungwa), and the people in the villages are ruled by their elders as much as ever". The same degree of local autonomy existed above the village level where the village organisation was augmented by small regional groupings which were usually based on a temple.29 For example, Mong Kok, Ho Man Tin and adjoining smaller settlements patronised the Kwun Yam [Kuan Yin] Temple (†) at Tai Shek Kwu near Ho Man Tin village. Their fore-bears had apparently built this temple soon after their arrival in the area. It was removed to make way for development in 1926,30 and as the preamble to the commemoration tablet in the new building has it:31 44 "The Shui Yuet Kung Temple was first built at Tai Shek Kwu over a hundred years ago. It was famed for the exact prophesy of its gods and had many worshippers". My informants confirm that it was a very popular temple and consequently well-supported. It was given a major repair about 1908 when all the local villagers and the Yau Ma Ti shop-keepers contributed money towards the project. The temple building stood on top of a rocky feature to which access and egress was by two flights of granite steps each with thirty steps. Local people referred to it as the Tai Shek Kwu Miu (★☎★A). At the beginning of the 20th century the temple was looked after by four managers, (f) as they were styled. One of them was a prosperous villager called WONG Lan-sang (*) a self-made man from Mong Kok village of whom more ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 135 three rows of houses, one behind the other. The centre one contains the principal tablets of the ancestors. Separate tablets commemorate the names and titles of the graduates and officers, which the clan has at different times produced. The second class are the Tangs, which belong to families who set up in them their private tablets of their ancestors. They are much smaller, consisting of only one edifice, with two small out-houses, but they are neatly decorated according to the Chinese taste. The Temples are in general inferior in size and beauty to the ancestral halls. The largest, most elegant, and most renowned is that of Chick-wan, which is dedicated to "Teen-hau" — the Queen of Heaven. The building may be seen from the entrance of Deep Bay. Imperial officers sent on a mission to Siam or Cochin-china, were in the habit of worshipping at this temple before starting, and if they returned safely from their perilous voyage, endowed the temple with rich offerings. By these means spacious buildings were gradually erected, and about six Taouist priests are supported on the income derived from the possessions of the temple. No Chinese vessel passes this way, without making some offering to "the Queen of Heaven." Second to this temple is the one in Man-chau, near San-keaou, which is also dedicated to the same goddess. The most popular idols to which temples are erected in Sanon, are "Teen-hao" — the Queen of Heaven; "Quan-yin" — the Goddess of Mercy; "Kwan-tai" — the God of War; and "Pak-tai" — the God of the North. In Sai-heong there is a considerable temple dedicated to a man who was once a high official at Canton. The following is the history of his apotheosis: The Emperor Kanghi once gave orders that the people should retire from the sea-shore, and settle some miles further in the interior, so that the pirates would be unable to carry on their depredations. This man interceded with the Emperor, and succeeded in getting the decree repealed. Out of gratitude to him, numerous temples were erected along the coast, in which he is worshipped. Altars are erected before the villages, in the fields, under green trees, and upon the hills, and are dedicated to the worship of the tutelary deities. They are the Gods of Land and Grain, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 46 R. G. GROVES Yee Yuen and donated sums to its resistance fund. The two lineages also comprised two yeuk within the Ts'at Yeuk and, as such, were represented in the fighting at Tai Po. At some point after 1st April, leaders from the Yuen Long and Sheung U Divisions went together to the Tung P'ing Kuk at Sham Chun and attempted with little success to enlist wider support for their activities. An agent was sent to Tung-kuan Hsien, where a number of 'bare-sticks' were recruited. In addition, the help of the Tang lineage of Pan T'in, in the northern part of Hsin-an Hsien, was solicited. This lineage appears to have stood in a clan relationship with the Tang higher order lineage within the New Territory. Members of the Pan T'in lineage participated in the fighting within the territory and subsequently felt themselves threatened by the British occupation of Sham Chun. The first confrontation between the Ts'at Yeuk and the vanguard of the occupying force occurred at Tai Po. Since late March, contractors had been erecting matsheds for the Hong Kong authorities on a hill near the market. Work had been obstructed by local villagers who claimed that the hill was private land and that the matsheds would disturb the feng shui of the area. On 3rd April Captain-Superintendent May set off for Tai Po, with a mixed party of Sikh policemen from Hong Kong and a detachment of Chinese soldiers, which had been temporarily assigned to him by the Commander of the Chinese military garrison stationed at Kowloon City. He hoped to get work on the matsheds started again and intended to leave the soldiers as a guard for the construction materials, pending assumption of British authority in the Territory. May arrived at Tai Po early in the afternoon and went to a nearby temple, almost certainly the Man Mo Miu, where he knew he would meet local leaders. A large crowd gathered, both within the temple and in the narrow street outside. His efforts at persuasion failed and the bystanders "became very offensive in their language and demeanour."59 May thought it wise to leave, but hope of a dignified withdrawal ended as soon as the British party reached the street. They were set upon by an angry crowd, wielding brooms, buckets, and other improvised weapons. An escape was made after the soldiers had threatened the crowd with their rifles and the Sikhs had made a bayonet charge to clear a path. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h THREE CHINESE DEITIES 177 In Chinese communities in Malaya and Cambodia, T'ai Sui is prayed to for rain, good crops, fine weather and for all the usual hopes of farmers. Also in South East Asia he is presented with offerings 30 days after the safe birth of a child, to ensure that its full life span had been pre-ordained. Alternative names and titles a. Yin Yuan Shuai (陰元帥) Generalissimo Yin b. Yin Tien Chün (陰天君) Heavenly Master Yin c. d. Yin Ing No (characters unknown) (Ch'ao Chow speakers) T'ai Sui Ye (太歲爺) e. Tai Sui Ti Chün (太歲帝君) Emperor Tai Sui す。 Ta Sheng (大聖) The “Great Life,” a nickname in Malacca. g. Chin Ting Nu (真定奴) His name whilst living with the h. hermits Marshal Yin T'ai Sui (陰太歲) One of the 36 escorting heavenly masters.* Feast Days The only identifiable feast date was one given on four separate occasions, three in present day Malaya and one in Shanghai in 1871, the nineteenth of the seventh lunar month. He was officially sacrificed to on the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in the Temple of Heaven in Peking. Descriptions of characteristics of T'ai Sui and Yin Ch'iao There are eight basic forms of this deity: a. as a shaven headed youth with a tonsure, in Buddhist monk's robes and sandals, holding either: b. (1) a scroll or split-bamboo plaque in both hands (2) a bell in his right hand (3) his empty right hand above his head, as though holding a raised sword. (4) seated with his hands on his knees as an elderly man in Mandarin's robes: (1) seated with both hands on his knees or (2) holding a bell in his right hand 5 Doré, Father Henri, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, (Shanghai 1914-1929, 15 vols.) 6 Grootaers, W. A. Chahar, Peking, Catholic University, Monumenta Serica, 1948). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 182 Co-location of deities KEITH STEVENS In Fukienese temples in Singapore and Malaya, the T'ai Sui images are often seen with Hsuan Tien Ta Ti (***) or with the Goddess of Mercy (##). In Cantonese and Amoy temples there, the T'ai Sui images are occasionally to be seen with the medical deities Lu Tung Pin (†) or Hua To ($) and in one temple with T'ai Shang Lao Chün (LB). In another Fukienese temple in Singapore a triad occupying the centre altar was said by the temple keeper to be three of the Nine Emperors (g). Two were positively identified, one as the second brother of the main deity Chiu Hwang ( ). He is black skinned, bare footed, with one foot on a fire wheel, has protruding eyes, black beard, and his hair is wound into a top knot. His two arms are at his side, otherwise he is very similar to Fa Chu Kung (✯✯2). The second identified image is on the right of the main deity, and he is, without doubt, Wang Tien Kung (1A). The third unidentified image on the left of the main deity could easily be T'ai Sui. He is black faced and bearded, a standing general in armour, holding a bell in his left hand and a sword in his right; he has three eyes, ear tufts of hair, and wears a Taoist crown. In one Fukienese temple in Taipei, Yin Ch'iao was seen together with Ch'ü Kung Chen Jen (AA). (Plate 19) In North China in Kalgan his second brother Yin Hung ( *) is a special deity said to save people from the "fifteen bad deaths". He sits on the opposite side of the central deity, the Jade Emperor (11), from Yin Ch'iao. Both brothers are naked and, surprisingly, have claws, beaks and wings. Grootaers10 says that Yin Ch'iao is never to be seen except as an attendant to the Jade Emperor. It would appear that either the local god maker in Kalgan did not know the identification features of Yin Ch'iao and has confused him with the Thunder God; or that there is a local legend which we do not know about; or thirdly that Grootaers misidentified the two attendants of the Jade Emperor. C. B. Day bought a hand-painted scroll in Hangchow, depicting five Buddhist figures and six Taoist ones. This pantheon chart included T'ai Sui Ti Chün ( *#*#) together with the San Kuan 10 W. A. Grootaers, Rural Temples around Hsüan Hua (Folklore Studies vol. 10). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 184 d. KEITH STEVENS An image in the form of Yin Ch'iao; with six arms, a blue face covered in spots like warts; two fangs, two banners, a bell, two swords and one arrow. Possible Misidentifications The images of Yin Ch'iao/T'ai Sui can be confused with several deities who have similar characteristics. These are: a. One version of the Fukienese god of actors, Tien T’o Yuan Shuai (*), is a standing general with a sword in his right hand and a hand bell in his left. He has or should have, however, a pink face, and his usual identifying characteristic, a crab painted over his mouth or his forehead. b. In a Singapore Foochow clan temple of the Hsu (✯) family there is a seated general in armour, with a blue face and fangs, called Liu Chin Sheng Ho (Hr). He holds an axe in each hand and is prayed to for the good health of the clan and for the rapid recovery of the sick. c. Pu Tu Kung (#2) who releases souls from the Under-world during the seventh lunar month, is often shown as blue-faced and with two fang-like teeth showing. Normally, however, he does not carry anything in his two hands. d. One of the two attendants of Fa Chu Kung (✯È2) is a general with a sword raised in his left hand and a handbell held in his right. He wears a tiger's head hat and is called Hu Ye (A). He has a pink face and a black beard. An image of the Golden Youth (✯✯), one of the assistants to Kuan Yin, could be mistaken under certain conditions with the manifestations of T'ai Sui as a seated youth with the scroll. The Golden Youth has a similar seated pose, the same style head and hair but normally holds a fly whisk in the right hand. If this is lost the image looks at first glance like a T'ai Sui without a scroll. The Indian Buddhist deity of death, Mara, could understandably be mistaken for T'ai Sui, Mara (A) in his Chinese form normally has a greenish hue, has a frightful face with two tusk-like teeth, holds a bell in his right hand, but has bare feet, is bare to the waist and wears a fur skirt. He is usually accompanied by two demon attendants, one black and one white, who are the Yamen runners, the Wu Ch'ang Kuei (❀❀Ą), who collect the souls of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 194 KEITH STEVENS in Thailand and at Nakorn Sri Thammarat. The few observed examples of his statue have all been in temples run by Fukienese emigrants, and probably the most famous statue is to be seen in Malacca in a temple run by Fukienese emigrants from An Chi county. (Plate 28) There does not appear to be a standard identification characteristic for images of Cheng Ho. The Malacca statue is of sandal wood, carved some 8" high, in Amoy style, depicting a Mandarin seated on a throne with his right hand clutching his girdle, his left palm cradling a flat elongated plaque of office or sceptre, which rests in the crook of his left arm. He is beardless and has the raised eyebrows so often seen on Chinese opera generals; he is wearing a military hat with one pompom on top, and a tassel hanging from each side of it over his shoulders. He is accompanied by two standing attendants; the one on his left a military attendant is carrying his sheathed sword, and the one on the right a civil attendant is carrying his seal of office wrapped in a red cloth. Alongside, on the same altar, is Kuan Kung, the Chinese god of loyalty and patron of soldiers, who is also the patron of Chinese businessmen. In the temples listed above, Cheng Ho has several birthdays and feast days, the most common of which is the 30th day of the sixth lunar month. One of the many images on sale in a Singapore godshop, was another Amoy style carving of Cheng Ho, some 10″ high in wood, now in the possession of an English news correspondent. This image of the Admiral depicts him as an elderly benign man without a beard, dressed in gilt dragon robes, and standing with a fly whisk in his right hand and a scroll in his left. (Plate 29) Cheng Ho in Java and the Philippines The Admiral is held in the highest esteem in Semarang in Java as the Chinese patron deity of the town. It is said that he left behind in Java some ten men under his sick navigator, Ong King-hong, who founded the town of Semarang. Before 1724 a statue of Cheng Ho together with four carved wooden attendants was brought from China, and these stand in a cave near the town. During the British occupation of Java in 1945 the commander of the British forces recommended the Chinese of Semarang to evacuate the town for their own safety. After consultation with Cheng Ho, they decided 11 Willmott, D. E., The Chinese of Semarang, (Cornell U. P., 1960). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r NOTES AND QUERIES 165 ments which were capable of delicate romance and noisy battle music. A tour through the large compound of the National Museum gave a perspective of the best examples of Thai art from the Dvaravati to the Ratanakosin periods. The latest discoveries of pots from Ban Chieng, thought to date from approximately 5,000 BC, were on display. In a museum as packed with treasures as this is hard to select any one piece as particularly outstanding; certainly the magnificent Avalokitesvara from Chaiya and some of the early Khmer pieces were much appreciated. The museum has the added advantage of containing the buildings of the former palace of the second king, which themselves are attractive and include the chapel of Buddhaisawan with its large lacquer cupboards and fine frescoes. The lavish carving of the royal funeral carriages, the rajarot, was also noted. The group visited Suan Pakkard Palace in Bangkok, the home of H.R.H. Princess Chumpot of Nagara Svarga, whose large collection of antiques, including some fine Ban Chieng and Sukhothai pieces, is elegantly and informally arranged in adjoining traditional Thai houses modernised for contemporary living. The grounds also contain the only lacquer pavilion to survive the Ayuthia period; with its fine decoration it has been restored to its former grandeur. After visiting the palace the members of the tour were entertained to lunch by Her Royal Highness. Pitsanuloke was used as a base for the visit to the Sukhothai area. In that city Wat Mahathat with its exceptional polished bronze statue of the Sukhothai period, Phra Buddha Chinarat, was seen. At Sukhothai itself some time was spent in the vast area of Wat Mahathat, strewn with ruined chedi, chapels and ante-chapels, where there is a number of stucco Buddha statues recently restored. The well-preserved Khmer style temple Wat Si Sawai, with its three symmetrical prang and double enclosure of brick and laterite was in its severity in marked contrast with the ebullience of Wat Mahathat. The ruins of Wat Trapan Ngoen and Wat Sra Si and their moats were noted, the massive walled Wat Si Chum was visited, with its vast and contemplative Buddha open to the sky surrounded by high walls with a hidden staircase in their mass, up which the adventurous climbed. The site of the ancient celadon kilns, Tao Turiang, was seen and Wat Saphan Hin, at the end of a long stone path up a hill from which it gets its name, offered a fine view over ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 76 HELGA WERLE which has the shape of a miniature temple, has the three characters Han-lin yuan embroidered on its red curtain; it is not General T'ien who is sitting behind the ever closed curtain, but the San t'ai-tze lao-yeh the 3 princes (Mu-ch'a, Chin-ch'a and No-ch'a).* The birthday of the San t'ai-tze lao-yeh is celebrated yearly by this troupe with special performances in the first month of the Chinese calendar in the public housing estate Tung Tau Tsuen ✯✯, not far from the airport, where a whole community considers the San t'ai-tze as their patrons. At this birthday celebration in 1976, between 9 and 10 p.m. a man suddenly came running to the temple facing the stage and donned the costume prepared on the table. No-ch'a is usually represented as a young boy: his hair tied in a bob over each ear, with his feet on fire-wheels. The man, a medium, is believed to be an ordinary man who might have never thought of No-ch'a. But on his birthday the god (here No-ch'a) will possess a person who will then only act as a medium. The man or sometimes a woman will get up from his bed, if he is sleeping, or from the table if he is eating, and rush to the square where the festivities are held without talking to anyone. Sometimes 3 people appear being possessed by the 3 princes. If the god in this temple has proved to be particularly efficacious (ling) then this event is expected and the respective clothes for the god are already prepared on a table specially marked with a green bamboo 3m high attached to its leg. The costume for the god is usually put into a flat round basket and a weapon is placed beside it. The medium puts on No-ch'a's costume, a yellow silk blouse and trousers and on the head he puts a band with the two hair-knots attached, shaking all the while and aided by those who have expected his arrival. When dressed the medium takes up the weapon, a solid spiky iron-ball on a chain, and wields it against his own body, beating his back and chest, perhaps to prove that he is actually possessed by the god. * Doré, Chinese Superstitions, Taipei 66, Vol. 7, p. 413 and Vol. 9, p. 111; E. T. C. Werner: Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, page 247. † Such a bamboo is also fastened to the roof of the stage or where rituals for the dead are held: it indicates the presence of spirits or marks the place to which spirits are invited to come. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA 77 By that time the audience who were watching the opera* becomes aware of the medium, who is now rushing through the audience on to the stage, where the performance stops and the actors retreat. A table is placed on the stage, the medium stands behind the table facing the audience, shaking in trance, beating himself with the spiky iron ball. A dozen men surround him, one spraying water from a bucket in all directions, one throwing rice around, several beating gongs. They take away his weapon and give the medium some water to drink from a bowl, they hand him a sword which he brandishes into all directions of heaven. He then opens his mouth, sticks out his tongue with the tip downward, and holding the sword vertically pointing upward he inflicts small cut-wounds to the middle of his tongue. Stacks of yellow paper in various sizes are already prepared on the table, and he bends down and chops the paper with his bleeding tongue, whilst the helpers take away the marked ones to distribute them to the crowd. When the medium's tongue stops bleeding he again drinks water from the bowl, brandishes the sword and cuts his tongue and repeats this whole process several times, shaking all the while, and the deafening gongs never stop being beaten. He finally beats himself once more with the iron ball and blood streaks appear on the back of his costume. Then he is rushed back to the temple where he repeats once more the scene, as on stage. After that he takes off his costume and returns quietly home. They suppose that he is unaware of what he has been doing, and that the wounds of his lacerated tongue and back will have healed by the next morning. The members of the opera-troupe who play the military roles, handling knives and swords also venerate Kuan-ti, the god of war on his birthday on the 13th day of the 5th month. In recent years, the Chiuchow opera in Hong Kong has received a great boost when Hsiao Nan-ying, a top Chiuchow actress, came to Hong Kong and started to perform in 1974. She has re-trained the actors of the Sang Ngai opera troupe and has written some libretti for them in the style of the reformed traditional plays, a movement which was created under Mei Lan-fang's influence. She produced the libretti, directed the performance, played the leading role... * From the stage a roof extends to shelter the audience, it rests on pillars and the 3 sides are open. As in church (in Europe and formerly in Protestant mission churches in China) the sexes are divided, women on the left and men on the right. There is a fenced passage-way through the middle up to the stairs leading to the stage. ================================================================================ 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 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 336 BOOK REVIEWS including Li E, accepted an invitation of the Ma brothers to go on a joint-tour to visit Chiao-shan, the famous island situated in the middle of the Yang-tze River near the present day Ch'en-chiang in Chiang-su province.24 For this trip, all members wrote some poems which were later put together, and titled as Chiao-shan Chi-yu Shih (hereafter to be abbreviated as Chiao-shan CYS), A Collection of poems Commemorating A Travel to the Chiao Island.25 Those poems inscribed by Chin Nung on leaves 11 and 12 of the Drenowaltz album are, in fact, two poems written by two different poets of this joint-tour. The first poem, "Watching the Moon on Chiao Island but being required in designing poem rhyme to use the word 'Sheng'"26 is written by Li E. It is not only to be found in the Chiao-shan CYS but also in Li E's own collection of poems; Fan-hsieh Shan-fang-chi #### (hereafter to be abbreviated as Fan-hsien SFC), A Collection of Poems Composed in the Fan-hsien Mountain Studio.27 Similarly, the second poem which is entitled "Watching the Moon in the Chiao Island but Required to have the word 'Yueh' in rhyme"28 is composed by Ma Yueh-kuan. It is found in the Chiao Island Collection29 and also in Ma Yueh-kuan's own collection of poems, “A Small Collection of Poems by An Untrammelled and Elderly figure at A Sandy River".30 In Vol. I, from p. 235 to the first line in p. 236, Prof. Li's English translation deals with Li E's poem; and, from line two onwards, the latter portion of the poem in English is Prof. Li's translation of the cited poem by Ma Yueh-kuan. To consider these poems by two identifiable poets as one is certainly incorrect. With respect to the second inscription, treated by Prof. Li as a long poem of Chin-Nung, it is in fact, a collection of three different poems once again all written by Li E. In Vol. II Plate LXXXI-L which is a reproduction of the last leaf of the album, from line 1 up to the first four characters in line 8, the content is to be identified as the first poem by Li E and the title of the poem is read as "Lodged in the Fo-jih Ching-hui Buddhist Temple".31 In Vol. I, page 236, line 1 to line 12 of Prof. Li's English translation deals with this poem. Similarly, in Plate LXXXI-L, from the fifth character of line 8 up to the first five characters of line 17, this section of the inscription on leaf 12 is to be identified as Li E's second poem associated with the long title "Getting up at dawn, monk Ch'e Page 345 Page 346 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d BOOK REVIEWS 337 guiding me to the foot of the Peak of Yellow Crane; there, after my contemplation of the Hiding Dragon Spring, I begin to search the Cave of Dragon and Reach the Cave of Immortal Lady”32. In Vol. I, from the last line of p. 236 up to line 21 in p. 237, the English translation deals with this poem. Once again, in Plate LXXX-L, from the last two characters of line 17 till the end of the inscription, the content is to be identified as Li E's third poem. It is entitled "A Travel to the Temple of Crane and Forest,33 Prof. Li's English translation of this poem is at Vol. I, lines 22 to 29 on p. 237. In the "Collected Poems Written in the Fan-hsien Mountain Studio" all poems are chronologically arranged, and the dates of each year are always recorded under the first poem of each year. Thus, according to such chronology, these three pieces cited are all Li E's poems written in 1735. That is, they are all composed one year before Chin Nung had completed the Drenowaltz album, since the latter is dated 1736. In logic, it seems alright for Chin Nung to inscribe Li E's three poems on the last leaf of this album since the two men seem to have been very good friends since at least 171434. However, it is absolutely impossible for Chin Nung to have inscribed two poems in 1736, one by Li E and other by Ma Yueh-kuan, to be written as late as 1748 in leaf 11 of this album. The significance of this discovery should be interpreted critically. The date of the inscription in this Drenowaltz album is some 12 years earlier than the actual date for composing the poems, and so the authenticity of the former is obviously doubtful. This brings us to the question of whether the calligraphy is really by Chin Nung or is perhaps by a very good copist. To think even one step further, the problem of whether extraordinarily elaborate landscapes should really be accepted as authentic works of this artist needs to be reconsidered. There happens also to be a third problem of identification. For instance, on the 1st leaf, as well as on that with Wu Ta-chang's colophon of Tai Itsi's album of ‘Landscapes after Great Masters' (Vol. II, Fig. 56, plates XCIV-XCIX), there appears a number of collectors' seals. Of them, as Prof. Li has specifically noted, (Vol. I, p. 262) "Six of Chang Hsiang-ning, ho p'ing-chai, who cannot be identified, one which cannot be identified”. In fact, this unidentified collector is not a mystery. He is Chang Hsiang-ning, a contemporary Cantonese literary man, a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 294 NOTES AND QUERIES of the Cotton Bag Monk, Pu Tai (), an incarnation of Mi Lo Fu. Pu Tai was said to have died at that temple at the beginning of the tenth century. Another preserved body was that of a Shantung peach seller who dropped dead at the altar and was embalmed in mud and became a deity, Wu Yu Hsien (†), around whom a local cult sprang up and flourished during the fourteenth century. Yet another was the skeleton of an old and holy abbot overlaid with gold foil on Chiu Hua Shan at the Pai Sui Kung“. A preserved body in the Nan Hua Shan Monastery in northern Kwangtung was that of the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Buddhism (A.D.). It appears to be the earliest recorded "fleshy body". The Sixth and last of the Chinese Patriarchs, Hui Neng (#), died in A.D. 712. His corpse is said to have remained incorrupt and even to exhale a sweet fragrance. His chest maintained its natural position and the skin appeared glossy and flexible. In A.D. 1236 when the Mongol troops pursued the last emperor of the Southern Sung and defeated him in Kwangtung, it is said that Mongol soldiers violated the tomb of the Patriarch and even went so far as to rip open the abdomen with a sword thrust. On seeing that the heart and liver were still in a perfect state of preservation, they were filled with fear and went no further in their sacrilege. Several replicas are to be seen in Hong Kong; a good example is on the altar of Huang Ta Hsien (黄大仙) in the San Yuan Temple (三元宫) in T'ai P'ing Shan Street, Hong Kong. (See plate 27). Incidentally, smaller images of Hui Neng, often seen in curio shops, are easily recognisable by the small dragon in his begging bowl. He is considered to be the founder of the Vegetarian Sects of Buddhism, Ch’ih Su Chiao ( vegetarian ). Another mummy, black faced, covered in lacquer and gilded, sat in a lotus position in a place of honour in the T'ien T'ai Temple south-west of Peking, wearing Buddhist robes but of Imperial yellow. He wore a vairocana five-leaf crown on his head, his face was smooth and full fleshed and his skin black with age. Many thought that he was a wooden image and legend, since disproved, claimed him to be Fu Lin, the first Manchu Emperor of China (1638-1661) better known as Shun Chih who died at the age of 30. The story probably grew from the known fact that he wished to become a monk. The mummy was refurbished annually at a minor ceremony and was a great attraction for pilgrims. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 租呂 Plate 27. A replica of the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Buddhism, Hui Neng on the altar of Huang Ta Hsien in the San Yuan Temple in Tai P'ing Shan Street, Hong Kong. (Plates 27-28 supplied by Mr. K. G. Stevens) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 46 W. A. REYNOLDS here, the surveillance is curiously haphazard and capricious. We could not see that we were followed on leaving; perhaps they have given up checking on foreigners". We had also been to a large reception given by General Chou En-lai on January 7th which was attended by General Marshall and, from the Kuomintang; Chen Li-fu, Feng Yu-hsiang and Dr. H. H. Kung, together with the Chungking establishment of Ambassadors, Consuls etc. The Journey There The route followed is shown in Fig. 1.* The convoy finally set out on a misty morning on January 21st intending to cross the Yangtse by the upper ferry. Disaster overtook us within four kilometres. Going down a steep slope the driver of the leading truck missed his gear change and ran off the road into a paddy field. The truck finished up on her side (Plate no. 6). With help from the base garage, she was hauled out, (Plate no. 7), the Garage Manager directing. The convoy returned to base, spent a day straightening and reloading and set forth again on January 23rd. The route went through Sui Ning, San Tai, Mien Yang over the Chien Men Kuan or Sword Gate Pass to Kwang Yuan and then over another Pass, Ch'i P'an Kuan or the Gate of Shensi, in the Mi Ts'ang Mountains to Pao Ch'eng.† North of Mienyang the 'new' motor road follows the route of the old Imperial Highway to Ch'eng-tu. Impressive “pai lo's”, fine trees and stone bridges mark the route (Plates 8 & 9). Just after Pao Ch'eng is the famous Buddhist temple Miao-T'ai Tzu, where we stopped for a visit. A place of peace and beauty to which one might dream of retiring for a while. In Pao-ch'eng the scene is very different from the Szechuan towns over the mountains to the south. This was the southern limit of the camel trains coming down from Sinkiang and Kansu, some with loads of dried Hami melon. Perhaps some of the flavour of the place is given in a quotation from a letter home: "We spent one night in Pao-ch'eng and as we came up across the bridge in the late afternoon, the long flatness of the Han-hui Ch'u valley behind us, lines of camels drinking at the river side were mirrored P.54 Plates 6-19 at rear illustrate the article. + The romanisation of place names is that used in the Times Atlas of China since this is the detailed reference most easily available to Western readers. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 60 J. T. KAMM exercise of ownership, and are contented to do nothing further than to receive a yearly rent. They can sell this right of receiving rent, but the land is otherwise under the absolute control of the cultivators, who often sell their perpetual leases. The landlord is called the owner of the "T'i Kwat" (note: Cantonese equivalent for t’i k’u), which may be termed the right of receiving rent. The tenant is said to possess the T'i P'i, or right of cultivation. Constant lawsuits result from this double ownership and the contending interests which it necessarily involves16 To summarize, perpetual lease in Hsin-An was characterized by the division of land into two values, surface-value, which corresponded to cultivation-value, and subsurface-value, which corresponded to rent-value. Landlords held rights over the rent-value, conceptualized locally as t'ien-ku-chuan (†), while tenants held title to the cultivation-value, or t'ien-p’i-ch’üan (✯✯). The process by which rent-value became separated from cultivation-value, i.e. the process of its primary accumulation, becomes manifest in an examination of the social and economic evolution of the county following the resettlement during the early 18th-century. Of the several kin groups displaced by the Kang-Hsi evacuation, the Tangs were among the least adversely affected. This was so for two reasons: 1) the proximity of the Hsin-An Tangs to several Tang settlements in Tung-Kuan,17 and 2) close relationships between Tang gentry and local officialdom.18 Not only were the Tangs able to keep abreast of developments while residing in a secure base not far from the evacuated county, moreover, the evacuation had the unintended result of increasing clan solidarity. In this regard, the establishment of the Tu-Ch'ing Tang (**)- the largest order ancestral trust uniting the clan, was most significant: Tang Pao-sheng (£), a chin-shih of the Ch'ing Dynasty, had the intention of constructing an ancestral temple, but his plans were not realized. An official, Tang Hsu-chou (✯✯✯), seeing that the five branches of his clan resided in different places far from one another, decided to fulfill Pao-sheng's wishes. After choosing a beautiful site at Chiu-Ch'iao (**), Tung-Kuan, the clan gathered together to construct a great temple. At each winter sacrifice (), the male descendents of the various branches would assemble and encourage each other to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN 67 12 Lockhart lists 255 villages occupied by Hakkas, with a total population of 36,070 in the Tung Lo in 1898. Assuming a population of 250,000 for the total district in 1900, Hsin-An probably had a Hakka population of around 90,000. 13 Rawski's bibliography in Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China offers the most complete listing of works bearing on perpetual tenancy. p. 64. 14 CSO280/04 Extension. See note 4, Essay 2. 15 Hsu T'ien-tai, Fu Chien Wen Hua (福建文化), Vol. 1, No. 1, (1941), 16 Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China, March 1898-September 1900. "Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong," (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November 1900) p. 19. 17 The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u (世鑑堂家譜), a collection of genealogies from Kam Tin, gives the following settlements of lineal descendants in Tung Kuan: Chuh Yuan (竹園), Yen Tien (燕田), Fu Lung (福龍), Huai Te (懷德), Shih Ching (石井), Tu Kao (土高), and Ping Hu (平湖). 18 "These clans gain their local influence, not through numbers alone, but owing to the fact that certain of their numbers have official rank, gained through competitive examinations, or obtained by purchase, which keeps them in touch with the Magistrate and even higher officials." Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China ibid., p. 20. The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u records that, from Cheng Hua (Ming Dynasty) to Tao Kwang (Ch'ing Dynasty)—that is, from roughly 1470-1820—fourteen Kam Tin Tangs passed the state examination. Several of these became office holders. Another indicator of gentry connections with officialdom was the construction, in Kam Tin, of a temple (祠堂) dedicated to the two officials (Chou Yu-te (周有德) and Wang Lai-jen (王來任)) who petitioned the Emperor, on behalf of the inhabitants of the coastal areas, to allow resettlement. 19 Introduction to the Nan Yang Tang Shih Tsu P'u (南陽堂世族譜), compiled by the Ping Shan Tangs. 20 Sung Hok-P'ang, in his articles on the Kam Tin Tangs in the Hong Kong Naturalist, claims to have seen references to Tang lands on Hong Kong in the Land Register (土地冊) of Tung Kuan. "One may judge that the land was owned by the Tangs before the first year of Maan Lik, AD 1525, (sic) as after that the San On District was formed” (Vol. VIII, nos. 3 and 4). 21 HKTCSMTC, "Details of Cultivated Land” (耕地詳情). 22 ibid. 23 The landlord clans were often referred to by the British as "first cultivators." See, for instance, CSO3172/1915 cited in the essay on tax-lordism. 24 Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China, ibid., p. 16. 25 Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 8. 26 In this regard, note the high degree of correlation among the different "tax-burdens" in Table II. One is tempted to speculate that a native formula for the conversion of rent rates from tax-rates existed. 27 In the 1934 edition of the Chung-Kuo Ch'ing-chi Nien-chien (中國經濟年鑑), chapter 7 (Chinese Tenancy Systems), contains the following description of the Fen Chih Chih (分種制) system, a form of perpetual lease found in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture: "This ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 122 GREGORY E. GULDIN of Fujianese attending the Yueh Fei temple gradually rose until today perhaps 70-80% of the worshippers there are Fujianese. Even so, the temple is not a Fujianese temple; both the people who run the temple and the deity itself are Guangdongese. This arrangement was less than satisfactory to the Fujianese. Since Fujianese and Guangdongese ritual practices and religious concepts are not always isomorphic, arguments over what food was properly offered to Guan Yin (Kuan Yin) or what was expected of a medium, etc., frequently erupted. Such disputes, complicated by the language barrier, made many Fujianese feel uncomfortable about worshipping in a "barbarian"-run temple. Ten years ago this situation began to change as the Cultural Revolution in China increased attacks on the old religious organizations back in Fujian. Temple personnel such as Buddhist monks and nuns began to arrive legally and illegally in Hong Kong and served to staff a new type of temple, a form particularly suited to Hong Kong's crowded situation. Apartments were rented to serve as temples in many of the apartment buildings which contained a heavy Fujianese population. North Point branches of Sai Ying Poon temples were likewise also begun in this manner. Each apartment-temple is dedicated to a particular god; sometimes it is a pan-Chinese spirit such as Guan Yin but it can also be a specifically local one such as Sheng Gung of Fujian Province's Nan An county. Sheng Gung's original temple is now in disrepair back in Nan An but the god's statue and objects were brought to Hong Kong a few years back. Hong Kong may thus have the only Sheng Gung temple left functioning in the world. "I have visited this little Temple, or joss-house, and have discussed its history with one of the local Kaifong, Mr. Lo Ho Ching, of 129 Electric Road, Ground Floor. "The little Temple is dedicated to the God of Warriors, Ngok Fei, and has been in existence about 40 years. According to Mr. Lo it was built by the late Kwok Shut Ting, Compradore of the Asiatic Petroleum Company (A.P.C.), at the time when the A.P.C.'s installation at North Point was built. At present the little Temple is looked after by an old woman appointed by the Kaifong. "The little Temple is a picturesque little structure, half embedded in a large boulder and covered by a tree. The Kaifong and I too would be reluctant to see it removed, but if it has to be removed I do not think the Kaifong will object provided that an alternative site for it can be found in the vicinity and if it is re-erected by Government at the time when the new Police Station at Bay View is built." This information was provided by the Hon. Editor of this Journal. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 44 KEITH STEVENS 1871) offered sacrifices at the City God temple and reported, in writing, that he and the whole family with gratitude had made an image of the Duke Wei which he presented to undergo the rite of consecration, so that it would protect all members of his family and all his domestic animals and poultry. The image is of a seated soldier, dressed in armour and military cap, his right hand is clenched and rests on his right knee. His left hand, the first and fifth fingers only, pointing vertically, is held at waist height in a magical sign. Wei had a gilded face, traces of which can still be seen, five tufts of black beard, the stubble only remaining and gilt armour covered by a red and blue robe again only traces of which are still visible. This image was blackest and greasiest of all and is quite surprisingly handsome now that the film of filth has been removed. Wei could possibly be Yu-ch'ih Ching-te (*), the Door Guardian who according to Mathews' dictionary is well-known as one of the two door guardians on temples and is “depicted with a black face and the fingers of one hand twisted up". The image, dressed in loose robes over armour and chain mail, has a gilded face but otherwise, has his fingers twisted up. In reality Yu-ch’ih was a general who served the T'ang Emperor T'ai Tsung in his wars against rebels and died in 659 A.D. The fourth image (Plate 5), also from Shan Men district, Wu Kang county in Hunan and dedicated in 1938 is of the bodhisattva Kuan Yin. The image, easily identifiable as such by her five-leafed bodhisattva crown, beads and vase, is seated cross-legged on a lotus, and dressed in gilded robes, The slip of paper in Kuan Yin's back relates that Petitioner and worshipper Mrs. Yin Wu-chi together with her five sons, four daughters-in-law, and one grandchild, on the 21st of the 6th moon of the 27th year of the Chinese Republic (18th July 1938) offered sacrifices to the Earth God at the City God temple in Lao Chai, presented and installed a new image of Kuan Yin. This has been done, the slip said, so that this Buddhist deity can be resorted to in her natural form and can kindly bestow good luck and eternal protection and prosperity on the Yin family and its future generations. In words of glowing praise, the petitioner described the heart, the liver, the lungs, the kidneys, the soul, the gall, the eyes, teeth, the bones, the bowels and the spirit of Kuan Yin, as 'the liver of a green dragon', 'lungs of a white tiger', ‘kidneys Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 46 KEITII STEVENS Mu. The whole is best known as a Taoist Heaven (*). The temple at its peak bears the title of Fan Ch'ih Kung (£) "The Palace of the Essence of Brahma". The slip of paper in Tou Mu's back relates that Huang Wen-yuan, a sincere believer, born on the 27th day, 11th moon of the Year i wei (about December, 1835), residing south of Lu Ling City, Chi An Prefecture, Kiangsi Province, together with the whole of his family, on a lucky day of the 9th moon, of the Year keng wu during the Tung Ch'ih reign (about October, 1870), prayed before Tou Mu stating, "I respectfully implore Most Reverend Tou Mu, a heavenly Goddess of Sacred Virtue, having the immense brilliance of T'ien Hou, generosity, the magic powers of suppressing demons and spirits, and the ability to produce amulets and prescriptions for saving people with serious afflictions, to effectively respond to my earnest prayers and wishes, and wield her supernatural powers to protect all the members of my family and to increase not only the number of children but also all kinds of happiness and prosperity". Of the score or so images, only three deities are categorically identifiable, Kuan Ti, Kuan Yin, and Chao Kung-ming, the deities of loyalty, mercy and wealth respectively. Two of the images seem to be local Earth Gods (+) (Plate 8). They are of a style very commonly seen but with what are probably provincial characteristics. They are seated old men, clutching a fly whisk by the end of its handle allowing the handle itself to rest along the forearm and the whiskers to hang from about the elbow. They have a "shoe" of gold in their left hand, long white beards, white eyebrows and white hair under a green floppy form of skull cap with their hair drawn up into a bun through a hole in the top of it. They are wearing long robes bound by a red belt tied in a bow at the front, and black shoes. A female carved in the same pose, holding a fly whisk in the same manner, and dressed in a floral robe but without the “shoe" of gold, has unbound feet, and hair, without a cap, drawn into two short pigtails. She may perhaps, be the consort of the Earth God. A final image, unidentified, has a spectacular face (Plate 9). He is an unidentified monk, seated cross-legged on a bench and with the ends of his robes hanging beneath him concealing the bench. He holds a fly whisk in his right hand in the same manner as the Earth God and in his left hand he holds a rosary. He has the face of an elderly man but with the characteristics more frequently ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 ALTER IMAGES FROM HUNAN AND KIANGSI 47 identified as those of the long-face northern Chinese, with narrow almost closed eyes, a furrowed brow and a black pointed beard resting on his upper chest. The rest of the images, all with empty back cavities, consisted of one man similar to the first above, six women seated, dressed in robes, with their right hand carefully holding the edge of their robes and their left hand concealed, similar to the second of the six images described above, and one other Kuan Yin with an empty cavity in her back." One slip only of the seven suggests that the Yin family placed an image on a family altar of a standardised, impersonal image of a female named Jen (perhaps the deceased wife of Mr. Yin). Perhaps it was the practice to place such standardised images of deceased relatives on family altars in Hunan? Cantonese god carvers in Kowloon were all quite positive that such a custom is not observed in Hong Kong, nor in their memory was it performed in Kwang-tung province. Several said that they understood that the Fukienese, and in particular the people from around Amoy, customarily placed stylised ancestral figures of old men and women on personal altars but never on temple altars. They also said that there is the well-known custom of the Boat People of South China, of placing standardised images of all deceased members of the family on the family altar irrespective of the age at death. (See my article on "Soul images and Gods of the Boat People" in Arts of Asia, volume 7, Number 6, Nov/Dec 1977). Regrettably, Hunan was ill-served by foreign travellers and writers, particularly about its temples and gods, and so no collateral information would seem to be available. A photograph taken in the sixties in the entrance hall to Mao's birthplace near Chang-sha in Hunan province, shows the family altar, with Chao Kung-ming the wealth God and Kuan Yin both easily identifiable, the remainder being indistinguishable. None, however, look like the images described above. An example of the Fukienese custom is the lady, Madam Hsieh (###), from a family household shrine in Singapore. The image, carved in 1931, some six inches high (see Plate 10) is again a standard, impersonal likeness of an elderly dowager. She is recognisable as an ancestral image by the white duck(?) under each of her bound feet. Otherwise, she is dressed in elaborate robes, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 48 KEITH STEVENS decorated with a large dragon across her bosom, and the "bird" hat with its representation of a small bird, wings outstretched, lying on top. She holds a raised fly switch in her right hand and her girdle is grasped in her left hand (the latter pose is usually reserved for male images). She is seated on a dragon throne. Perhaps readers can offer their views on the use of impersonal images on family altars and further examples of the practice in other parts of China?* NOTES 1 Lao Tzu—the philosopher generally believed to have founded Taoist philosophy. 2 Erh Lang (#) often identified with Yang Chien (##) the nephew of the Jade Emperor, the supreme Taoist deity. 3 The Five Thunder Magic () is used in Taoist folk religion as the ultimate threat; a magic of destruction brought about by Taoists against those who broke the rules or opposed the Taoists. 4 Lei Kung (2) the God of Thunder. 5 usually read Wei, is read Yu in this surname. 6 The image of Kuan Ti, the God of Loyalty and one of the most popular of deities throughout China also contained a slip which noted that it had been dedicated in the autumn of 1789 in the same area in Wo Kang as the images in illustration 2 and 4. The slip tells us that Devotee Pan Mu-shih, together with his wife, two sons and two daughters-in-law offered sacrifices to the deities in the City God shrine in the local temple, reporting that he and his whole family had had the image of Kuan Ti carved by a scholar. This they respectfully presented to have its eyes opened before the Gods so that it would be able to rid their dwelling of evil spirits and bring them blessings. The latter part of the text on the slip says that, "Your Honour Kuan Ti is the cleverest, most faithful and righteous in the world both past and present. You are a true spirit, a wonderful inspiration and have the ability to suppress demons. To show you our sincere respect we shall now dress you up, worship you every morning and evening with incense and further, offer you Spring and Autumn sacrifices each year.... 7 The provenance of three further images in the shipment, in better condition, is unclear though possibly they came from one of the areas in Hunan or Kiangsi from which the others originated. Of these three, two are versions of Yao Wang (1) the King of Doctors, who is easily recognisable by his tiger and dragon, one below and the other above him, and the small red pearl he holds aloft between his fingers. The third image is Yao Wang's aide, a middle-aged man standing carrying a herbalist's case slung over his shoulder and a furled umbrella in his hand. * Mr. Stevens has made a further discovery in the matter of ancestral images: see the Notes and Queries section at p. 206. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 SHIWAN POTTERY EXPLORED 105 Exploration around the modern city of Fushan reveals present-day continuation of the handicraft industries of painting (Plate 11), textiles, paper-cutting, papier mache, and of course pottery in the neighbouring town of Shiwan. The famed Ancestral Temple in a short distance from the Overseas Chinese Hotel, is full of the work of handicraft artists of the past, with excellent examples of metalwork (Plate 12), gilt wood carving (Plate 13), brick carving and papier mache, not to mention the rooftops which are covered with long and elaborate Shiwan pottery friezes (Plate 15). The Shiwan potters' use of waste and inexpensive materials led to the development of a rather unique art aesthetic. The use of all different types of waste materials, in addition to being economical, was perfectly suited to the development of a wide range of colourful and variegated flambe glazes, which indeed has been unequalled. Descriptive names such as "tiger skin", "leopard skin", "pomegranate red", "peacock's feather", "sesame seed", etc., were bequeathed according to colour and configuration. In addition, the inexpensive pottery clay with a high content of sand was much more pliable and suitable for sculpture than fragile porcelain clay. Taking advantage of the nature of this material, the potters sculpted their vessels in high relief forms from plant and animal worlds (Plate 16). The pliable pottery clay was also good for figure sculpture which became a Shiwan specialty. The potters soon found that if they left flesh areas unglazed, more detailed and warm human expression would result. For subject matter they drew on a wide range of characters from folklore, history and religion as well as the common man, in each case attempting to distill the nature of the individual into a small size artistic creation. Anatomic exactness was sometimes deliberately altered to better convey spirit.10 (Plate 7). The superiority of Shiwan pottery sculpture over that of porcelain was recognized when in the late 1920's three of Shiwan's best artists, Pan Yushu (**), Chen Weiyan (), and Chen Zhi (*), were invited to the Jingdezhen (✯{1⁄2§4) porcelain potteries to sculpt figures. According to Silva Mendes, Macau barrister and Shiwan collector, who personally knew the potters, the results were not good because porcelain is not as adequate a material as clay for this type of work, (i.e. sculpture). A porcelain figure of the goddess Guan Yin (†) in a private Macau collection with the mark of Shiwan potter Chen Weiyan, verifies this point, displaying ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 SIIIWAN POTTERY EXPLORED 107 the theme of "restoring rivers and mountains" to the point of becoming formula, but no one complained. Mai further describes how the Guangdong opera actors practised the martial arts of the Shaolin branch (*) and finally put this art to use when in 1854 their leader, the actor Li Yunmao (***) also known as Wen Mao () led three armies of actors to join the Taiping effort against the Manchus. These armies were destroyed along with the rest of the Taiping army, and in the aftermath, the Qing court issued an order forbidding the performance of Guangdong opera and had the actors' Qiong Hua (hortensia flower) Association Hall (1446) in Fushan burned to the ground. A gilt wood carved altar in the Ancestral Temple in Fushan, and a Shiwan frieze depicting the story of the Yang Family Generals, preserve in their carvings the significance of these events and their broader implications for a community not under the domination of a foreign Manchu government, but also besieged with Caucasian foreigners pressing for trade and territorial rights. The Qing dynasty gilt wood altar carving has double meaning. The carving depicts the story of Tang dynasty Li Yuanba fighting the dragon colt (*£#£#6). On a second level however, the horse represents the unruly foreigners, and Li Yuanba, having the same surname, represents Li Wenmao. Verifying this are two hidden plaques hung above the scene which can only be seen from a crouching position. One reads "Great Ming Mountains and Rivers" (11) and the other "Qiong Hua Hall" (44), with the middle character Hua (4) substituted as disguise for the similar sounding Hua (*) of the Hortensia Flower (Qiong Hua) Association. Furthermore, according to Mr. Zhang Tao (**), curator of the Ancestral Temple, the characters on these two wood plaques were originally covered with extra slabs of wood and were only discovered while renovation was being done to the temple between 1971 and 1972. (Plate 14). In addition to this gilt wood altar scene, a beautiful ceramic frieze depicting the story of the Yang Family Generals, Song dynasty loyalists, is displayed in the rear courtyard of the Ancestral Temple. In addition to this anti-Manchu theme (the Yang family's loyalty to the native Song dynasty during the period of barbarian Yuan conquest, symbolising the loyalty of the Chinese people to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 150 JULIAN F. PAS ficant scale (17th century) till the period of Japanese control (1895-1945), one can see three successive waves of temple-building, each characterized by its own cult-symbols or deities. This phenomenon is in fact a manifestation of the relationships between the groups of settlers: competition between various groups of immigrants is reflected in the competition of their gods. During the first period of temple-building, the choice of universalistic gods, worshipped by various groups of settlers, points to a spirit of cooperation between them. This was a time of external pressures necessitating cooperation in order to face common threats. Examples given are the Matsu temple in Kuantu (1661), the Shennung temple near Feit'ou (1669) and the Kuan-yin temple whose location is not identified (1660-70). During the second period of temple building, there was a shift in cult-symbols: the choice of more particularistic deities goes hand in hand with strife and competition, or even hostility between groups of settlers of different geographical origins. Examples of such gods with a narrower appeal are K'ai-chang sheng-wang, Ch'ing-shui tsu-shih, Ting-kuang Fo, and the so-called Wang-yeh gods. The third period of temple-development was occasioned by new political changes in Taiwan: the threat of foreign invasion (Sino-French war in 1885), and the Japanese occupation (1895-1945). A new consciousness unites the Taiwan population against these foreign threats. While some of the old universalistic gods regain popularity, new cult-symbols arise, such as the Taipei city god cult, "emerging as the center of a consciousness that transcends particularistic interests" (p. 40). During the Japanese occupation, great changes take place in the pattern of religious activity. Cut off from its roots on the Chinese mainland, and pressured by the Japanese rulers to undergo a process of acculturation, Taiwan religion follows a development of its own. Local cults and practices are often discouraged (e.g., second burial, spirit medium cults) and Buddhism enjoys a privileged position. Out of twelve temples built in the Peit'ou-Tamsui area during 1895-1945, ten are Buddhist. (Perhaps the author should have added a fourth period of religious activity: after 1945. The picture has been changing considerably and still is nowadays, especially since the author's research took place about ten years ago. Religious freedom has been restored: but moreover, the influx of a new wave of mainland im- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 158 JULIAN F. PAS As I see the situation, Chinese temples can be grouped under various criteria, for instance, (i) religious affiliation; (ii) nature of deities enshrined; and (iii) ownership. Let us try this proposal and see how it works out. (i) Temples according to their religious affiliation: First, there are temples that must be considered as essentially Confucian: in Taiwan only a small number located in most of the district capitals: Taipei, Tainan, Tai-chung, Changhua, Hsinchu, Kaohsung, Hualien, Chiayi, Taitung. These are the temples erected in honor of Confucius himself. A number of temples enshrining Kuan Ti or other deities do not fall under this category. Second, a great number of temples are distinctly Buddhist: they are built by the Buddhist community (monks and/or nuns) or by a distinctly Buddhist group of lay people or even by an individual Buddhist believer or Buddhist family. They enshrine Buddhas and/or bodhisattvas, and are in most cases attached to monastic establishments. Temples enshrining bodhisattvas Kuan-Yin or Ti-tsang are not necessarily of this type. Third, there are temples in Taiwan that may be called Taoist. Their numbers on the mainland tend to be much larger: they were in some cases attached to Taoist monastic institutions, just like their Buddhist counterparts. Taoist monasteries (as the author also mentions, p. 113) do not seem to exist in Taiwan nowadays (although a revival is taking place, e.g., the Tao Te Yuan in Kao-hsiung) but Taoist temples can still be recognized as such, although it is not easy to formulate practical criteria. Negative criteria are: temples designated as Taoist either in government publications and official lists or by the temple administration itself are not necessarily Taoist. In those cases "Taoist" temple means any temple which is not Confucian, Buddhist or ancestral. Furthermore, a Taoist temple is not necessarily one that enshrines Taoist deities (cf. Buddhist temples). Positively speaking, a Taoist temple is one founded and/or administered by a distinctly Taoist ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED 161 present day Taiwan, I may point out the cult of the Golden Mother of the Jade Pool and the cult of Kuan Ti focussing on divinatory writing and the publication of morality books. Having discussed the great variety of temples according to the first criterium: religious affiliation, the other two criteria mentioned (nature of deities enshrined, and ownership) do not need much attention, since they have already been co-discussed. However, the second criterium needs some elaboration: distinction of temples according to the nature of the deities enshrined. In a few cases there can be no mistaken identity although this criterion by itself is insufficient to determine the temple type. The clearest cases are when the Buddhist Holy Ones are the main objects of worship; Buddhas Sakyamuni, Amitabha or Amita, the Buddha of Healing (rather than 'Medical Buddha' as Baity calls him on p. 126), bodhisattvas Kuan-yin (Avalokitesvara), P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra), Maitreya, Wen-shu (Manjusri), to name the principal ones. In most instances these temples are essentially Buddhist. However, one has to be very careful: the mutual absorption of cult objects by various religions has often blurred the origins; in many Matsu temples (community temples of the folk religion) there is a secondary shrine behind the central hall, in which Kuan-yin is enthroned on the central altar. However, the iconography has been changed: this Kuan-yin does not have the appearance of traditional Buddhist sculpture but appears as another deity of the folk religion. Therefore such temples are still essentially folk religious temples, and the dissonant appearance of Kuan-yin should not deceive the observer. The same principal applies to the cult of Ti-tsang (Ksitigarbha). Although originally a bodhisattva, his cult has become so popular that he has been absorbed into the folk religion: his image can be found in many community temples throughout Taiwan, mostly on a secondary altar in the central hall. But once again he has lost the typically Buddhist iconographic appearance. What is the difference between Taoist and popular deities? The most distinctively Taoist Holy Ones are those one does not often see in the temples: their images, painted on scrolls, are in the possession of Taoist priests and brought to the temples or temporary roadside shrines by them for special occasions: such as rituals for the dead or the great chiao festival. Besides those there ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN (c) Taoism 181 Taoism, as a religion nowadays, is hard to define; it is much more than Buddhism caught up in popular religion and very often identified or confused with it, not only by students of Chinese religions but by believers as well. Examples are lists of temples in Taiwan, where temples are identified either as Taoist or Buddhist, with the rare exceptions of Confucian temples and ancestral halls. If we see the folk-religion as a separate category, then Taoism as such should be stripped of all the folk-religious elements and seen in its purity. In that case, only a few temples can be identified as Taoist, and the Taoist religion has thus basically to be identified with the various sects of Taoist priests. The matter has become more complicated since the institution of a Taoist Association in 1950. This is organized and run by Taoist laymen but has requested and obtained membership among many temples of the folk religion (in many temples, one can see the metal membership plates on the wall). The Taoist priesthood is divided into 3 (or 4) sects: the ling-pao, cheng-yi, or t'ien-shih and san-nai sects. The cheng-yi sect, or the sect of the Heavenly Master, has been trying for a long time to control the Taoist priesthood of all sects to unify them (and collect their dues). The 64th successor to Chang Tao-ling, living in Taipei, confers ordinations and promotions all over the island. However, as over the centuries, candidates to the priesthood (often hereditary) are not well trained in Taoist philosophy: they start their instruction as apprentices of a particular master, but throughout their training, they usually do not go beyond learning to recite the sacred texts and performing the various rituals. There are, happily, exceptions to the rule, and a fascinating example is Master Chuang of Hsinchu city, who is not only a master of rituals but performs the esoteric meditations of inner alchemy as well. In Taiwan, there are no Taoist monasteries where priests live as celibate monks, although there seems to be a movement of return to the ancient model: in one temple in Kaohsiung, the Tao-Te-Yuan, a group of young women have been ordained as Taoist priests and have made the vow of celibacy. The same temple also organizes study sessions for laymen to foster a deeper understanding of Taoist philosophy. As in Buddhism, the laymen again are promoters of a more serious involvement in Taoism. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 In cases of chain-misfortune, the family will consult a medium who evokes the spirits of their deceased ancestors until settlements of complaints result in a more peaceful existence. The duty of filial piety and related family virtues are still strongly emphasized in education and traditionally derive from Confucianism. They have, however, become part and parcel of the Chinese tradition as a whole and of the family religion in particular. Although in Taiwan families tend to be more often than not nuclear, the duty of filial behaviour is taken seriously. Several temples have used modern techniques to instill and propagate traditional virtues by putting the 24 stories of heroic filial piety on animated puppet shows (e.g., Changhua, Hsinchu). (ii) The Community: for the majority of the rural population and to a large extent of the city dwellers, religious life centers around (home and) the community temples. Traditionally, each neighborhood, hamlet, or village has its own temple, and this temple is the focal point of the whole group, around which social life is organized. Although some details discussed here also apply to Buddhist and Taoist temples, the average community temple is quite distinct from both of them. Most community temples in Taiwan are neither Buddhist nor Taoist: the gods enshrined and worshipped are of popular creation or of popular choice; they are non-denominational and are community "property". Only in a few cases can it be said that the gods derive from one or the other of the voluntary religions: more often, the secondary gods are of Taoist or Buddhist origin. Examples are Kuan-yin: rarely a primary deity, and formed more often of secondary importance in Matsu temples. Ti-tsang-wang is another case. He is the Chinese adaptation of the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha of Buddhism; although few temples enshrine him as their principal deity, he seems to be ubiquitous all over Taiwan as a deity on one of the main side-altars. On the Taoist side, Lü Tung-pin can be mentioned as a secondary deity, whereas Hsüan-t'ien Shang-ti is an example of a well-spread cult of a primary Taoist god. But in the majority of the cases, the most frequently worshipped deities are of purely popular origin: Matsu, Kuan Ti, the gods of pestilence, Pao-sheng Ta-ti, T'ai-tzu yüan-shuai, etc.15 What determines the community and folk-religious character of these temples even more is their actual origin: these temples are Page 210 Page 211 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN 189 different in objectives and methods, but their common ground is that both believe in divine possession of a human medium (man or woman) to communicate divine messages to the people, either individuals or groups. The writing cults even make great efforts to reach the public at large by publishing the oracles in the so-called shan-shu (morality books).20 An increasing number of them are printed by temple committees or even individuals. Some periodicals were founded for the sole purpose of printing the divine messages on a monthly basis. Whereas the mediums who handle the willow-branch (fu-luan) are obviously more moderate in their operations, the other type or 'divining youths' are more spectacular and appeal to the popular mind because of their dramatic performances. During temple festivals and pilgrimage trips their ecstatic trances reach a level of delirium. Scenes of self-torture astonish the bystanders and make the people believe in the efficacy of the possessing gods. Mediums are cherished by many temple-goers and often attract visitors from far away: their advice often proves to be correct and effective and very likely the financial advantages gained by the mediums attract a number of charlatans and throw discredit on the whole profession. There are several cases of recent government intervention to control and moderate this type of medium-cult. Finally, I wish to mention one more characteristic of Chinese religion, discussed by many scholars in the past: its ethical character. Perhaps I did not do justice to this very real phenomenon when I discussed the utilitarian aspect. The ethical character seems somehow to contradict this. But I believe this is not so. Ethics, ethical prescriptions and behaviour are a very ‘useful’ component of a society; it even emphasizes more strongly the fundamentally humanistic character of Chinese religion. It also is in harmony with the stubbornly prevailing concept that Confucianism is after all a religion. That the religion of the people is ethical-oriented does perhaps not need further demonstration. Here I want to add some examples from my Taiwan experience. When people in Taiwan — from educated people to taxi drivers — learn of the reason of my stay there: to study Chinese religion — their spontaneous reaction invariably is: "Religions are all the same: they teach you to do good, to avoid evil”. Religious doctrines are of minor importance: most people hardly know the difference between Buddhism and Taoism; they know that both have a set of moral prescriptions to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 205 12 On this particular type of tenancy, see John Kamm, "Two essays on the Ch'ing economy of Hsin-an, Kwangtung Province”, JHKBRÁS 1977, pp. 55-84, and James Hayes, The Hong Kong Region, 1850-1911, Folkestone, Kent, England, 1977, pp. 50-53. 13 Ints. Mr. Wong 22.6.81, Mr. Lam Kaap Shau 8.6.81, Mr. Cheung Kau 26.6.81, Mr. Cheung 26.6.81, Mr. Cheng Yung 10.7.81, and Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81; Hugh D.R. Baker, Sheung Shui, A Chinese Lineage Village, Guildford and London, 1968, p. 172. 14 Father Sergio Ticozzi, 12.5.81, quoting from Giovanni B. Tragella, Le Mission Estere di Milano, Nel Quadro Degli Avvenimenti Contemporanli, Milan 1950-1963, vol. 1, pp. 274-275, vol. 2, pp. 85, 89, and 314. Int. Father George Carusso, 20.5.81. 15 Ints. Mr. Lok Tak K'ei 17.7.81, Mr. Leung Yung Hei 16.6.81, Mrs. Lau 14.6.81, and Mr. Tse Kw'an 16.11.80. 10 Int. Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81. Mr. Yau's term for "moorage inlet" was "siu wan t'au". Cf. also the type of market James Hayes refers to as "coastal market centres" in his Hong Kong Region, p. 37. 17 Documents on this case are included in Kuan T'ien-p'ei, Ch'ou-hai ch'u-chi (1836, n.p., Taipei reprint, 1968) 2/26a-33a, 56a-74a, 80a-99b. Kuan was Naval Commander-in-Chief for Kwangtung from 1834 to 1841. C. Fred Blake, in Ethnic Groups and Social Change in a Chinese Market Town, Hawaii, 1981, p. 46 note 8, states "Lung Shuen Wan was a traditional outpost for the Chinese imperial navy's regulation of eastern approaches to the Pearl River. I wonder if perhaps Lung Shuen Wan was the original 'coastal market centre' in this area?" Elsewhere (loc. cit. and p. 95) he points out that the Lung Shuen Wan Tin Hau Temple retained the patronage of the Pak Kong and Sha Kok Mei villagers, despite the greater convenience of the Tin Hau Temple within Sai Kung Market. 18 These are figures of shops as registered in the Block Crown Lease (DD215, DD224). It is more than likely that these were shop spaces rather than shops, and in the event that a shop might take up more than a shop space, there were fewer shops in Sai Kung and Hang Hau in the early 1900's than noted here. For comparison, in 1905, Yuen Long had only seventy-four shops and Tai Po Market twenty-three large and fifteen small ones. See James Hayes, Hong Kong Region, p. 36. 19 Ints. Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81, Father George Carusso 20.5.81, Mr. Lei Kan 19.6.81, Mr. Ue Shun Hing 10.7.81. 20 Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 15.5.81. 21 Mr. Cheung Ts'oi 20.6.81, Madam Chiu I Mooi 7.5.81, Mrs. Foo, née Lei, 28.6.81. 22 Mrs. Kong Lei San Kiu 21.6.81. Mr. Cheung Kin Wa 10.6.81 of Taai Fung Nin (opened c. 1933) in Sai Kung Market remembered that the shop used to slaughter a pig each day to sell to the boat people. 23 Mr. Chan Kei Shang 28.5.81, Mr. Chan Shou 19.6.81. 24 Mr. Hoh King 6.5.81, Mrs. Lei née So 20.6.81, Mr. Lei Yau 13.11.80, Mr. Cheung Ming Shing 8.6.81, Mr. Lai Foh 8.5.81. Mrs. Lei used to obtain piglets from Kam Lei Loi in Sai Kung Market. It took six to seven months to fatten them, and two dollars to have each pig carried back to Sai Kung Market. She also had rice and pig feed (chiefly rice husk) from Kam Lei Loi on credit. Kam Lei Loi was a butcher's cum general store, where her husband worked. 25 According to Mr. Yau T'aam Shang, 15.5.81, the interest rate in Sai Kung Market was 5 cents per dollar per month, i.e. 60 percent per annum. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 15 In single-room and larger temples the major altar, which faces the entrance, may be either one large space reaching from side wall to side wall or it can be divided into three, five or more individual altars with, on occasions, a separate altar or two constructed down the side walls. (Plate 6). In quite a number of traditional temples the main hall is divided longitudinally by partition walls from floor to ceiling. These stretch a short distance into the main hall from the rear wall of the temple, one on either side of the main altar. The two side altars are therefore outside the partitions, and in practice these partition walls serve to isolate the side altars. In many traditional temples several major deities, and even a few minor deities, have a side hall dedicated entirely to themselves and their attendants. These include the God of Loyalty and Literature Guan Di; the fertility goddess Jin Hua Niang Niang; the bodhisattva Guan Yin and the wealth god Cai Bo Xing Jun. It is not necessarily a down-grading of the importance of the deity but a late recognition and addition to the temples' complement. A great many side hall altars contain a group of unconnected and unidentifiable minor images around the major and identifiable deity's image, all placed there over the years by zealous devotees. A side hall in one temple contained the lone image of the Earth God on the only altar, although the characters above the altar read Jin Hua Niang Niang. Presumably over the years the images of this fertility Goddess and her attendants had been removed and replaced by the image of the Earth God without the title above the altar being changed. The temple incinerator, and the temple keeper's kiosk or counter from which he sells charm papers and incense, are usually in one or other of the side halls or courts between side halls. Side halls also contain large ritual items such as the temple bell, drum and the removable head and tail from the village dragon boat, and in one of the side halls of most Boat People's temples replicas of early junks (some 8' to 10' in length) also gather dust in the gloom. These model junks are used only on festival days when offerings are placed on the decks. The devotees thank Tian Hou for good catches over the previous year and request similar benefits for the coming year. The roofs of traditional temples consist of interlocking tiles resting on lathes supported by strong cross beams. The latter are ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 18 KEITH G. STEVENS main altar, with a further three altars down the side walls. In the centre, a long altar divides the upper part of the hall from the lower. A side hall to the west, dedicated to one goddess, is also used as a workshop for the construction of paper items to be burnt in ceremonies for the dead. Behind this side hall is a courtyard beyond which is a separate hall containing three more altars. To the east of the main hall is a secondary hall, dedicated, not altogether surprisingly even in a traditional temple, to the Buddhist Trinity. This hall contains just the one large altar and behind it are the living quarters for the staff. Some traditional temples have had a secondary temple built alongside, as an annex or as a separate temple dedicated to a particular deity, and many traditional temples nowadays have had windows knocked into the outside walls, particularly into the rooms in which the keeper and his family reside. In villages and hamlets there are two types of temple. The first is the small, often single-room popular folk religion temple or shrine, of the kind we have described above, in which one or two major deities are depicted on the main altar. The second, the clan ancestral hall or temple, may be a comparatively large complex of halls and rooms, the main hall of which contains, by seniority, serried rows of ancestral tablets of the most senior members of the family, the public ancestors of each generation back twenty or more generations. Village temples, be they traditional folk religion or clan temples, are more than just religious establishments where prayers and offerings may be made. Side halls and rooms are used as the village storehouse for items like the old rice winnower, large tables and clan crockery*, as the village school, the games room and as the civic and medical centre. They also frequently are homes for one or two of the village needy. Most walled villages in the New Territories have a very small single-hall folk religion temple called a Shen Ting (神廳), dedicated to one of the national or local heroes (such as Guan Di or Hou Wang) situated in the north wall, facing south, and located at the opposite end of the main lane which bisects the village from the main gate. In most walled villages too, the Tu Di Gong (the Earth... * Lineage or village properties that can be borrowed by families on festive occasions. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 20 KEITH G. STEVENS Although clan or ancestral halls and temples are usually handsome buildings located near the centre of a village, many now old and rarely used have been permitted to fall into disrepair and are derelict. These memorial halls contain only the ancestral tablets of the senior member of each generation of the clan whose surname appears over the main entrance of the hall or complex. Some villages have two and even three such temples, dedicated to each of the clans dwelling within their bounds. (Plates 10 and 11). The memorial and ancestral tablets of the man-in-the-street (personal ancestral tablets) are placed on either the private household altar of the family or the shelves of the memorial halls of Buddhist or Daoist monasteries and temples. Personal ancestral tablets are rarely retained for more than three generations, whereas the tablets of the public ancestors of the clan are retained as far back as the first ancestor who moved to the area in which they are presently situated. Like the small temples, the clan halls are usually cluttered with agricultural equipment used only when the season comes around. None of the clan halls is spotless, and often the plaques, panels, mirrors and other decorations are so covered in accumulated filth that they are hard to decipher. The excuse given is that the lineage is too poor to employ a temple keeper and by implication there is no one else who should keep it clean, so the halls remain decrepit and forlorn. Family and clan temples very rarely contain images, particularly as Cantonese do not carve images of their ancestors as did the people of Hunan and Fujian provinces. When family and clan temples do contain deities, these are represented by either a framed print usually of the bodhisattva Guan Yin or a small image of a popular deity placed there by a devotee who either had no place for it at home or had a misguided notion to donate such an image to the clan (Plate 12). This happened in a small clan temple near Sheung Shui where the tolerant members of the clan have ignored the deity and have left it there to avoid hurting the donor's feelings. Shrines Shrines almost certainly pre-date temples and in their basic form have remained essentially unchanged for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. A considerable percentage of Chinese ritual is performed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 NOTES AND QUERIES ANOTHER (MISSING?) LIBRARY 157 In 1935, after two years' travel and study in China, Gerald Yorke's book China Changes was published by Jonathan Cape of London. In Chapter Eight, entitled "In Search of a Hermitage", the following extract (p. 159) refers to a library at, it would appear from the final paragraph, "the temple of the Mountain Cave (Tung Yuan) above Lanchi." This is county in Chekiang Province. "In the meantime Li [Li Yuen-tzu, his companion, interpreter and friend, to whom the book is dedicated] had heard of a temple in the hills behind the town. It was not easy to find, and at first sight proved disappointing; for a family of peasants were in charge. But a draper's assistant, whose master had failed, was staying there to study. I had stumbled on a library presented by a scholar (Chao Ke-lao) in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. A tablet in his handwriting still bears witness to the gift. The books are in their original bindings and as fresh as if printed yesterday. Several appear to be of great age. This is hardly surprising, as the Tripitaka, the Bible of Chinese Buddhism in over one thousand volumes (the San Ts'ang), was first struck off wood blocks in the nine hundred and seventy-second year of Our Lord. The draper's assistant knew his way about and picked out for me volumes with exquisite woodcuts as frontispieces. Unfortunately, he never distinguished between the dynasty in which a book had been written or translated, and the century in which it had been printed. I longed for a bibliophile to enlighten me. Over two thousand books printed before the year 1500 survive in as clean a condition as anyone could wish. Before taking them from their cases, sticks of incense and candles are lit by the peasant in charge. It gave me a real thrill to find such a treasure so respected in the hills. The veneration in which learning is held in China has no counterpart in the West. There were too many people living at the temple of the Mountain Cave (Tung Yuan) above Lanchi. I decided to return to the Ch'ientang gorges, where the temple of the Master of the Water Rushes (Lu Su Chen Kung) had attracted me with its name." Does anyone know if this library still exists? Hong Kong. January, 1981. JAMES HAYES ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF 1-KUAN TAO 45 Intellectual conditions which are implied by the modernizing process in Taiwan should go hand in hand with significant changes in religion. The fact that there are connections between social and religious change is too obvious to be doubted. What is less obvious are the kinds of religious changes which are connected with modernization in Taiwan. To be sure, one tendency has long been observed, i.e., secularization. Yang has given an excellent analysis of secularizing tendencies in modern China which can also be applied to Taiwan. Moreover, it can easily be seen that the factors mentioned above do in fact undermine the social base of many traditional forms of religion. The socio-economic frame of many traditional religious activities has been the peasant village community. To the same degree that industrialization reduced the relative importance of agriculture, the religious rites and festivals which were strongly related to the cycle of the farming seasons lost their significance for the society as a whole. Urbanization, a seemingly inevitable concomitant of industrialization, brought many people to the fast-growing cities, which lack the intimate social contacts of the villages. While in the countryside residential community and religious community were nearly identical, symbolized in the village temple; in the modern cities, new social relationships are formed, which normally do not coincide with the residential neighbourhood. As a result, the traditional religious life which formed an integral part of the village community loses its social base and is weakened. Finally, cultural contact in Taiwan has taken place to a degree that it can properly be named 'westernization'. Westernization in Taiwan has several aspects. On the one hand, there is the integration in the capitalist world economy, which resulted in a socio-economic readjustment after the model of the Western industrial nations. On the other hand, there is the strong impact of the Western intellectual tradition, above all of science, but also of philosophy, political thinking, and religion. The rationalistic and materialistic coloration of Western science and philosophy induces many well-educated people to disregard traditional forms of religion as superstitious. At the same time, the Chinese cultural heritage is no longer the sole repository of social and cultural values; people are turning more and more to Western ways of life, which are fashionable especially among the middle and upper classes in the cities. There cannot be any doubt that industrialization, urbanization, and westernization affected many traditional forms of religion and diminished their structural as well as their functional position in Taiwan. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO 49 Not much is known about the history of popular religious lay-communities in the twentieth century11. While in comparison with the last century their popularity may have faded they are far from having perished. They still play a significant role in the religious life of present-day Taiwan. It is convenient to distinguish analytically three types of popular religious community even if in practice it is often impossible to separate them clearly. First, there are groups of people which centre around the person of a specially-gifted woman or man, who may be a spirit healer able to cure sickness or a medium who can communicate with the spiritual world and reveal future, hidden or mysterious things. In most cases people who consult such persons form not a community but a clientele, i.e., they do not relate to one another but only to the healer or the medium, much like the clientele of a doctor. Sometimes, however, a healer or a medium is able to organize a cult in which his followers come together and jointly receive blessings or instructions or perform certain practices12. In such cases the clientele may turn into a community whose members share a common stock of beliefs and habits and develop a feeling of belonging together. Normally the person of the leader remains the centre of the cult and the community may retain the traits of a clientele for a long time. Second, there are religious communities which are not primarily related to the person of a leader but are connected with a particular temple or - what normally amounts to the same thing - the worship of one or several particular gods. These temple-communities are probably the most common religious community in Taiwan. In most cases they consider themselves orthodox Buddhist or Taoist, while actually they are strongly syncretic in character. It might happen that in the religious life of the temple-communities spirit-mediums do play a part, but normally they do not hold the central position. Occasionally, however, a medium may be able to gain a leading role and to turn the community into a dynamic movement whose influence extends far beyond the local or regional level13. The third type of popular religious community in Taiwan is the sect-like movement. In contrast to cults and temple-communities these movements have or at least try to develop a country-wide organization. Furthermore, they are often explicitly syncretic, combining elements of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, and in this way consciously distinguish themselves from those religions. Since in traditional China such sects were in danger of being regarded as... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 58 HUIBERT SEIWART culture is by no means absolute. As can be observed in the above quoted text, the real contrast is not between the Chinese and the Western cultural traditions but between spiritual and materialistic approaches to life. To be sure, the spiritual culture is represented above all by the religious and moral traditions of China, while materialism is seen as the product of Western civilization. But at the same time it is admitted that in the West there also exist spiritual traditions, namely the two religions Christianity and Islam. In this view Western civilization is not objected to in its totality, only its materialism is rejected. The menace of the modern world results from the fact that the West has submitted to materialistic thinking and this materialism gains more and more ground in China as well. Since the Chinese religious traditions and the Western religions are equally opposed to this materialism, they are all fighting for the same cause, they are allies not adversaries. The recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions equal to the Chinese religious traditions can be observed at different intellectual levels. A rather superficial level is represented by some of the fu-luan cults. While the deities which manifest themselves by the writing-stick originally all belonged to the traditional Chinese pantheon, it does happen today that Western gods, above all Jesus and Mohammed, give revelations by fu-luan. This integration of Western deities into the fu-luan cults may be seen as symbolic of the lack of opposition to Christianity and Islam; it is no proof, however, of any deeper understanding of these foreign religions. Actually, as far as I could observe, the knowledge of the general fu-luan believer and even the mediums about Islam is virtually non-existent, though somewhat more is known about Christianity. When I asked a medium how Jesus and Mohammed could manifest themselves in a Chinese temple, I was simply answered that in heaven no boundaries between East and West exist and all gods live in the same heaven3. While the recognition of Christianity and Islam in the fu-luan cults is purely formal, allowing Jesus and Mohammed a status equal to the Chinese gods, the teachings of I-kuan Tao go one step further, trying to integrate the doctrines of these Western religions. To be sure, a manifestation of Jesus during an I-kuan Tao fu-luan session is recorded as early as the year 1939, and we might suppose that at that time their understanding of Christianity was much like that of today's fu-luan cults in Taiwan. But in recent years texts have been published which prove beyond doubt that one is earnestly attempting ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 68 1968).   HUBERT SEIWART Cf. Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China. (Cambridge, Mass. Cf. Y. Raguin, "Buddhismus auf Taiwan", in Buddhismus der Gegenwart, ed. by H. Dumoulin (Freiburg 1970) pp 113 – 116. a "Taoism' (by A. K. Seidel), in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia, p 1042. For example, the Taoist Association of the Republic of China is run mostly by laymen who try to get rid of many of the more "vulgar" practices of religious Taoism and to restore the intellectual tradition of former times. These efforts seem not to be supported by many of the Taoist priests, possibly since they make their living by performing these practices. 10   See for example G. G. H. Dunstheimer, “Religion et magie dans le mouvement des Boxeurs”, in T’oung Pao, 47 (1959) pp 323 - 367; G. Miles, "Vegetarian Sects", in The Chinese Recorder, 33 (1902) pp 110; D. H. Porter, "Secret Sects in Shantung", in The Chinese Recorder, 17 (1886) pp 1 – 10, 64 – 73; M. Topley, "Chinese Religion and Rural Cohesion in the Nineteenth Century", in JHKBRAS 8 (1968), pp 9 - 43. 11 Cf. Wing-tsit Chan, Religioses Leben im heutigen China, (München, 1955) pp 109-156. T'ai-pei-shih 12 Such a healing-cult is treated by Wang Chih-ming Chi-lung-lu ti i-ko min-su i-sheng he t'a-ti hsin-t'u-men (unpublished B.A. thesis, National Taiwan University, Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1971) 13 An example of this is the Sheng-hsien-t’ang community in Taichung. The publications of the revelations of the mediums of this temple are distributed and read everywhere in Taiwan. 14 Some sects (e.g. Li-chiao), however, are copying Buddhist or Taoist ceremonies and dress so that it is difficult to decide whether the performers are priests or laymen. 16 Some of the "new religions” are treated in Hsiao Ching-fen, “The current situation of new religions in Taiwan", Theology and the Church, 10:2 – 3 (Tainan, 1971) pp 1 -- 28; 10 I-kuan is actually derived from a passage in the Confucian Analects (IV, 15). 17 The popular name is Ya-tan chiao. Other names are Tien Tao chiao, K'ung-tzu chiao, Ta Tao chiao, Lao-mu chiao 4. Cf. Tung Fang-yüan, Tai-wan min-chien tsung-chiao hsin-yang (Taipei 1976) p 123. 18 Tung, op. cit., p 123f. According to Su Ming-tung, T'ien-tao kai-lun (Kaohsiung, 1979) p 197, there are more than 300,000 followers of I-kuan Tao in Taiwan today. Li Shih-yü, Hsien-tsai Hua-pei mi-mi-tsung-chiao (Chengtu, 1948, repr. Taipei, 1975) p 32. 20 It seems certain, however, that the I-kuan Tao has followers outside Taiwan, esp. in Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. In contrast to Taiwan, in these places the sect is not forbidden by the government and can operate openly (cf. Su Ming-tung, op. cit., p 198f). For the propaganda of the Communist government ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF 1-KUAN TAO 69 against I-kuan Tao see L. Deliusin, “The I-kuan Tao Society", in Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840 – 1950, ed. by J. Chesneaux, (Stanford, 1971) pp 225-233. 21 In orthodox Buddhism San Pao stands for Triratna, i.e. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha (W. E. Soothill and L. Hodous: A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, Reprint Taipei 1970, p 63) 22 Cf. for example Ching-fen Hsiao, loc.cit., p 17. 23 Cf. Shih Wen-tu *, "Wo tsen-yang t'uo-li I-kuan Tao” #, in Chuch Shih #(Kao-hsiung, Sept. 1977) pp 20 -- 32. 24 Since these accusations can neither be proved nor refuted by the observer it is very difficult to give a fair description of the sect. 25 Cf. Chao Wei-pang, "The Origin and Growth of the Fu-chi", in Folklore Studies, 1 (1942) pp 9 — 27; Hai Ti-shan #, Fu-chi mi-hsin ti yen-chiu *****(Taipei 1966). 26 Cf. G. Seaman, Temple Organization in a Chinese Village, (Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, No. 101 Taipei 1978) pp 20 – 35. 27 Cf. Halao, loc. cit., pp 12 – 16. For a case-study ref. Seaman, op. cit. The members trace the origin of the sect back to Fu Hsi and have an elaborated list of the transmission of the Tao through the centuries. The historical evidence for the existence of I-kuan Tao as a separate tradition does not reach beyond the last century, however. 29 The ordinary fu-luan cults have sessions much more often, in general eight or twelve times every lunar month. 30 Obviously many teachings of the fu-luan cults have their origin in the popular "Buddhist” tradition which is also a main source of the I-kuan Tao teachings. It is difficult, however, to assess to which degree there is a direct influence of I-kuan Tao on these cults in Taiwan today. Probably there is a mutual influence since many followers of I-kuan Tao participate also in ordinary fu-luan cults. Actually, some fu-luan cults seem to be reservoirs of potential I-kuan Tao proselytes. 31 Tian-jan *, 2 (Hsinchu Febr. 1980) pp 2 - 3. 32 Cf. K. Ch'en: "Anti-Buddhist Propaganda During the Nan-Ch'ao", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 15 (1952) pp 166 - 192. 33 For examples see J. Chesneaux ed. Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950, (Stanford 1972). 34 Of course, Mohammed is not regarded as a god in Islam. The knowledge of Islam in China, however, is rather poor and Mohammed is thought to be a divine person much like the Chinese "historical" gods or for that matter – Jesus. 36 The medium belonged to the Sheng-hsien t'ang in Taichung. 36 W. Grootaers, "Une société secrète moderne, I Kuan Tao: Bibliographie annotée", in Folklore Studies 5 (1946) p 332f. 37 Tian Tao Kai Lun (1979 2nd printing), p 61. 38 ibid., pp 61 – 62. by Su Ming-tung (Kaohsiung, 1978) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 118 successful leadership was assessed by the smooth handling of the arrangements for celebrating the birthdays of the principal gods of the two local temples, Hung Shing and Kuan Yin, and the important festival of Hungry Ghosts in the seventh lunar month. Each Fong took its turn to be responsible for managing and financing the arrangements made on these ritual occasions, and by local custom, the leaders were not permitted to canvas funds outside their own Fong. It was this restriction which led to the amalgamation of the three old Fong organizations about 1930. The Fong serving the San On group had declined in numbers, and when it came to its turn, could no longer support the burden of financing the festival arrangements to the satisfaction of the community. The amalgamation was hardly a major innovation, in that the whole community, and the leaders of all three Fongs, had always combined together whenever it became necessary to repair the local temples. The hearing of 1893, referred to above, makes this clear. The Hung Shing temple had been given a major reconstruction in 1888. On that occasion the three Fongs appointed between 10-20 managers from among their leaders to share the work of collecting subscriptions and arranging for the building work to be done. The record of the 1893 hearing shows that, in ordinary years, there were usually three members of the temple committee, called chik sze. (4) One of the current chik sze of 1893 described his duties. 'Our duties are to attend to the theatricals in the course of the year and to look after the interior fittings of the temple'. The evidence contains a passing reference to 'the three guilds'. Other facts stated in the record and discussed with old residents (born respectively in 1887, 1891 and 1897; and interviewed in 1966) shows that the three Fongs were meant. The implication is either that each Fong supplied one manager to the body of three who looked after the physical maintenance of the temple; or that as with the celebration of major festivals each Fong took it in turn to manage the temple for one year. I believe that the former was the case. I turn now to the leadership of the Fongs. Unfortunately the record of the hearing in the temple dispute does not help to explain how the leaders in each Fong came to be elected to their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v VARIATION TECHNIQUE IN THE FORMAL STRUCTURE OF THE MUSIC OF TAOIST JIAO-SHI IN HONG KONG PEN-YEH Tsao CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG Taoism is one of the major indigenous religio-philosophical traditions that have played an important role in the life of Chinese people for more than two thousand years. Organized Taoist religious communities have had at least eighteen hundred years of history since the second century A.D. Among its various sects, the more representative and wide-spread are the Zheng-yi 正一 and Quan-Zheng. The most important Taoist ceremony is the Jiao-shi, a ritual that expresses gratitude to the gods for their blessing and solicits continued peace and prosperity or early termination of and recovery from natural calamities. The holding of Jiao-shi involves a team of dao-shi Taoist priests, who recite, chant, and dance during the various stages of the ritual, accompanied by melodic and percussion instruments. Among the twelve or so types of Jiao-shi, the following four are more often practiced: 1. P'ing-an-jiao Jiao-shi to pray for continued peace and prosperity, the most frequently held among the four. 2. Wen-jiao Jiao-shi to pray for the extinction of a plague. 3. Q'ing-ch'eng-jiao Jiao-shi to celebrate the completion of a construction, such as a temple. 4. Huo-jiao Jiao-shi to appease the God of Fire after a big fire. A Jiao-shi can be completed in one day, two days, three days, or more; the more common being that of one day (yi-zhao-jiao) and three days (san-zhao-jiao). Generally, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 18 JULIAN PAS does not play any role in the actual consultation; only 49 stalks are thus used. Although two sets of 49 oracles are found in the Taotsang, none has so far been spotted in actual use in Taiwan or other places. A Sample Study in Taichung, Central Taiwan My own research and collecting of samples in Taiwan started in 1977-78 and was continued in 1980. Each time when I visited a temple, I tried to obtain a few sample sheets of the oracles either hanging on a side-wall in the temple, or stacked away in specially built wooden cabinets with small drawers for each oracle. Whenever I came across a new variety, I asked the temple superintendent's permission to collect sample sheets of the whole series. I did not always receive a friendly welcome, but in most cases, the response was excellent, especially when I explained that I was studying and trying to understand all aspects of Chinese folk religion. A donation to the temple made all wrinkles of doubt disappear. In the autumn of 1978, I discovered W. Banck's publication, which increased my interest in this area but left quite a few questions unanswered. I hope he will soon complete his second volume. In the meantime, I decided to examine the relative frequency of each type of oracle sets and to test the possibility that the proper character or affiliation of a temple also indicates the type of oracles that can be found there. After collecting about 340 samples throughout Taiwan, I came to certain basic conclusions: the set of 100 oracles, called the Kuan Ti series (Banck #2), is always found in temples dedicated to Kuan Ti (obviously) but is also usually adopted in city god temples, and often but not always in temples in honour of Hsuan-t'ien Shang-Ti, Yu-huang Ta-ti, and even Sakyamuni Buddha. In other words, this oracle is almost never found in the temples honouring the common folk deities (there are a few exceptions). It is certainly not the most frequently found oracle, as will be pointed out below. By far, the most popular series is the 60 slips Matsu oracle (Banck #1). Then I decided to take the city of Taichung as a sample case. It is located in central Taiwan and has a fast-growing population, being already over 600,000 inhabitants. The newly built harbour will continue to influence the city's growth for many years to come. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 29 2. Historical precedents: many of the sets of temple oracles, and certainly the major ones (B-1, B-2), contain somewhere near the edge of the printed slips short sentences which are rather titles than complete sentences. W. Eberhard has done a preliminary examination of these and states that they refer to historical or legendary events from China's past often known to the general public through popular dramas. Although traditionally the majority of the rural people in China were illiterate, they would naturally know the stories referred to in the oracle slips from their own experience of stage performances in the village. Drama, and in modern times puppet theatre, have been effective ways to educate the people in the countryside, especially since these stories usually contain a moral lesson, and extol such national virtues as filial piety, righteousness, integrity, loyalty, patriotism, etc. By attaching a reference to a famous event of the past to the oracle, the ordinary uneducated worshipper would understand the basic meaning of the oracle: what happened long ago to hero so-and-so, also applies today to the problem at hand. Eberhard quotes eleven examples from set B-2 (the Kuan Ti oracles), from which I pick the following one: “No. 10: Meng Chiao passes the examination at fifty”, thus very late in life. Meng was a friend of the scholar Han Yu (768-835)... The oracle indicates that success will not occur until very late..."22 The application from the story to the particular request made by the worshipper seems to be very clear: Whatever was asked for will not be immediately granted but the petitioner will succeed in the end. The worshipper is encouraged not to give up but to remain patient. In a table at the end of his article, Eberhard lists for B-1 and B-2 the number of plays or stories that he has been able to identify, i.e., to find the corresponding drama and/or story in literature. Very likely some titles refer to local dramas and are thus not easy to identify. In B-1 (the 100 Kuan Ti oracles) 83 are identified, whereas for 10 oracles the titles are missing (I presume in the set available to him). What is interesting is that the titles of the two sets under study (B-1 and B-2) are not the same, and they are probably ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 41 etym, (variant); } = cracks; 1= || scapula !) (K. 1192) enquire by divination; auspicious, good, virtuous; firm, solid; and !! diviner's fee?) { Kui (K. 462) tortoise, divination by aid of the cracks in heated tortoise shell to draw lots; a lot [this character is a strange mixture; enclosure or “border prairie” with possibly 2 sets of stalks on top of a tortoise: 2 types of divination mixed together] * (K. 894; M. 5763) to divine by stalks of milfoil; (from K magic and " bamboo-stalks) * shih (M. 5801) milfoil (“achillée”) [the character suggests a plant, and elder person, and a mouth: oracle of old sage?] Characters derived from 4: A hands manipulating divining sticks on a table to perceive name of king, Kao, a diviner to learn to teach (to learn + whipping) NOTES 1 The Chinese text of this oracle is found in Sheng-ch'ien chu-chieh (see bibliography) 2 While this article was already in press, I obtained new information stating that there is a still older example of Chinese oracles, dating from the 5th century A.D: “The earliest example of a Buddhist oracle-sequence can be dated to the middle of the fifth century, and is found in the printed Buddhist Canon. It forms the tenth book in a work entitled The Book of Consecration (Kuan-ting ching, T. 1331).” Although this text is not necessarily a temple oracle, yet it is so far the earliest book containing 100 oracle stanzas in a style similar to the later temple oracles. (Michel Strickmann, “Chinese Oracles in Buddhist Vestments”, p. 27 of an unpublished paper delivered at the Berkeley Conference on Chinese Divination and Portent-lore, June 20-July 2, 1983). 3 See for example L. Vandermeersch, "De la Tortue à l'Achillée", p. 46. Fung Yu-lan, in his History of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 1 (1952), pp. 27-28: quotes the Ch'ien Han Shu, which in its turn refers to the Shuching. “The divina-tion plant (shih ) and the tortoise shell (kuei #k) are used by the Sages. The Shu says: "when you have doubts about any great matter, consult the tortoise shell and divination stalks'. . . . ** See also J. Needham, Science & Civilization in China, vol. 2 (1956), pp. 347-349. On page 348 there is a reproduction of a drawing dating from the late Ch'ing dynasty, which shows the legendary emperor Shun and his ministers consulting the oracles of the tortoise-shell and the milfoil. 7 & Miyazaki Ichisada (1966), p. 161. 8 Miyazaki (1966), p. 162. 9 Webster's New 20th century Dictionary of the English Language (1979), p. 765. 10 Andree Richard (1906). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 42 JULIAN PAS Webster's Dictionary (1979), p. 1733. 10 Webster's Dictionary (1979), p. 170. Lenormant (1875), p. 18. 12 Lenormant (1875), p. 19. 13 Lenormant (1875), p. 30. 14 Needham (1956), p. 349. Banck (1976). 16 CHENG, Chen-tuo, Editor, T'ien-chu ling-ch'ien (Reproduction of the Earliest Preserved Set of Temple Oracles) Folklore & Folk Literature Series of National Peking University. (reprint), Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1958. 17 19 I have used the cheng-t'ong or Ming edition, as reprinted in Taipei. Eberhard (1970), p. 193. Huang-ti shen-kung Ħ☎1⁄2, Banck (1976), #17. 20 Eberhard (1970), p. 191-192. 21 Jordan (1982). 11 W. Eberhard (1970), p. 195. The Chinese text: 1+X8 23 24 The Chinese text: 高達五十得名 St. Augustine's Confessions, translated by William Benham (New York: Collies & Son, 1909), pp. 141-142. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Sources (i) Taiwan (& Hong Kong) Oracles, published in booklets B-I B-I B-I B-2 B-2 B-2 Sheng-ch'ien chu-chieh E, Kuan Yin Fo-tsu, T'ien-shang Sheng-mu &Ħ, X_L, Taichung, Jui-ch'eng Bookstore AĦĦ , 1972, (1st ed. date, unknown). K'ai-t'ai Ma-tsu chien-chieh, published by the Feng-t'ien Temple in Hsin-kang, Chia-yi *, ****8. (n.d. circa 1978). The oracle texts are on pp. 1-30. + Ling-ch'ien chich-shuo, with commentaries by Yeh Shan #ll, Taichung: Ch'uang-shih Publishing House, & FURN 1979. + Pai-shou ch'ien-chieh, Published by the Hsing-sheng Temple in Taichung 台中市行聖宮,1977. Ling-ch'ien chieh-shuo *, with commentaries by Yeh Shan #. Taichung: Ch'uang-shih Publishing House, ÷ÞOKRE 1975 (1st ed.: 1966) Kuan-sheng Ti-chún ch'ien-shih chich MESE the Shui-hsien Temple in Nan-kang, Chia-yi, 1 Published by *, 1964, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 43 B-2 B-2 Pai-shou ling-ch'ien, Ku-shih chu-chieh ti by Cheng Chin-ling $436. Tsoying, Kaohsiung, 1976. M. Published Kuan-sheng Ti-chun ying-yan t'ao-yian ming-sheng ching E KNMVTÆ. Published by the Fu-ch'uan Fo-t'ang in Kang-shan, Kaohsiung. QUI÷HES, 1971. (The oracles are in the Appendix). B-6 Kuan Yin ling-ch'ien chu-chieh, erh-shih-szu shou Pi. Taichung: Jui-ch'eng Bookstore, 1975. B-34 Ch'ien-shu chu-chieh, Tien-shang Sheng-mu, lished by the Nan-yao Temple in Changhua M, R, LTE. Pub Mä, 1977. B-54 Huang Ta-hsien (Wong Tai Sin) ling-ch'ien, ku-pen chu-chieh A¶ LASER. Published by the Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon, HK, n.d. (purchased in 1980). B-55 Po-chi hsien-fang 1981;. Taiwan (no exact place indicated but stamped by the Tz'u-yu Temple in Taipei, BMK), 1951. B-55 Lu Ti ling-ch'ien hsien-fang, PPARI), Hsinchu: Chu-lin Book-store 新竹市竹林書局,1977. B-55 Fu-yu Ti-chün chüeh-shih ching, Lü-tsu ling-ch'ien chi hsien-fang Fili MEIM.NG MAUZERO/2A07), Hong Kong, N.T., SEDILE. 8-0 1976. + Wu-nien ch'ien-sui ling-ch'ien chu-chieh 1F, Published the Chen-an Temple (2000) of Ma-ming-Shan in the county of Yiin lin, Taiwan, 1963. (ii) Taiwan Oracles: Temple Samples Werner Banck, Das Chinesische Tempelorakel PPE (part 1: Sources), Taipei: Ku-t'ing Bookstore, fillaliliPVM, 1976. (iii) Canton Temple Oracles, collected by the Library of the Center of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong (not included in Banck's source edition) 1. Kuan-shih-yin ling-ch'ien, #, published by Wu-kui t'ang 4, in Canton, n.d. (circa 1940?) block print reproduction; contains 100 oracles). 2. Hung-sheng-wang ch'ien 1, published by I-wen tang in Canton, n.d. (blockprint reproduction; contains 64 oracles). 3. K'ang-kung ling-ch'ien 12, published by T'ien-pao Printing Co.: Ch'an-shan, Canton, dated 1855 (nice wood block print edition) + 4. Fu-shen T-u-ti ch'ien (@J:22, published by Wen-tang Bookstore, **W in Yue-tung ch'an shan 40, dated 1859. (woodblock print; 30 oracles). 5. Shang-ti ling-ch'ien (zar, published by Wen-t'ang Bookstore, Z, n.d. (wood block print; 50 oracles). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 232 CHOI CHI CHEUNG words, he starts to accept orders for making Ming-che" from the middle of the 7th moon. However, not until the beginning of the year is any actual work done. The Association first elects a committee for the 'Yue Lan' festival during the feast for the Lantern Festival (15th of the 1st moon), and several donation-books (Yuan Bu*) are sent out to different places in Japan to collect donations from the Chinese. At about the same time (2nd of the 2nd moon), Mr. Lin starts to make figures, Ming-ches, Chos (paper-made houses for the gods and ancestors), gold and silver paper-made hills, direction flags, and other paraphernalia. Major figures are completed a month before the festival starts. Then, a priest is invited to open the eyes (Kai Kuan H or Kai Yen MIR) of the paper-made figures, and the statues of the Kwan-ti temple and the Tao-ch'ang. On the same day, a ‘Raising the Lantern of Heaven' (Chie T'ien Dan) ritual is done to invite all the spirits to the festival. The committee will then start to send invitation letters to the Chinese in Japan. The festival lasted 4 nights and 5 days from Aug. 31 to Sept. 4 (from 13th to 17th of the 7th moon), 1982.” According to a public notice, the rituals included: (i) a daily morning and a daily night ritual, (ii) praying for the reincarnation of the dead in the morning and afternoon, (iii) reporting to Heaven in the afternoon, (iv) offering to the hungry ghosts at night, and, (v) a lantern floating ceremony in the afternoon of Sept. 2.10 Table 1 shows, however, that the scheduled time-table was not strictly followed. For example, on the last morning of the festival, three rituals were performed to thank the gods of the Temple, to thank Heaven, and to offer to the ghosts which were supposed to be late or handicapped, instead of the previously advertised "praying for reincarnation”. From my observation, it appeared that no one attended the 'Morning Lessons' (Morning ritual and prayer for reincarnation), and, except for the rituals for reporting to Heaven, the lantern floating ceremony and the last ‘Great Offering', there was less than ten persons who attended from start to finish. Besides the rituals for reporting to the Heaven, the three rituals held on the last day and the lantern floating ceremony, all other rituals took place at the 'Tao Ch'ang' area. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 38 With two governments claiming jurisdiction over it, the Walled City fell between two stools, as one undertook minimal administrative responsibility to avoid diplomatic embarrassment, the other none at all. The result was a near vacuum of administrative function and authority. After Chinese officials departed in 1899, the City's population was much depleted. Some of the original inhabitants stayed on. Their landownership was terminated by the Hong Kong government, which, in turn, granted them 5-year leases. The leases were necessarily short because of the awkward political circumstances. The government was in fact reluctant to grant land leases for any but public purposes and the Protestant Church became a major beneficiary of the situation, receiving several short-term leases to operate schools and charities in the City. In 1906, the Anglican Holy Trinity Church converted the former San-sheng (Three Saints) Temple into a chapel, the T'ien-kuo chiu-tao t'ang (Heavenly Kingdom Chapel). Sermons given every Wednesday and Sunday evening seem to have attracted many women and children from the neighbourhood, who might have attended as much for reasons of faith as for the entertainment. The Church also obtained the lease of an official building to operate an old people's home, called the Kuang-yin yuan, and an alms house. Later, these were turned over to the Chinese Christian Churches Union which also ran a home for widows and orphans, known as Eyre's Refuge, in the large compound. In 1908, the Holy Trinity Church converted the former hsun-chien's office into a primary school, the T'ien-kuo A (Heavenly Kingdom) School, operating it until 1936. For some time around 1931, the Church's youth groups also held their activities there. 52 The former Lung-chin Communal School was also put to good use. Between 1900 and 1905, it was the Land Court's office. Then the Secretary for Chinese Affairs took it over to run a free secondary school for over 300 students with funds from the Hou-wang Temple nearby. At one time, a public dispensary shared the premises. In this way, the schools and other charities, besides meeting the spiritual and material needs of the City's inhabitants, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 74 CONFUSED GODS: HUANG DAXIAN (WONG TAI SIN) AND HUANG YEREN Introduction AT MT. LUOFU LARS RAGVALD AND GRAEME LANG* 2 Since 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. 3 In 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. In 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 Lars 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. + 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. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 80 legendary 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. 21 The 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). It 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 Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 82 placed 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). A 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: It 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. Thereafter 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. + 29 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 83 The 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 According 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. These 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. 30 This 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. It 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 84 not 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? Perhaps, 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). 32 Hong 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. It 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 86 differences 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. Plates 8-16 at the rear of the volume illustrate this article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 89 Northern 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). 14 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. 19 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. 16 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." 17 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. 18 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. 19 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. 20 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... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 90 ese 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, 21 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). 22 Guangdong Xinyu, Hong Kong, Zhonghua Shuju (Chung Hwa Book Company), 1975 (reprint), pp. 729-730. 23 The 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. 24 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. 25 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. 26 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. 21 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 ================================================================================ 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 282 kon ɔk. Before the tram service was opened in 1904, her family members used to walk there to buy goods, going also to the shops in the Western District of the Island. (She called it by its old name of Ham Yue Lan, or "Salted Fish Dealers”). Before the trams, it was common for little wooden carts pulled by men (and probably women also) to carry goods along the north shore of the Island. The Shau Kei Wan shops catered mostly for boat people, owing to the large number of craft using the anchorage. They included both local and visiting craft. The old lady's purchases were largely of fishing supplies. She particularly recalled buying the traditional dye stuff called shue leung. This was used for dyeing nets, and she remembered the large wooden vats set up beside the shore that were used to immerse the hempen nets in order to restore their strength. Shue leung was also used for dyeing cloth, she said. At this point her son and daughter interposed, saying that their mother had been very competent at making clothes and had made all the family's garments for a long time, after first dyeing the cloth purchased from the shops. In response to questions about the local temples, and her visits there, she said that when young and through her life, she had gone regularly once a year to the Tin Hau Temple at Causeway Bay during the annual festival, adding that there was a Kuan Yin or Goddess of Mercy image there as well. She did not seem much interested in the other temples of the adjacent areas, but did mention that she kept the traditional observances at the little shrine on board the family boat on the 2nd and 16th days of each lunar month (tso-nga #4). Unfortunately, I paid only the one visit. JAMES HAYES ADDENDUM: For a detailed account of Tanka fishermen in a permanent local anchorage, see Section I, “Chinese Fishermen: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 96 moved from Fukien to Heong Shan county in Kwangtung during the Sung dynasty (960—1279). About a hundred years later, his great, great, great, great grandson, Heen Bow, who was a student at the county school, founded the village of Cha In and established the West Branch (145 or 945) of the clan. Since he was born during the latter part of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and died during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) at the age of 56, Cha In village was settled about the mid-1300s. An ancestral temple was built to honour him as the 'First Ancestor' and to pray for the glory and prosperity of his descendants. A great, great, great, great, great grandson of Joong Goong, named Jun Hung, branched out to Poo San #1, as did another great, great, great, great, great grandson, named Bow Sung. The son of Heen Bow, named Kwong Joong, had two wives, the first of whom died before the marriage was consummated. The second wife bore him three sons. The eldest, Li Jung, branched out to start the East Branch 東堡 or 東房, The second son of Kwong Joong, named Li Jen, entered the emperor's service when he was only 15 and his feats of courage surpassed others. At the age of 19, while on a mission for the emperor at King Jow Prefecture, he met his death at sea. This service to his country brought glory to the clan. A temple was built in his honour and a statue of him was placed there for sacrifices to him. During the reign of Hong He of the Ming dynasty, an official named Iu Goong was commissioned to find out all about Li Jen's background for a report back to his superiors. Iu Goong visited the temple and was so impressed by what he heard that the Emperor bestowed Li Jen posthumously with many honours for his distinguished service, naming him to a government post in Taiwan and Adjutant to the Viceroy of Fukien, and noted that although Li Jen was dead, it seemed as if he were still alive. Iu Goong also presented to the temple a tablet of honour and a stone lion to enhance its appearance and to serve as an inspiration to others 'to serve the emperor with loyalty and devotion, to bear the lance and follow the emperor to battle, to win glory, to extend benevolence, to protect the race, and to respond whenever the need arose.' Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 19 2 Goullart in his description of the monastery in Kiangsi in which he spent several holidays, describes in one hall 'Shang Ti smiling benevolently and enigmatically from his canopied throne'. He then refers, in his description of another temple, to the Jade Emperor and speaks of him as Shang Ti. There are various explanations offered as to why this deity is called the Jade Emperor. One suggests that the reference in the Book of Changes to '. . . heaven being the ruler, and is... jade' is its origin; Goullart however gives, in translation, an invocation from the abbot to Shang Ti in which he refers to him by title as 'the Mightiest Emperor over all Heavenly Kings, who lives in the Jade Hall of the Western Heaven'. This, surely, is a clue. The supreme deity, Shang Ti, lives in the Jade Hall, hence his title the Jade Emperor. This title is a relatively recent development in Chinese chronology having only become prominent during the 11th century AD. However, popular recognition of and interest in the cult became apparent during the Manchu (Ch'ing) dynasty. The title of the sovereign divinity of the Chinese State religion until 1911 was Huang T'ien Shang Ti, the First Rank Supreme Deity in the 17th century regulations of the Ch'ing dynasty. Shang Ti, as the All-highest, was never portrayed in image form, and in a number of temples in South-East Asia the title of Huang T'ien Shang Ti is still given for the supreme deity, usually carved on plaques, and in one temple in Singapore an image of the Jade Emperor even bore a vertical slip of paper inscribed with this title. Many Chinese myths and legends involve the Jade Emperor; those surrounding his origins are shrouded in mystery and probably his genesis will never be known. China has a rich popular tradition incorporating local tales from every corner of the vast empire, and it is no wonder that numerous and varied explanations have been given by devotees of how and when the Jade Emperor became the senior deity. The earliest known reference to him is from the T'ang but he could have existed long before that. Since then it has commonly been believed that he was either an incarnation of, or given the task of Supreme Deity by Yuan Shih T'ien Chun, the senior deity of the Taoist trinity, the Three Pure Ones (San Ch'ing). His popularity declined somewhat during the Ming. Although a Taoist deity, his image is to be found on altars in several Buddhist temples and some Buddhists even claim that he is really just an adaptation of Indra. To the man in the street all Buddhist, Taoist and folk religion deities are his subordinates, and well timed worship will ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 22 removal to T'ai Miao. In Tainan in southern Taiwan an elderly temple keeper claimed that the heads of the five major religions, Confucius, Lao Tzu, The Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed gathered and chose Kuan Yu (otherwise known as Kuan Kung, the Patron deity of loyalty) to be raised in succession as the 18th Jade Emperor. He assumed the throne at Chinese New Year in AD 1864 and still occupies the throne. Although the Jade Emperor is concerned with running the bureaucracy of the spirit world and with meting out justice, he delegates many of his day-to-day responsibilities to his ministers and judges. It is accepted by devotees that he is the arbiter during disagreements between the gods. His rule is conceived of as similar to a reigning Chinese emperor, he being the heavenly ruler with the Chinese emperor the terrestrial ruler. Most people believed that the emperor of China was his terrestrial equal. Despite the large pantheon the Jade Emperor commands, containing an inordinate number of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, The Five Emperors, Kings/Judges of the Underworld, major gods and all the deified spirits (shen), in Chinese mythology he is frequently duped and outwitted, as indeed the Chinese well knew that their emperors were. One only has to remember the story of Ch'i T'ien Ta Sheng, better known in the West as Monkey to see how gullible he can be. This does not mean that he was not feared. The Jade Emperor's forces include his powerful spirit armies, capable of destroying anyone or anything, which he can unleash upon anyone who offends him. An English missionary in the nineteen thirties after 36 years in North China wrote "Lao T'ien Yeh is the Supreme God, the popular equivalent of Shang Ti of the Classics. He is not represented by any image or other symbol nor are there any temples in his honour, nor is he the object of popular worship. But built into the outer wall of the house, beside the doorway, there is commonly a little shrine in which thank offerings are placed at harvest time. When you inquire what people know about him, the usual answer is 'He sends the wind and the rain and ordains life and death, and to him the Kitchen God makes his annual report'"*. It is well known that the Jade Emperor personally receives reports from each and every Kitchen God during the period from the 12th day of the final lunar month until the Lunar New Year's Day, and from these ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 28 Sheng Mu (玉皇聖母) One of the more interesting arrangements is the main hall of the Temple of the Jade Emperor in Tainan. The Jade Emperor occupies the main altar with the San Kuan (Three major Taoist deities) immediately before him. On his left hand is his son, referred to as the Fourth Heir Apparent (Yu Huang Ssu Tien Hsia F) (see Plate 4) but without any personal name, and on his right is his grandchild, the Third Princess (San Kung Chu Niang, see Plate 5). According to the temple keeper she is the younger sister of the Jade Emperor's heir Yuh Huang T'ai Tzu, and her annual festival is celebrated before her altar on the 15th day of the third lunar month. The other children of the Jade Emperor are not represented. An image of the Jade Emperor's third daughter (see Plate 7), a princess whose name is not given, is the main deity on an altar in a temple in Pai Sha on the Pescadores Islands. On the same altar are four other princesses, said to be her sisters, but again without names. These four are lesser deities. 10 Mrs. Goodrich was told by her Peking informant that Yen Kuang Niang-niang, the deity who watches over eyesight, was the sixth daughter of the Jade Emperor. Her image in the Temple of the Eastern Peak in Peking portrayed her carrying images of eyes in her hands. She has to be worshipped by a pregnant mother or her child will be born with incurable eye trouble. In another temple on the Pescadores, the Lung Tu Temple in Makung, the Third Prince of the Jade Emperor is the main deity on one of the major altars. He is flanked by smaller images of the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Princesses (Ta, Erh, Ssu, Wu Kung Chu). This Third Prince Yu Huang San T'ai Tzu should not be confused with Na Cha, who is also referred to as the Third Prince (Nacha San T'ai Tzu). The third son of the Jade Emperor is portrayed as a seated, beardless, middle-aged man holding an unsheathed sword vertically before his chest and with his left hand raised to shoulder height making a mystic sign. He is wearing a high, round-topped cap with a bead-screen, and has four flags signifying his military rank in a rack across his back. This same deity, Yu Huang San T’ai Tzu, has been noted with an image of the Taoist deity, the Saintly Mother (Sheng Mu) on a side altar in the main hall of a large folk religion temple in Manila. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 29 dedicated to Pao Kung, the Lenient Judge, and also in a Buddhist temple in Beverley Hills on Cebu where he has behind him a small image of the Jade Emperor's second son Erh T'ai Tzu (...). The whole group of the Jade Emperor's family, though only the two sons (the second one and the third) are portrayed, is referred to as Chiu Chung T'ien Lao Tsu (LICEEM). A rural temple on the island of Penang contains three images on its secondary altar identified as the Three Sons of the Jade Emperor. They are referred to as San Yuan T’ai Tzu (SAT). Another rural folk religion temple at Bukit Mertajam on the Malaysian mainland opposite Penang contains an image of the Jade Emperor's Fourth Daughter (Ti Ssu Kung Chu Pч2) on one side of the main deity on the altar, the Jade Emperor himself, with an aide to the princess on the other side of the Jade Emperor. The aide is known as Meng Yen Hua (夢燕花), An unusual image, of a farmer standing holding a hoe over his shoulder, stands on a private altar belonging to a Hakka petty businessman in Kranji, Singapore. The businessman explained that it portrayed one of the sons of the Jade Emperor and had been brought from eastern Kuangtung province last century; it has been prayed to for good crops ever since. He is known as Li Po Kung Kung (#22). In one group in Singapore, on a Taoist altar in Lorong How Sun, the Jade Emperor is attended by four of his seven daughters. The first is Hsien Chi Niang Niang (瑄姬娘娘), the second is Kuan Yin, the third is T'ien Hou and the fourth is Nu Wa. All but the eldest are well known deities from early Taoism and Buddhism in their own right. Hsien Chi Niang Niang has only been noted twice, both times in Singapore, on altars where she is said to be the eldest daughter of the Jade Emperor. She is portrayed standing on rocks, holding a fly whisk in her right hand. Again in Singapore, on a private altar, a Buddha figure, gilded and seated in a lotus position, was identified as Han Hsien Fu Tsu (# bili), and said to be a daughter of the Jade Emperor (see Plate 8). She has three identifying features apart from her Buddhist five-leaf crown. These are a small dragon crawling over her left knee, a vase balanced on her right knee and her palms held facing together before her chest with her fingers making a mystic sign. This image has also been seen ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 31 aides and guardians. His two major aides, according to a Taiwanese temple keeper, are major deities in their own right: T'ai I Chiu K'u T'ien Tsun (AZREF) and Lei Yin P'u Hua T'ien Tsun (LEO). He has a senior deity as his personal messenger, Teh Chih Chiangchun (特赤將軍) A Buddhist priest guiding a visitor around his temple in Chia I county in Taiwan, in which the Jade Emperor was the main deity on a side altar in a side hall pointed out that he had four bodyguards: The Marshals Wen (溫), Ma (馬), K'ang (康) and Chao (趙) with blue, white, red and black faces respectively. The full title of the Jade Emperor is: Hao T'ien Chin Kuan Yu Huang Shang Ti (昊天金阙玉皇上帝) or T'ien Ti San Chieh Shih Fang Wan Ling Chen Tsai (天帝三界十方万灵真宰). This is possibly best translated as The True Lord of Heaven, Earth and Mankind, in all areas and of the Mystical Spirits. The following are the short titles by which the Jade Emperor is known: Yu Ti (玉帝) Yu Huang T'ien Kung (玉皇天公) T'ien Kung (天公) T'ien Kung Tsu (天公祖) T'ien Kung Yeh Yeh (天公爷爷) T'ien Shang Ti (天上帝) Tien Ti (天帝) He is also known as: Yu Huang Ta T'ien Tsun Hsuan Ch'iung Kao Shang Ti (玉皇大天尊玄穹高上帝) Yu Ch'ing Shang Ti (玉清上帝) Hao T'ien Shang Ti (昊天上帝) Shang Ti (上帝) Lao T'ien Yeh (老天爷) North China ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 32 Huang T'ien Shang Yi (LR) San Chieh Yu Huang Ta Ti (三界玉皇大帝) (The San Chieh altar before a temple entrance in Fukienese and Ch'aochou communities, represents the Supreme Deity, T'ien Kung (The Jade Emperor). It is a trinity of Heaven, Earth and Mankind, and the altar is usually higher than normal altars.) Yuan Chih T'ien Tsun (X) (Taiwan) Yu Huang Chih Tsun(玉皇至尊) Yu Huang Ta T'ien Tsun (X) (Taoist) Ch'ing Ching Tzu Jan Chiao Wang Ju Lai (a**=**) Some temple keepers claim that Yuan Shih Tien Tsun is an incarnation or alternative title for the Jade Emperor. Though Yuan Shih T'ien Tsun is often claimed to be the Supreme Emperor of the Beginning of time, he is primarily a member of the Trinity, the San Ch'ing (), and its first member. He is the First Principle, he has no beginning and no end, is the source of truth and his doctrine leads to Immortality. He dwells in the Kunlun Mountains and was possibly a deity invented by the Taoists to counter the then growing influence of Buddha. His image appears with that of the Jade Emperor on a number of temple altars, thus highlighting the difference between the two deities. Most of the information related above about the Jade Emperor is reasonably well known; however, the question of the images of the children of the Jade Emperor is a subject which appears not to have been investigated before. Most of the children, numbering up to seven daughters and four sons, appear on altars with their father, in groups on their own or individually alone as deities in their own right. Temple keepers without exception did not know why the particular son or daughter was represented on the altar in their temple though some suggested that the children were really well known major deities such as T'ien Hou and Kuan Yin. However, it is understandable that individual members of the Jade Emperor's family who are referred to on a number of occasions in the legendary history, the Feng Shen Yen I, together with mythical apotheosised heroes from the same legends whose images appear on Chinese altars, should themselves also appear on Chinese altars. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 40 Pestilence Wang Yeh contained the character revealing where he had originated from. An altar in a converted shophouse temple in the suburbs of Taichung bore the title 'Chinmen Su Fu San Wang Yeh'. The temple keeper's family, also named Su, had brought the image over from Quemoy (Chinmen island) off Amoy. An example of the many idiosyncrasies involving the worship of the surnamed Wang Yeh can be observed in the Ma Temple in Ssu Hu village in Yunlin county where the Ch'en family has worshipped Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui+ for many generations. The temple was built there with Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui as the major deity but following an epidemic Ma Fu Ch'ien SuiT, the ancestral deity of the local Ts'ao# family became the major deity on the altar. He is regarded as the senior of the two Wang Yeh. According to local legend, during a virulent epidemic Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui gathered together Ma Fu Ch'ien Sui, Ta Sheng Yeh (Monkey god), the Third Prince (T’aitzu Yeh), Kuan Yu (the red-faced god of loyalty), and T'ien Shang Shengmu (The Holy Mother of Heaven better known as T'ien Hou) and together they stopped the epidemic. In their gratitude the locals extended the temple to honour them and, according to the temple keeper, the whole area has been peaceful and harmonious ever since. Ma Fu Ch'ien Sui, the senior Pestilence deity in the group, is portrayed as a multi-armed deity, with a multi-coloured striped face sitting on a throne. It is very Hindu in its appearance. In Hsin Ying near Tainan a main deity known as Han Lao Yeh##Zm but better known colloquially as Han Ch’ien Sui### was discussed by a number of villagers. In consensus they decided he was not a Wang Yeh despite being a protective deity who was particularly revered for the maintenance of good health. They were unable to identify Han but recalled that he had been a civil official in Fukien whose image had been brought over to Taiwan long after he had been deified. Pestilence Wang Yeh generally occupy the main altar of the temple in which they reside. The main deity will occupy the centre spot with the junior Wang Yeh in lesser positions beside him. However, in a number of temples they can also be seen in a row on the altar table before the main altar which can be dedicated to another, entirely unconnected deity. This would seem to be the temple staff taking advantage of the custom of borrowing a Wang Yeh image to take home for private reverence by the sick, who leave a donation in the temple for the service. Pestilence Wang Yeh images are frequently carried home from temples ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 43 to the Afterworld during the major festival of the Hungry Ghosts. In Chinese ethnic communities other than the Fukienese, pestilence deities are rarely known as such, though individual 'deified doctors' (deities prayed to for specific cures and illnesses) are believed to have special abilities to prevent or cure plague and pestilence. They are not referred to or considered as Wang Yeh. A good example of this is the image of Sui Ching-po (#24(1)) brought to Hong Kong in 1894 during a major outbreak of plague. 4 Amongst the large number of Pestilence Wang Yeh temples in Taiwan the most popular is, as already mentioned, at Nan K'un Shen at Peimen, just north of Tainan. This modern temple is located on the site where the Five Wang Yeh are believed to have first arrived in Taiwan from Fukien province some four centuries ago aboard their Spirit Boat. It began, as did most modern temples, as a tiny shrine of mud and stone, and as time passed and the community became wealthier, and of course, when the cult proved efficacious, the building progressed from wattle and daub, to wood and then to brick and tile. The Nan K'un Shen (A) temple contains a blend of cults, of Wang Yeh, of a protective general and the spirits of the unknown dead, the Yu Ying Kung. Legend has it that several hundred years ago a youth looking after cattle took shelter from the rain under a tree and stayed dry due to the special quality of the tree. The boy died young, seventeen according to some, and was buried under the tree as he had stipulated in his last wishes. From time to time his spirit, which was at first called the Spirit of the Broom (k) appeared to villages who built a small shrine for him referring to him now as Yu Ying Kung (A). He was looked upon as the 'prince' of the surrounding area. However, later five Wang Yeh arrived in their Spirit Boat and the spirit of a general was brought over to Tainan; they asked the Yu Ying Kung spirit to permit them to have a temple in which they could live to be built nearby. The Yu Ying Kung refused and said that he had stuck a needle into the ground to mark his possession of the territory. The Wang Yeh countered this by claiming that they had buried a coin in the ground and thus they too had a claim on the territory. It came to blows until Kuan Yin intervened and a compromise was reached with the two temples standing side by side sharing one common wall which separated them. Thus it is that the Plague Gods (The Wang Yeh), the general (an unidentified and unnamed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 45 On another occasion the main Wang Yeh of the Five was on his way to Hsikang in central Taiwan on a tour of inspection when he encountered a demon causing trouble. He had gathered together a large force of spirit soldiers from the Underworld and was causing great hardship and harm to the local people. The Wang Yeh summoned the other four Wang Yeh and, with help from Kuan Yin, the local City God, and the Ma Tsu from Peikang, he defeated the demon and his army but suffered a wound to his head. Although repeated efforts have been made by craftsmen to repair the damage to his head the wound can still be seen today. Some say that the wound on the Wang Yeh's head was the result of his fight with the Yu Ying Kung, but whatever the reason might be, the people look upon the deity as a hero. In Fulai, a village near Chia1 in central Taiwan, the main Pestilence Wang Yeh of the five on the altar is afforded an honour generally reserved for powerful major deities like Kuan Kung. He possesses a horse whose image stands alongside the side wall of the main hall of the temple. Though the Pestilence Wang Yeh are 'popular' deities they have their demonic aspects as well as their divine and are in general looked upon as dangerous, awesome and fearsome spirits to be approached with great circumspection. A number of devotees believe that the task of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is to police the World and control demons. While a small minority regard them as healing gods the majority believe that their function is to ward off and even attack demonic influence. If the attack is successful, it leads to a cure. Being awesome deities the Pestilence Wang Yeh are only worshipped when devotees have a problem which requires the dispersal or destruction of malignant and demonic forces. Only very rarely are these deities approached by worshippers seeking advice and therefore the use of fortune slips and forms of communication such as divining blocks between the devotees and the deities are not usually to be found on the altars dedicated simply to them. Divining blocks are used however when temple committees wish to ascertain the views and wishes of Wang Yeh concerning his personal circumstances such as the location or use of his images. Pestilence Wang Yeh are not approached for aid and advice as are, say, agricultural or fertility deities. Their role is limited to protection, and by extension to cures from pestilential diseases. They are, however, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 56 beaten and thrown out by his two partners. Having lost everything the mother had to take in washing even though she was seven months pregnant. One day whilst washing clothes by the river she slipped but luckily the local Earth God seeing her falling, changed into a dog and rescued her, dragging her out of the water. When she regained consciousness the Earth God had changed into an old woman who helped deliver her of a healthy boy, Hsu En-te (4). The beating had caused the father injuries which prevented him from working and the family lived in poverty. The father, unable to stand it any more went out to hang himself but met with a local dignitary named Kuan who, when he had heard the sad story took the family back to his house and cared for them. The father slowly recovered and when fully back to his old self he became a rent collector for Mr Kuan. On one of his trips out collecting rent he encountered his two former partners from the silk shop who again robbed him and took the rents he had just collected, beat him up again and this time the father died of his injuries as he crawled back to the Kuan household. By this time En-te was seven years old and he swore never to forget those who had done his family such great wrongs. He worked at looking after the accounts for Mr Kuan and secretly started to learn martial arts. He was accomplished by the time he was fifteen. When he was sixteen the Kuan household was attacked by bandits and to everyone's surprise En-te not only beat them off but detained three of them. At first he turned down the offer from a local magistrate to become the head of the local police force but as his mother wished him to serve the people he finally accepted the offer and served three years. When, after the three years, he returned to live in the Kuan household he discovered that one of the two partners who had killed his father was also living in the Kuan household together with his daughter. The killer was hated by everyone but being afraid of him they left him well alone to live in peace. The killer fell ill, repented and expressed his deep sorrow at his heinous crimes. Hsu En-te gave some money to the daughter so that she could buy medicines for her father. After many incidents En-te eventually married the daughter of his father's killer and when, much later, En-te himself died he was revered by the local population as a benefactor and was looked upon by them as their protective deity. The cult was carried across to Taiwan, to the temple in a village near Tainan where the immigrants from Kiangsu established it as Hsu Wang Yeh, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 136 Lei (#) clans were settled in the area then, and the Ho family at least must have been there from the late Yuan." It seems likely, however, that no Ming political groupings survived the chaos of the Coastal Evacuation (1662-1669) in the area - the returning villagers must have had to re-create their society more or less from scratch. Soon after the rescission of the Coastal Evacuation Order Hakka groups moved into the Ta Kwu Ling area. There is no evidence that there was any opposition to this, and the area has been one of marked Punti/Hakka co-operation throughout the last three hundred years." The first, and the most important, Hakka group to enter the area was the Chan (B) clan, of Ping Yeung, Nga Yiu Ha, and Wo Keng Shan. Other Hakka groups arrived mostly during the eighteenth century. These villages began to establish alliances between themselves from early in the eighteenth century. The Chans of Ping Yeung, Nga Yiu Ha, and Wo Keng Shan allied themselves with the Fus and the other tiny clans of Wo Keng Shan to form the Sam Heung (, "Three Villages"), and this alliance in turn allied itself with the Mans of Ping Che to form the Ping Yuen Hap Heung ("Ping Yuen United District'). The Tin Hau temple at Ping Che was founded by this group of villages, probably in the early eighteenth century, and they celebrated the Ta Tsiu festival in front of the temple from the eighteenth century until the 1930s." The groupings of Kan Tau Wai, Tai Po Tin, and Lei Uk; and of Lin Tong, Wang Kong Ha, and Au Ha2 are very probably of the same sort of date. Several villages in the area were genealogically related, and these also tended to form loose groups around their main ancestral graves during this period. However, inter-village alliances in the area in the eighteenth century do not seem to have been particularly strong or socially significant. Each individual village had its own Tai Wong (AE, “Superior Earthgod Shrine"), and the groupings of villages around a single, shared shrine found in many places in the New Territories were unknown here. Thus, when the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was founded towards the end of the eighteenth century, it was founded within a region with a weak political structure, marked by numbers of villages without alliances with others, or only weakly grouped with others. The strongest grouping, the Ping Yuen Hap Heung, consisted of only four villages, two of them very tiny. It is entirely likely that the area was in this period dominated politically by “major lineages" from outside the area -- particularly the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 397 the Yuen Ka Walled Village E, Mui Wo, Shek Pik, Tong Fuk 塘福,Shek Mun Kap 石門甲,Shui Hau 水口, Shek Lau Hang 石榴坑, Ngau Au 牛凹, Sha Lo Wan, Shek Tau Po石頭莆,Yi O 二澳 and Yau Ku Long. Also, Hakka villages were found at Tai Ho, Pak Mong, Wang Long and Ling Pei Walled Village at Tung Chung." The population on the island increased, and they depended on fishing and farming. Nowadays, Mui Wo, Pui O, Shui Hau, Tai O and Tung Chung have developed into towns; Shek Pik Village has been removed, and a reservoir built on that site. However, many villages founded in the Ching Dynasty still remain with little development. NOTES ANTHONY SIU KWOK-KIN 1 The inscription of the 42nd year of Chien Lung (1777) on the stone tablet in the Hau Wong Temple of Tung Chung bears the name "Tai Hai Shan". 1 See Chapter 19 of Kwong Yu Kei, Ming edition. 1 1 See Chapter 2 of Yuet Man Chuen See Kei Leuk, 1684 edition. See Chapter 7 of Lin Tien-wai and the writer's Essays on the History of Hong Kong Prior to British Colonisation, Commercial Press, 1984. It is now known as Lantau Island, and in some newly published maps of Hong Kong, it is also known as Tai Ho Island. + See S. G. Davis and May Tregear's Man Kok Tsui, Archaeological Site 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Univ. Press 1961; and “An Archaeological Site at Shek Pik”, Journal Monograph I, Hong Kong Archaeological Society 1975. 7 See Chapter 29 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi 8 See Chapter 1 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi, 1464 edition. 非 See Tsang Yat Man's "Hai Nam Chaak, an old Salt Pan on Lantau Island" 大嶼山鹽田學, No. 284, Cosmorama Pictorial, Hong Kong. 9 As Note 8. See Tsang Yat Man's "A Textual Research on the Ins and Outs of the Rebellion of the Natives of Tai Hsi Shan – Now Tai Yu Shan of Hong Kong - in the third year of Ching Yuan of Emperor Ning Tsung of South Sung Dynasty" 南宋寧宗慶元三年, Chu Hai Journal No. 11, October, 1980. 12 See Chapter 67 of the Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1558 edition. 13 See Tai Hai Shan 大箂山 in Ng Loi 吳榮's Nam Hoi Ku Chik Kei 南海古鏞記, Chapter 61-1 of Su Fu, Shun Chih edition. 14 See Chapter 12 of the Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1697 edition. + 15 As Note 4. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 78 icon form on minor altars in Taiwan. These icons are understandable as portraits of Sun the 'Father of the Nation' appear with those of Chiang Kai-shek in offices, schools, barracks etc. where they were bowed to each morning as a sign of respect. Among the less literate and more superstitious it is not difficult to see how this has led to such icons appearing on altars with incense burnt before them. In the mid-1960s, the Kuomintang organised a political demonstration in Cambodia on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, the middle of the month during which Hungry Spirits return to the human world for thirty days. During the demonstration public sacrifices to the spirits of the victims of the communists in China were performed. There was also talk of deification of one or two but this came to nothing. It has not been unknown for outstanding living persons to have a sanctuary built in their honour. The magistrate of Ch'ing-ho district in Hopei was such a man. He brought about a substantial reduction in taxes and other government levies and thus lightened the financial burden on a hard pressed people. In 1886, two years after he had been transferred to administer another district, the grateful populace of Ch'ing-ho built a shrine in his honour. In Singapore in 1970 a new cult was founded near Woodlands on the northern tip of the island when the deity, Wu T'ien Chu, appeared to a Singapore Fukienese man in a dream. The deity explained to the Fukienese that he, Wu T'ien-chu [The Military Master of Heaven], was a mighty deity who had chosen the Fukienese man to become the 'Master Warrior' of his cult. He required a new bungalow to be converted into accommodation for the founder with the lounge becoming the altar hall. He told the Fukienese man that he would protect his devotees, cure their illnesses and bring them good fortune. A statue of the deity was carved in the likeness of the spirit as he appeared in the founder's dream and placed on the altar. The founder, the Fukienese man, explained that with his wide knowledge of all religions he encourages devotees from every nation and creed to worship in his temple. He explained that the world's most powerful deity is the Jade Emperor, with Sakyamuni, The Buddha, as his deputy. Next in seniority is Kuan Yin followed by Wu T'ien-chu who has a great many assistants and warriors under his charge, none of whom is ever portrayed in image form. He continued that the four pillars of the cult are "the four gods (shen) of other religions, Buddha, Christ, the Pope and Mohammed”. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 158 children took Mme Hardoon's surname-Lo-the Eurasian children the surname Hardoon. Their ostentatious life-style was particularly noted. The Aili Garden, designed to be in the style of the Da Guan Yuan of the Dream of the Red Chamber, embraced a temple and a school. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, it was said that the Hardoons assumed the life style of the court by entertaining imperial concubines and employing eunuchs as retainers. Actual facts known of the Hardoons are somewhat less flamboyant. Silas Hardoon was born in Baghdad. At the age of five, in 1851, his family moved to Bombay where his father worked for the Sassoons. In 1873 he moved to Shanghai to work for Sassoon as a clerk. His parsimonious living, administrative skills, and keen business sense soon enabled him to become a rich man himself. He engaged in opium sales and real estate speculation. Instead of buying expensive land in the British settlement, he bought land for himself and for the Sassoons in the External Roads area. And, when the settlement expanded, land value rose. It was said that he made as much as 500 million taels in one single transaction. Hardoon married a Chinese woman and had little to do with Jewish religious or social life in Shanghai, despite his significant gift to the construction of the Beth Aharon synagogue for the orthodox congregation Sheerith Israel. Before and during the Revolution of 1911, Hardoon and his wife harboured revolutionaries in the Aili Garden. Whether or how much they contributed towards the revolutionary coffers is unknown. Silas Hardoon died in 1931 and was buried in the Aili Garden. This final act of disregard of religious tenets again angered the Jewish community since the garden was not consecrated ground. The Kadoories The first woman to drive an automobile in Shanghai was Lady Kadoorie, wife of Sir Elly Kadoorie, an Iraqi Jew who made his fortune in real estate utilities in Shanghai. Kadoorie was a part of the Sassoon establishment until he went on his own. One of their sons, Lawrence,* was to become Lord Kadoorie, the first man from Hong Kong to sit in the House of Lords at Westminster. He has remained active in finance and industry in Hong Kong. Their other son, Horace, is known for his support for education of Jews all over Asia, including Israel. Horace likes to be active in all aspects of founding a school, from curriculum planning to staff hiring, in addition to fund raising. In Shanghai in 1939, * Since deceased [Editor] ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 192 Another claim suggests that Ch'iu was the adviser to the Yuan emperor Shih Tsu [better known as the Great Kublai Khan] though as Ch'iu is said to have died in AD 1227 this would be impossible; yet another claim which is again fanciful, Ch'iu is said to have been the author of the dramatic version of the "Journey to the West" the well-known story in which Monkey [Ch'i-t'ien Ta-sheng] aids a famous monk to carry Buddhist scriptures to China from India. His mausoleum was in the influential Taoist White Cloud Monastery, the Sect centre, in Peking. Temple records in the Pai-t'a Dagoba in the Pei Hai in Peking noted that he died at the age of 80 in AD 1227. His image is to be seen on two altars in Hong Kong, both in Taoist monasteries where he is portrayed as a seated Taoist figure dressed in robes, blue in one monastery and golden in the other, with a black beard. He is wearing the tiny Taoist crown and holds a fly switch in his right hand. He has no unique identifying characteristics, though in private images he is often depicted with his blue robes decorated with pa-kua signs. His image, in both monasteries, is on a secondary altar in a main hall dedicated to Wang Ch'ung-yang, with Lu Tung-pin being the sole deity in the other secondary altar. These three Immortals are known collectively as the Three Generations, with Lü the eldest, Wang the second generation and Ch'iu the third generation and the junior. His great weakness, which he had to overcome, was his impatience. He was renowned for his propensity to butt in and offer his opinion, often after reaching conclusions prematurely. In Peking, his image in the Tan-chi Kung depicted him as a young man without eyebrows or whiskers and with a whey-coloured face. In Singapore, his old gilded image stands on an altar in an old temple in Telok Blangah where he shares a shrine on an altar with Lu Tung-pin, one of the Eight Immortals, with the other shrine occupied by images of Ho Hsien-ku, another of the Eight Immortals, and Sun Fu-jen, an unidentified matron. Ch'iu was deified by the Yuan dynasty emperor Shih Tsu [Kublai Khan, ca AD 1260] as: Ch'ang-ch'un Yen-tao Chu-chiao Chen-jen (MIÈ3⁄4Ç^). Later, at the time of Yuan Wu Tsung [ca. AD 1308], ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 100 personalities were the same. In an enumeration of patriarchs of their magic the Yao manuals from Liannan do name Xu Jiangyang (i.e. Xu Xun) just before a Zhang Zhao Lang (probably referring to Zhang Zhao Er Lang) and a Zhao San Lang (probably Zhao Hou San Lang). Comparing the position of Xu Xun in this account with the Cantonese DJYL which alleged the Zhang Zhao Er Lang and Zhao Hou San Lang were disciples of Lü Shan Jiu Lang, one may surmise that Lü Shan Jiu Lang is none other than Xu Xun. 36 We notice three different styles of names in this genealogy of the magic of sorcerers related by Bai. The first group had titles ending with wang "King", the second titles beginning with what looks like the name of a mountain followed by a number and the word lang, and the third beginning with a surname and ending in a pattern similar to the second. The first two characters in the titles of the third group seem at first reading two surnames which leads one to guess they refer to more than one person (3 in the case of Zhao Hou San (3) Lang and 2 in the case of Zhang Zhao Er (2) Lang). Of the gods of the second group the format of their title bears close resemblance to the names of some gods found since at least the Southern Dynasties. It was this third format that we have seen above appearing as ritual names of some class of persons initiated by traditions of magic found among the Yao, the She and the Hakka. The Southern Song passage has a note under Lu Shan saying that it was a mountain in Luzhou or what is Liaoning province in Northeastern China. A work of anecdotal literature of the Jin period, by Yuan Haowen (1190-1257), did mention a Lu Shan Gong temple or Lu Shan temple in Guangning, near Lu Shan in the present Liaoning province, which was certainly in honor of the god of the Lü Shan. The temple was said to be very daunting. It housed ugly and fearful images, so much so that people who entered during day time were frightened. The name of the other two mountains can be found in many different parts of China, making it difficult to determine their locations. In the case of Heng Shan, the one referred to in the name of the god may be related to the one in the story of Sishan Zhang Daidi". But a popular novel from Fujian in late Qing dynasty, featuring as its central figure Chen Jinggu, allegedly the disciple of Lu Shan Fazu, quoting what it claims to be a saying known in Fujian at its time, suggested that the place is in Fujian province itself. I believe that Lu Shan could have been somewhere in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 121 4. Such as Muxía San Lang (p 695), Hagoo Wu Lang (p. 1802), Hupe Wu Lang (p 1802) and Mu Ping San Lang (p. 308) 12 See for example, Yi Yuan of Southern Dynasties15 p. 1, Shoku edition. The passage reportedly appears also in Hua Yang Guo Zhi of earlier Jin dynasty, and the Hou Han Shu of the Southern Dynasties "Kainan Xhuan Xin" 4, Shoku edition pt Hht No Gan p 5 in Shankar edition 14 For Tarshan Shi(4) Lang see p. 297 21b Tarshan Sau Lang | 298 p 24b Huayue San Lung | 300 p 30 and ↑ 301 p 33, Huashan San Lang | 303 p 39. There is even a Ji (7) Lang son of Daryue San Lang in) 305-p-490). By in Xiaoshuo Daguan edition reprinted Yangzhou 1983 ** J 4 p 21 in Shrakat edition "The Wudu HaYao", quoted by Wang Jiayon Daojiao Tungan, hengdu Basu Shushe, 1987, $49 IN Nanbu Xusha, Simoku edition mp4 Hong op out p 508 * Quoted by Rolf A. Stein "Religious Laoism and Popular Religion from the Second to the Seventh Centuries”, in Holmes Welch and Seidel eds. Facets of Taoism. Yale University Press, 1979. He dates the collection as from Tang dynasty (p. 67). The text is in the Daoist Canon, vol 704 4) Garyu Congkao | 37, p 677 in reprint by Hefei Rennin Chubanshe 1990. 52 Hong mp of, pp. 916, 1692 * The most curious example is abid, pp. 328-110, quoting an abridged document submitted to a temple as petition. The quoted passage gave an additional name of himself in the form Ediscuss here. The quoting passage seems to have overlooked the fact the author of the quoted passage was the husband of the female ghost who made trouble. DIYLp 41, p 25 "He may be related to Zhan Hou of Jin dynasty who appeared in a legend about a stone horse and stone rider, related in the Yi Yuan a work of the Southern Dynasties quoted by Taiping Guangji4 (top en ↑ 284 p 1969). Perhaps the same Zhao Hou is referred to by Zhao Hou Nan Fa (Southern Magic) and Zhao Hou Da (register) mentioned by the Ming Daoist manual [Tan Huang Daojiaoling Yu Ce, in the Daoist Canon vol. 1109-1110]. There are a few schools of magic, that calls themselves Nan Fa. One is mentioned in Du Guangting op cit 12 p 5, and another in Hong op cit pp. 1733 and 1736] Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 157 limited by the size of its villages and their economic status, Tung Chung did not adopt the tso-she ceremony in the earth god worship as Kwangtung's countryside did in the 1920s. Again, worship is mainly on a personal, rather than village, basis. The most important supra-individual/lineage inter-village social activities in Tung Chung, as remembered by the older generation, were the chiao ceremony and the Houwang's Birthday Festival. Literally meaning sacrifice or offering, the chiao is a large-scale Taoist ceremony, performed to wipe away evil, forestall calamities, restore peace, and renew life in the way of cosmic harmony for the entire population of a community. It consists of a series of rituals, which are commonly called ta-chiao (arranging sacrifices or making offerings). In spite of its rich meaning, the chiao can be better understood as a festival with a dual purpose: giving thanks to the deities and offering sacrifices to the spirits of the dead. Basic items of activity include chanting by Taoist priests, called nun-mo-lao (chanting fellows), inviting local deities to the altar placed in a matshed, going to the puppet show and the communal meals, and joining a parade through the villages. Beginning in the late Ch'ing, the chiao ceremony was held in Tung Chung regularly in the 14th lunar month, and especially after plagues had taken many lives there. The Shek Mun Kap village, being the oldest village in the area, served as the locale. According to an old villager, the village became a local venue of social and economic activities after some shops were established there. Villagers liked to gather at the place to gamble and chat. It was, therefore, a suitable centre for popular festivals. As an inter-village ceremony, the chiao required donations from all households at every village. From each village, a man was chosen as yuan-shou (leader of worship) by casting the divining blocks in front of the earth god at the entrance of Shek Mun Kap. He had to pass the divination three times in a row. These men took charge of money collection, the preparations for the occasion, and the hiring of matshed and stage builders, the puppet show troupe and the nun-mo chanters, etc. They also acted as the village representatives in assisting the ceremony. At the site of the chiao ceremony, in front of the earth god shrine at Shek Mun Kap, a matshed was set up temporarily to enshrine the Houwang image "invited" from the local temple. Oblations, joss sticks, and candles were put in front of the idol. Erected behind the earth god shrine was the gigantic bamboo and paper figure. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 168 recording a list of money donors who sponsored a reconstruction project then, those who served as Directors of the renovating work or donated the largest sums of money were the K'ungs from the Tung-yuan t'ang and shopowners from the Hsi-yuan t’ang They were apparently Tung Chung's social leaders. Elderly people testified that the K'ungs from lower Ling Pei and the Hsiaos from Ngau Au were the largest landowners in the area, renting out their plots to tenants at neighbouring villages. They also ran commercial businesses on Tung Chung Street. The Ta-sheng t'ang Store, owned by the K'ungs, and the Yao-ho Store, by the Hsiaos. As the most influential people in the community, they naturally became the managers of the temple reconstruction project. With their economic power, they were able to act as sponsors of large-scale religious functions, which in turn legitimized their status as cultural and sociopolitical élites of local society. Their role in the annual festival commemorating the Houwang's feast day made their social position even more conspicuous. Before the War, it was the Neighbourhood Association which took charge of the preparation for the Houwang's Birthday Festival. The association was formed by shopkeepers who were elected by all shops on Tung Chung Street. Members would take turns in leading the association for a term of three years. Making arrangements for the annual festival stood out as the most important job for the association and its leader who, after taking up the post of Chief Director, would serve as the head leader of the festival. A red paper with this title would be put on his shop's signboard. The festival was thus an opportunity to show off one's wealth and power and to increase one's influence within the community. This function is especially significant to multi-surname villages where no single lineage dominates the situation. Common practice requires that every household member makes a donation to support the festival activities. The amounts of their donations are publicly detailed on a wall bulletin called "the long paper in red". In the pre-War period, when Tung Chung Street became a local commercial centre, the list was posted on the exterior wall of the Yao-ho Store, one of the largest shops on the street. A few outside donors, from Tai O and Bak Mong, for example, would also volunteer to support the function. Because of substantial expenses involved, Page 195 Page 196 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 180 The Issei, "The Jiao Festival in Hong Kong and the New Territories," in Julian F. Pas, ed., Turning of the Tides: Religion in China Today (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 271-298 Interviews: K'ung Chao-hsiang (age 79), Lung Tseng Tau, Jul 6, 1991; Hsieh Ch'i, op. cit. Interview of Mo Shu-ling (age 65), Mok Ka, Jun 29, 1991 Interview of Lo Ch'uan, op. cit., Jul 8, 1991 [hid] "Ho, op. cit.; while some villagers did not remember the role of the Houwang in the rituals, an old man, who had witnessed the festival three times, indicated that the Houwang idol would be "invited" from the temple and enshrined on an altar set up for the ceremony (Interview of Lo Ch'uan, op. cit., Chap Mun Tau, Jun 22, 1991) "Tanaka, op. cit., pp. 273-274 *Faure, 1986, op. cit., p. 84 14 James Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 159-160 "Ho, op. cit., p. 6 16 Interviews: Cheng P'o, op. cit.; K'ung Chao-hsiang, op. cit. "Interviews: Cheng Man-hung, op. cit.; the Tung Chung Public School, Jul 1991; Tseng Kuan-hsing (age 60+), Upper Ling Pei, Jul 12, 1991 *Interview of K'ung Chao-hsiang, op. cit. 14 JCH Ibid.; Interviews: "Uncle Li", op. cit.; Cheng Man-hung, op. cit.; the Tung Chung Rural Committee, Aug 12, 1991 Interview of Feng Po (age 65), Ma Wan Chung, Jun 16, 1991 Brum, op. cit. *James Hayes, "Chinese Temples in the Local Setting," in Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, Week-end symposium, Oct 2, 1966, the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, p. 92 "Faure, 1981, op. cit., p. 76 **"Ch'ung-hsiu Houwang-miao pei-chih," IV, 1910, collected in K'o Ta-wen, Lu Hung-chi, & Wu Lun Ni-hsia, comp., Hsiang-kang... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 181 per-muing hia-pren, diffighi Vol 2 (Hong Kong Urban Council. 1986), pp. 395-402 * Interview of Lo Ch`uan, op cat Jun 22 1991 46 Interviews La P'o † # (surname Ho, age 70+), Ma Wan Chung, Jun 30, 1991, Ch'en Kuang-sheng P4144 (age 63) Fishermen's Village. Jul 8,1991 & by telephone, Aug 1,1991, 20 Mall, op cit 1 Anthony KK Sau “Distribution of Temples on Lantan Island as Recorded in 1979.** JHKBRAS, Vol 20(1980), p 138 ** Ch^en Po-Cao BR1MB "Touwang ku-mao sheng-shih per-chu,” (Kowloon: n.p., 1917) the Flouwang Temple Kowloon City For different opinions on the Houwang's identity, see Hsiao Kuo-chuen "Hstang-kang Hou-lung so ssu-feng chih 'Yang-hou-ta-wang' k'ao,” in Hstang-kang ch'inh-tai-shih huu-chu (Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1985), pp 307, 313, Jao Tsung-yı "Yang-1'ai-hou chia-chih yu Chit-lung Yang-Houwang miao,' in Chu-hung vu Sung-chi shuh-hao (Hong Kong: Wan-yu t'u-shu kungssa, 1959), pp 84--92 * Ronald Ng. "Culture and Society of a Hakka Community on Lantau Island,” in I_C Jarvie, ed, A Society in Fransition. Contributions to the Study of Hong Kong Society (London: Butler & Tanmer Lid. 1969), pp. 55, 62 40 According to an interview at the Tung Chung Public School, Jun 24,1991, see also interviews. La P'o †% (age 63), upper Ling Per, Jun 15, 1991, Cheng Man-hung, op cit 1 5? Interview of 11 Chii-sheng PL/ (age_73), Lam Che. Jun 18,1991 * Interview of M. Huang (age 76), Wong Ka Wai, Jun 25, 1991 Brim, op eit, p. 100, N 10 ** Interview of Cheng Man-hung, op uit, upper Ling Per Aug. 11. 1991 Ho, op ett. p 13 Flayes, 1967, op eit, p 91 * Ho, op. cit, p9 5 lbid. p 13 * Brum op eit,p/103 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 182 ++ James W Hayes, "The Patterns of Life in the New Territories in 1898,” JHKBRAS, Vol 2 (1962), p. 75. James Hayes, "The Settlement and Development of a Multiple-clan Village," in Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, ed., Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Week-end Symposium, 9th-10th May, 1964 (Hong Kong: Cathy Press) p. 13. Hayes. 1966 op cit, pp 92-93 ***Kung-li Ta-hsi-shan Tung-Hsi-chung Chiang-shan chu-tien Liang-hsiang ho-huo yung-yuan chao-na pei,” £££%£¶‡ui (@N✯ in K'o, et al. op cit. p 43 65 For the concept equating local temples with the yamen and temple gods with local officials, see Faure, 1986, op. cit. p 71 James Hayes, "Secular Non-gentry Leadership of Temple and Shrine Organizations in Urban British Hong Kong," JHKBRAS, Vol 23 (1983), pp. 113-114 K'o et al, op cit. pp 399-402 + * Law Man Sang, "The Rural Leadership of Tung Chung " Graduation Thesis, History, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992, pp 36 AT Interview of Kung Chao-hsiang, op cit For this point, see Topley, op cit p 18 Interviews of Kung Chao-hsiang, op cit, Jul 6, 1991, Jul 8, 1991 70 Ibid "Interview of Cheng Man-hung op cit Jul 1, 1991 Ibid 21 Interviews Lo Chin-hu (age 80), Shek Lau Po, Jun 29, 1991, Li P'o, Cheng Man-hung etc, upper Ling Pei, Aug 11, 1991, Huang P'ing T (age 70), Ma Wan Chung, Aug 19, 1991, Cheng Man-hung, Huang Chieh-lin etc, Tung-sheng-lou Sept 23, 1991 # "Interview of Cheng Man-hung, op cit. Aug 11, 1991 "Law, op cit p7 Th Interview of Huang P'ing, op cit. Aug 18, 1991 + "Ng Cheuk You "Land and People in Tung Chung Valley An Example of Rural Land Use in Hong Kong." Ph D Thesis University of Hong Kong, 1965, p "Interview of Ch'en Kuang-sheng, op cit, Jul 8, 1991 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 49 In one temporary temple run by Chaochou immigrants in Hong Kong the Fifth Son was portrayed simply by a stylised painting depicting him as a ferocious warrior, unarmed, standing on one foot. This likeness was on a secondary altar whilst the main deity, also represented by a portrait, was of the first emperor of the Sung, Sung T'ai Tsu. The temple keeper explained that the Fifth of the eight sons of General Yang Ling Kung, who is better known as Yang Yeh, was a bodyguard to the first emperor of the Sung. A story related in Tainan county claims that a herdsboy who, having picked up a piece of wood which had the outward appearance of a Buddhist priest, was playing with it. A teacher, having seen him with the odd-shaped wood, requested a medium to clarify whether it was an image of a spirit. He was taken aback when the answer was an affirmative and that the spirit was that of a local man who had been borne off to Heaven in the not too distant past. Furthermore, the deceased had been an incarnation of the loyal Sung "minister" [sic], Yang Wu Lang, who had now become a Buddha. The piece of wood was placed on the altar in the village temple where it is prayed to as the spirit of the Fifth Son, and known as Yang Wu Sai Yuan-shuai 吳賽元帥. An image of a black-bearded general with protruding eyes, five flags on his shoulder rack, and a magic sword raised in his right hand, stands on the main altar of a rural temple in Muar near Malacca. He is only known as Yang Wu Shih is said to be "the Fifth Son of a famous general who lived a thousand years ago". Yang Yen-chao, is known as Yang the Sixth, Yang Liu Lang or Liu Shih-yeh. His image on the main altar in the temple near Taichung is one of two individually identified. The temple near Taichung would appear to be the only temple in Taiwan in which the Sixth Son is the main deity and the temple keeper, proud of his deity's uniqueness, explained that Liu Lang was captured by the Tatars and had even married a Mongol bride. His image has not been seen in any temple in South-east Asia though a story told in Penang claimed that a massacre of Fukienese by an army under a 'cruel general, Yang Liu Lang' continued for several days until, on the 8th of the first lunar month, many were able to escape by hiding in sugar cane fields. Ever since, annually on that date, sugar canes with foliage have been placed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 52 Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu. They were first placed there some three hundred years ago, towards the end of the last fully Chinese dynasty, the Ming and before the overthrow of the Ming by the non-Chinese Manchus. The Two Temples in the Western Hills The old Kuan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu X, the fourth of the Eight Great Places in the Western Hills of Peking, is sealed off and not available to the general public. It contains a modern image of the major deity, the bodhisattva Kuan Yin with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes together with old but refurbished images of the Deva with their name in Sinicised Sanskrit but without providing any hint as to their origins and legends. The statues of the Deva were originally made during the Ming, ca. 1500 AD, and consist of clay reinforced with hemp. They are referred to in temple literature as the Group of 28 Great Immortals +. The image of the Thousand Arm and Thousand Eye Kuan Yin was replaced by the Japanese after the Second World War in an attempt to make amends for having taken the original and melted it down for the brass content during the War. The Kuan Yin Hall in the Ta Pei Ssu contains in addition to the one bodhisattva, Kuan Yin, twenty-eight images, which can be categorised as follows: twenty-six deities with Sanskrit titles including the five T'ien-wang [Guardians] together with two Chinese folk religion deities. Of the twenty-six, five are deities specifically referred to separately in the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings? [Deva, Mahoraga, Kinnara, Asura and Gandharva] It is lamentable that the Kuan Yin Hall is closed to the public; however, fortunately, there is also a Hall of Bodhisattvas in the second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu #, some five kms. to the north of the Ta Pei Ssu, which is open to the general public and it too contains the Twenty-eight Deva; however, the images here have all been made within the past fifteen years, probably replacements for the original images destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and yet again without any signs to indicate that they are anything other than Chinese deities. The fact that all but three were originally Hindu deities brought to China by Buddhism is not explained in temple literature, though the monks un- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 53 derstood that all twenty-eight of the deities in the hall were followers or disciples of the Kuan Yin with the Thousand Arms and Thousand Eyes. The twenty-eight images in the Bodhisattva Hall of second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu, (apart from the main deity Kuan Yin), fall into three categories: four bodhisattvas [P'u Hsien, Wen Shu, Ta Shih Chih and Ti-tsang Wang - but not including the main deity, the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin]; seventeen deities with Sanskrit titles [including four T’ien-wang Guardians] and three Chinese native folk religion deities. The monks also explained that a stream which ran through the area had attracted imperial favour and several temples had been sited and built by palace eunuchs to enable the emperors to relax during the summer heat or visit the nearby shrines of deities of longevity and prosperity. Amongst these were the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yün Ssu. They also understood that when the decision was taken to set up the images in the Hall each image was specially constructed and given a name or title all in accordance with Buddhist sacred writings. However, these two temples in the Western Hills are not quite unique in that a further 28 deities can be seen in a cave-tunnel in a comparatively modern temple near Taipei in Taiwan, each labelled with a Sinicised Sanskrit or pseudo-Sanskrit name, similar to the deities in the two temples in the Western Hills. Such alien names mean nothing to most Chinese. In the Ta Hui Ssu X, a third temple, within the city of Peking, statues referred to in the temple as the Twenty-eight Protectors of the Buddhist Law line the flanking walls of the main hall. These too are very similar in style and appearance to the Twenty-eight Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu in the Eight Great Places and though not individually identified as such in the Ta Hui Ssu they are probably similar Deva. According to Soothill's Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms Deva is a general designation of the gods of Brahmanism, celestial beings whom he lists as the Twenty Deva [+]. The Sinicised Sanskrit titles of the deities seen in the two temples in the Western Hills, compared with the list of twenty in Soothill's dictionary, con- Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 55 saddle on his recumbent lion, holding his rattle-stick in his right hand and his pearl in his left. He wears monk's robes and the five-leaf Buddhist crown and is a benign middle-aged monk. However, in the Ta Pei Ssu he is without any unique characteristics, and is portrayed as a middle-aged deity, standing, with palms held together in prayer before his chest; he is dressed in multi-coloured robes and an ornate crown. Without his label it would not have been possible to identify him. Native Chinese Deities co-located but unconnected with the Deva Two of the Twenty-eight deities in the Ta Pei Ssu are not Deva, being native Chinese deities. One is known as the Lord of the Purple Planet, Venus, Tzu-wei Ta-ti and the other, the Lord of the Underworld, Tung Yüeh Ta-ti. In the Pi-yun Ssu the additional native Chinese deity, bringing the total to three, is the Spirit of Thunder, Lei Kung, though in practice he might perhaps be regarded as originally Hindu in that he is a form of Garuda, a human with wings, the beak of a bird and clawed feet. The great majority, if indeed not all Chinese visitors to these temples, be they devotees or merely sight-seers, tend to assume that the deities were legendary Chinese figures, possibly because the sign-board outside one of the halls describes them as P'u-sa [bodhisattvas], a term Chinese are familiar with considering it to be Chinese. Having said that, a number of the deities have titles on individual tablets before them which, though in Chinese characters, are obviously not Chinese names such as Kan-ta-p'o, the Sinicised version of Gandharva. These names can be somewhat confusing if not bewildering as different Chinese characters for the alien sounds are used. In addition they are not always the full titles provided in Buddhist religious literature. There are several major differences between the array in the Ta Pei Ssu and in the Pi-yun Ssu. Primarily, though both groups stand within a hall dedicated to Kuan Yin, the image of the goddess in the closed temple hall stands some fifteen feet tall and is the thousand-arm, thousand-eye Tantric version, standing, with two of her arms resting one each on the heads of her two attendants. The image of Kuan ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 93 Appendix D THE TWENTY-EIGHT BUDDHAS OF YORE Twenty-eight images of the Early Buddhas, the Ku Fo; the Buddhas of pre-history, the Buddhas who came before Sakyamuni, The Buddha, are to be seen in the Kuan Tu temple complex, to the north-west of Taipei. These 28 'Old Buddhas' are: Ta Fan T'ien Wang 大梵天王 [Maha Brahman - Brahma] P'i-p'o Chia-lo Wang 毘婆迦羅王 [Vipasyin: the first of the Seven Buddhas of antiquity] Kan-ta-p'o Wang 乾達婆王 [Gandharva: the gods of fragrance and music: the musicians of Indra] Ti-shih T'ien 帝釋天 [Indra] Ta Pien-ts'ai 大辯才 [Sarasvati] Ma-hsi-shou-lo 摩醯首羅 [Siva: Mahesvara] Ta Hai Lung Wang 大海龍王 [Sagara - Lung Wang] Chien-na-lo Wang 監那羅王 [Kinnara] Wu Pu Ching 五部凈 Chin-p'i-lo Wang 金毘羅王 [Yama - as protector of the 1000 arm Kuan Yin] [Kumbhira - a Yaksha king, who was converted and became a guardian of Buddhism] ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 97 NOTES MacGowan J : Men and Manners of Modern China: T Fisher Unwin: London 1912 2 Werner in his Dictionary of Chinese Mythology gives the Eight Classes of Dragon Kings as follows: 3 Deva naga, Yaksha, Gandharva, Asuras, Garudas, Vinnaras, Mahonagas and Rakshas Soothill in his Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms lists the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings as follows: Deva, Naga, Yaksha, Gandharva, Asura, Garuda, Kinnara and Mahoraga. Major well known Brahmanist deities not included in the groups of Deva in the Western Hills of Peking include Hanuman, Parbati and Ganesh. * A Student Interpreter: Where Chineses Drive : English Student Life in Peking Wm Allen & Co : London: 1885 6 As with a number of titles the romanised spelling varies depending upon the form used and, as examples, we have Siva and Shiva, Pancika and Panchika. He is the esoteric cult Deva, a masculine form of the wife of Siva. He is the tutelary god of Mongolian Lama Buddhism, and is also said to be an incarnation of Vairocana for the purpose of destroying demons. 7 Werner, ETC: A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology: 8 9 x stands for an illegible character. Although images iconographically look like the standard Buddhist image of the Temple Guardian, Wei T'o, they have been identified as being one of three Vedic deities. Lessing in his Yung-Ho-Kung [Stockholm 1942] and the Taiwanese guide to The Guan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu both identify Wei T'o's origin as Skanda whilst Soothill claims that he is Viharapala. 10 Occasionally Yüeh T'ian-wang, that is the 12th century hero Yüeh Fei, takes the place of Li Yüan-shuai. "Chin-se are the Five Primary Colours permutated in various ways to represent various ideas; also, a five coloured emblematic cord, a Brahman sign worn on ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 141 been sacked in the memory of man. When the Taiping rebels came to the walls of Nanchang in the middle of the 19th century, they saw sitting on it the figure of a huge man swinging his feet in the moat. He was apparently selling sandals three feet in length to the beleaguered citizens. That was enough for the attackers who turned and fled. It was the figure of Xu Xianzhen. This, however, was not true of the Wan Shou Gong at Xi Shan which, according to temple records obtained by Professor Liang Hongsheng. These are quite clear that since the Furen Palace was first constructed there in 1743, it was destroyed by fire first in 1820 and again in 1856, after it had been rebuilt in 1848, by the Taiping rebels. It was again repaired in 1871 only to be destroyed once more nearly a century later by Red Guards, Somewhat surprisingly Xu has been seen on altars in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, possibly carried there by immigrants from Fujian province, a province immediately to the south of Jiangxi. His is, however, a minor cult deity. An image of Xu, one of the minor healers in a group of five, on the main altar in a temple in Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan, portrays him as a standard Daoist immortal with a sword and small Daoist crown. The gilded image is swathed in a golden robe and all that can be seen are his face and bald head, his black beard and one hand holding the sword aloft. He and the others are collectively revered by devotees as celestial doctors who reveal herbal prescriptions for devotees through a spirit medium. The senior celestial doctor in the group of five is Yang Zhenren, better known perhaps as Yang Zhensong; the other three junior doctors being Xuan Zhenren, Wu Zhenren and Sun Zhenren. The old temple keeper who had founded the temple and is now dead, came over to Taiwan in the 1930s bringing the cults with him from Nanping in Fujian province, some 200 miles due south of Nanchang. A temple in Singapore, opened in 1971, has Cuji Zhenjun as the main deity on its main altar. The temple keeper was in no doubt that this deity was Xu Sun, a famous Song dynasty doctor, who was portrayed as a black-bearded, seated Daoist, dressed in colourful robes and a scholar's hat, but without any unique characteristics. His image is flanked by two aides who have not been noted anywhere else: Cishui Lingguan Dadi 刺水靈官大帝 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 176 image with one of the other titles is the same god. The Fengshen Yanyi records numerous departments of the Celestial World including, for example, the Department of Thunder. It has a chief, General Wen, and twenty-four subordinates, amongst whom are the spirits of wind, rain and lightning; these are often referred to as the Five Spirits of Thunder, Lei Shen. Another is the Department of Fire Spirits. Its departmental head, Luo Xuan of Fire Dragon Island, called himself Yan Zhong Xian, the Immortal of the Flames, and was a fierce-looking iron-toothed, red individual. His immediate subordinate was Liu Huan, a yellow-faced demonic being who, during the Shang-Zhou struggle, brought along the materials with which they nearly destroyed the capital of Xi Ji, before being themselves routed. Luo Xuan was awarded the title The Chief Spirit Ruler of the Southern Region Three Atmospheres Fire Virtue Star: Nan Fang San Qi Huode Xingjun Zhengshen. Among his subordinates are a pig, monkey, tiger and snake spirits, all representing the different kinds of fires. The tiger is the 'tail fire' which is very hot; the pig is a 'house fire' which bursts out unexpectedly; the monkey is the 'nose fire' which comes suddenly through openings; whilst the snake is the 'winged fire' which leaps from one place to another. Liu Huan causes fires to spread. The story begins with the last ruler of the Shang making an offering at the temple of the goddess Nü Wa. Having written a poem on the wall of the temple, a graffiti that offends her, she sends three monsters to bewitch him. The following résumé of the last two chapters of the book brings into focus the tenor and style of the story. Jiang Ziya, about whom tales are told of his ineffectual efforts to become a trader and thus satisfy his wife's demands that he should do something useful, was eventually introduced to the Court and King Zhou Xin, who gave him a high position. Jiang antagonised Dan Ji, Zhou Xin's concubine, by getting rid of one of her vampire friends who had disguised herself as a human to share with the evil queen the flesh and blood of the victims she had slaughtered. Jiang was being taken away to be executed outside the palace but managed to slip through a hole in a bridge and disappeared. The guards sought him everywhere and finally assumed that he had been drowned. He had however been able to conceal himself. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 181 may be unremarkable, in Mao's China not all that long ago folk religion was taboo, and even in today's China that they offer such displays of the old deities without blatant propaganda is surprising. NOTES 1 The Feng-shen Yen-i is usually attributed to Hsü Chung-lin who lived during the first half of the 16th century. 2 The mythological gods of the Creation and pre-history are different from the “human” deities, the latter being canonised since the 11th century BC [and, indeed, up to the present day] 3 Confusion between the new dynasty, the Chou and the last ruler of the Shang, Chou Hsin was so general that it became the convention for a while to romanise the name of the last ruler of the Shang as Tsou rather than Chou. Duke Fa of the Shang vassal state of Chou, the later King Wu [Wu Wang], the first emperor of the Chou dynasty Filial piety prohibited a son from bearing a higher title than that borne by his father. Should he acquire the throne it was necessary that the title should first be conferred on his father, dead or alive. We therefore hear of names like Wen Wang [the Emperor Wen] and Chou Kung, awarded to his father and brother respectively, these being the titles 6 A mural portraying Duke Chou is one of the panels, together with others depicting Christ, Confucius, Lao Tzu and Mohammed, around the inside of the dome above the main hall of the cult centre temple of the I-kuan Tao at Nan Hua near Tainan. 7 The only image of Pai Chien noted in today's temples is in Havelock Road in Singapore where he is one of the 24 Heavenly Generals. * The seven, who not long after this became Immortals, free from the cycle of rebirth and death, were: Li Ching The Three Princes, Chin Cha, Mu Cha and Na Cha Yang Chien Wei Hu ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 189 In late 1997 in northern Shansi province whilst touring round village temples as well as those on high mountains it was soon apparent that the Cultural Revolution had laid the majority of village temples low and left them in ruined dereliction. However, Buddhist temples far from the cities had been more fortunate and these still contained undamaged images albeit in a poor state of care. Many of the village temples were being used as squatter residences usually for a single elderly person, with the walls crumbling, the roofs matted with grass and weeds between the roofing tiles, doors and windows agley and hanging on one hinge, and in a few places the images of the old deities still lying on their backs on the floor where they had been flung thirty years earlier by the Red Guards, and awaiting rescue. Villagers were still interested in their temples but have not the funds to do anything about renovation, at least for yet a while. The elderly remembered the gods and the majority had small cheap images, on their household altars or paper icons pasted to their walls, mainly of Kuan Yin and Kuan Kung. One temple stood out as a born-again Buddhist establishment, with an in-house priest and several ladies ranging from very old to a young woman in her late twenties who all cared for him and hung on his every word. They were punctilious with their greetings and their constant invocation of O-mi-t'o Fu, as well as with their gentle pressure on their foreign visitors to feel the sanctity of the place and, in particular, of their priest. The temple, a recently refurbished building of wood and tiles on the site of a former temple, had no feel of age nor did it in any way bring to mind its former self, the building which had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Sadly, it was a utilitarian construction with a few religious appendages, and similar in style to many an old village school with little if any of the sense of numinous felt in old temples. Also during this visit to northern Shansi we came across the old temple which had been dedicated to Wu Lang. This was described in detail in Volume 37 in an article entitled the Yang family of Generals. Mainland press reports during the years 1995-6 have frequently referred to provincial crackdowns on the construction of 'illegal' religious temples as well as the excessive building of tombs. Some regions, it was reported, had been seeking to promote tourism by engaging in superstitious activities on the pretext of respecting "the traditional culture of the motherland." The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the party, called for a complete ban on Chinese tourists paying homage at temples and monasteries, even though such practices have been tolerated ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 191 industry. It was common, so it claimed, for construction teams to hold Taoist rituals, including the sacrifice of oxen before work began.* On the other side of the coin, according to the Bureau of Religious Affairs, about 200 Taoist temples have been re-opened to the public in China since the 1980s and seven Taoist provincial associations have been established. One of these temples is the former Taoist Cheng-i sect centre, the Heavenly Master Sect temple [T'ien-shih Miao] on Dragon and Tiger Mountain, Lung-hu Shan, in Kiangsi province. It was burned down in 1945 and work on rebuilding it did not begin until 1983. This consisted of the renovation of the main hall and the re-sculpturing of the images of the San Ch'ing, the Three Pure Ones, and fourteen other clay statues. Other sites nearby have also been renovated, including the Shang Ch'ing Palace, where the Immortals lived, and the Lien-tan Ch'ih, the Furnace [where pills of immortality were made]. It is interesting to read that both local and central authorities donated more than half a million yuan towards the project. About the same time as the iconoclastic campaign began, a ban was also imposed in Tsingtao, the port in southern Shantung, on the manufacture, sale and burning of funeral objects in a bid to curb a resurgence in superstition. ... Despite all of these reports of the destruction of illegal temples and the crackdown on superstition, my daughter and I during the years 1995-1997 have visited a number of temples both urban and rural in remote areas of China as well as in cities and towns which, without doubt, fall under the category of superstitious religious establishments. We have not only been guided to several such temples by policemen but also in one instance we found the local party cadre actually lived with his mother inside a small popular religion temple. The only instance where a member of a temple staff had reason to explain that an activity was banned because it was superstition happened in the suburbs of Shanghai. When we asked why there were no oracular blocks on the altar with which to obtain the deity's answers to questions posed by devotees, we were told by the temple guardian that this particular practice was superstition and not permitted, whereas other routine rituals seen in temples in Hong Kong and Taiwan were. A Chinese scholar recently explained that in his view illegal temples are the structures built without permission because local State authorities have not had the quid pro quo erection of a village school, crèche or health centre paid for by the villagers with the same sum funded for the project as Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 323 THE DRUNKEN DRAGON DANCE AND THE TAN GONG (TAM KUNG) FESTIVALS: NOTES ON THE RASKB VISIT TO MACAU, MAY 1997 GEOFFREY ROPER The eighth day of the fourth lunar month is an important date in the Chinese religious calendar. Principally it is Lord Buddha's birthday, and for that reason is soon to become a Hong Kong public holiday. In Macau, on a more local basis, it is also the date of the Drunken Dragon Dance Festival around the markets of central Macau and the Tan Gong (Tam Kung) Festival celebrations in Coloane Village, Coloane Island. It was with these two Festivals mainly in mind that a twenty-strong party from the Hong Kong Branch of the RAS, led by President Dan Waters, set off for Macau early on Wednesday, the 14th May (the date in the 1997 Western calendar). a.m., Preceded by Chinese opera performance the evening before, the initial Drunken Dragon Dance celebrations had already started by 8:30 by the time we arrived at the western end of the former Sao Domingos Market. The dragon heads and tails were being blessed by a Taoist priest outside the adjacent Guan Di (Kwan Tai) Temple and brought to life by the painting of eyes by invited VIPs. A golden flower with a red ribbon was tied around the head of each dancer - representing God's gift of energy for the dancing ahead. The scale of the festivities was somewhat smaller than the previous year, with humbler staging for the sponsors from the Macau Fish Merchants Association and restrictions on the free distribution of rice and vegetables to the public at the first market. The reason was disruption caused by building work, but most importantly, the Dance itself remained unchanged. The dragons, the dancers, and the dance itself are best seen in the illustrations (which were actually photographed by the author at the 1996 celebrations). Accompanied by a loud drumbeat, the group of about twenty male fish porters circled around and took turns in holding the wooden red and gold dragon heads and red and green tails. As ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 377 translated into Italian, then into French. It was the undated French version that we saw. It had been written, possibly in Macau, on the instructions of the Pope and described the persecution of priests. There was also a massive hand-written "Tartare-Mantchou French dictionary” 1st edition, Paris 1789, in 3 volumes. Another interesting book was "Dr Fryer's Travels: A new account of East India and Persia in eight letters, being nine years travels" by John Fryer MD (Cantab) and Fellow of the Royal Society, published in 1898. The more linguistically accomplished of our members interpreted these works for the benefit of all and there was much erudite discussion. This was the Society at its best and we could have spent many more hours, even days, delving into this fascinating collection. [Illustration Two]. On Saturday afternoon we drove out to Fa Hai (Sea of Dharma) Temple, in the distant western suburbs at the southern foot of Cuiwei Mountain. The temple was begun in 1439 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) with funds raised by Li Tong, a favourite eunuch of the Emperor. It was completed in 1443 and named by Emperor Ying Zhong. The most outstanding features are the frescoes, which completely fill the walls of the main, Mahavira, hall. These reflect a relatively pure Buddhism without Taoist depiction. They are of Buddhas, Avalokiteshvara (Kuan Yin) and the three other bodhisattvas, devas, wonderful animals, auspicious clouds, flowers and realistic landscapes. There are five Buddhas on either side with the 10 Buddhas together representing the full power of Buddhism, and possibly also the idea of east and west. The colours are subtle and not too faded (although the viewing of a colour-enhanced video prior to touring the Temple helped our appreciation). In the temple grounds are unusual pine trees with silver-white bark; ancient trees, said to resemble dragons, and a bell engraved in Chinese characters expressing Sanskrit teachings. The auspicious clouds inside were matched outside, for misty rain added to the atmosphere of the temple, set in the mountainside woods. On Easter Sunday we were up very early to go to the oldest Christian church in Beijing - the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception of Blessed Mary, on Qianmen Avenue. This is also known as Nan t'ang, or South Church. The Emperor bestowed on Matteo Ricci the lands and funds to build the church near the then Calendrical Bureau inside ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x descent from an Imperial clansman who was abandoned here in 1277 (their surname is the same as that of the Sung Imperial house), - the clan subsequently left the area'. Certainly the villagers remembered the Sung Court with reverence. Many folk-tales grew up in the nearby villages about the boy-Emperors and their actions. The villagers down to the nineteenth century revered the grave of the sister of the two boy-Emperors, which stood just outside Kowloon City. The major temple of the area, the Hau Wong Temple outside the Walled City, was dedicated to the uncle of the boy-Emperors, the Prince-Marquis Yeung Leung-tsit. The villagers say that they worshipped this man in secret during the Yuan dynasty, and built him a temple as soon as the coming of the Ming made this possible. The villagers greatly reverenced Yeung Leung-tsit's benevolence and selflessness, but his deification is clearly one that was intended to reflect the local people's reverence for the Sung Court as a whole. At some date, an important Market grew up in front of the yamen at Kowloon City. In the later nineteenth century this stretched from the south-east gate of the Walled City (the most important entrance to the City) down to the great stone pier that stretched out into the waters of Kowloon Bay. There was one long main street, with a number of side streets10. Around the Market there were a whole string of small suburban communities, mostly market gardening communities or else places doing business in offensive trades that were too unpleasant to occupy space within the Market area proper. The largest of these suburban communities was Sha Po Village, immediately east of the Market. This was mostly a market gardening village. Branches of the Nga Tsin Wai clans (among many others) were settled here, and it came to be regarded as a settled village with permanently resident clans. The Lok Sin Tong (founded in 1880), the most important local charitable organisation, was also here: the Tong occupied a large area (it had a major Meeting Hall and a dispensary for issue of free medicines, which, with its offices, were arranged around a courtyard with a garden, opening off Blacksmith Street through a substantial gateway, with a second courtyard behind with a school, which used the second courtyard as a playground). The Tong doubtless found land in Sha Po cheaper than in the Market itself. The other suburban villages - Sai Tau, Tung Tau, Hau Wong, and Hoklo Villages - were more transient. There were a few families in each, which were permanently settled, but most residents here were resident only temporarily. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x Kwangtung, is treated as the First Ancestor of the Nga Tsin Wai clan. His eldest son was in turn born in 1102, but the Nga Tsin Wai descendants stem from the fifth son, who can hardly have been born much before 1120. Nine further generations are recorded in the Tsuk Po. The fifth of these was a sixth son. Assuming a 25-year generation gap for those ancestors born as the first, second, or third sons, and a forty-year generation gap for the sixth son, the eldest son in this ninth generation must have been born about 1370-1385. There were five brothers in this generation, who must have been born within the period 1370-1400. Ng Kui-hau fled from Nam Hung in the disturbances of 1126-1127, when the Northern Sung collapsed in the face of barbarian invasion. He went to the safety of Canton City where he lived until his death in 1158. Six of his seven sons moved away from Canton, five to establish descent lines in various places in central Kwangtung, and one to settle in Annam. The fifth son, Ng Jui (42) from whom the Nga Tsin Wai Ngs descend, settled in Tung Kuan, at Ng Ka Chung (4, "Creek of the Ng Family”). One of the sixth generation descendants of Ng Jui, (Ng Chung-tak, the eighth generation Clan Ancestor), born about 1290-1300, moved from Ng Ka Chung to “Kowloon”. The recent revised Tsuk Po states that he settled at a place called “Kwun Fu Sz Nga Tsin Tsuen”TM 1775, "The Unwalled Village in front of the Kwun Fu Yamen". Ng Chung-tak's third, but only surviving son, Ng Shing-tat, is considered the Founding Ancestor of the Nga Tsin Wai clan. He cannot have been born much before 1320-1335. The old Tsuk Po does not say that either Ng Shing-tak or his father settled in Nga Tsin Wai, merely in “Kowloon”; presumably implying that the family were then settled here and there in the open fields rather than in a village as such - presumably in that Nga Pin Heung where the Chans had already been settled for nearly two hundred years by the time the Ngs moved there. A date somewhere in the middle of the fourteenth century is the most likely for the Ng clan to have settled in the Nga Tsin Wai area, in Ng Chung-tak's old age (the Tsuk Po has a reference to Ng Shing-tak bringing his ancestor's bones to "Kowloon": this may refer to his mother's remains). The date remembered by the clan as the foundation date of the Tin Hau Temple, 1354, is almost exactly the period when the Ngs are most likely to have settled in the Nga Tsin Wai area, and the establishment of the temple, or whatever this date ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 269 FURTHER TALES OF THE MAN THE EMPEROR DECAPITATED P.H. HASE In Vols 28, 29, and 34 of the Journal a series of folk-tales relating to Ho Chan, the Warlord of Canton in the late Yuan, and Earl of Tung Kuan under the first Ming Emperor were printed1. Recently a further version of one of the folk-tales has been seen, in the booklet issued by the Kau Sai Hung Shing Temple Restoration Committee to commemorate the re-opening of the Temple (March, 2000), and a translation of this version is given below. It will be seen that this is a version of the same story relayed by Tsim Fo-sang (Journal, Vol. 29), although it differs in a number of details: certain important details are also clearly related to parts of the story collected by Wong Wing-ho (Journal, Vol. 34). It seems likely that this story is essentially a boat-people's story from Kau Sai. Tsim Fo-sang in the years just before the coming of the Japanese used to carry fire-wood from his home village in Sha Tin across the mountains to sell to the boat-people in Sai Kung. It is likely that his version of the story was the one he heard in the late 1930s from his boat-people customers, the version given below is as the story is remembered today in Kau Sai2. “Talking about Tiu Chung Crag (吊鐘巖), the Sai Kung fisher-people have a strange folk-tale which has been handed down among them. In the Tiu Chung Crag there is a cave. It has been handed down that when the first ray of dawn enters the cave, the cave discloses what seems to be a Golden Bell hanging in the air: the island is believed to take its name (Tiu Chung Chau, 吊鐘洲, “Hanging Bell Island") from this. It is said that, at the end of the Sung, there was an official called Ho, who loved walking in the mountains and admiring the sea views. He came to Tiu Chung Chau. He considered the scenery there to be very fine. There was an old banyan tree growing in the centre of the island then, with roots wriggling in every direction like a young dragon. In particular, there were two roots, as thick as a thumb, which pierced through the top of the Tiu Chung Crag. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 134 Quadrants 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. Although 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. Yang Ren There 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. XIE. [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. The 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 138 The Binary Titles for the Sexagenary cycle The list of the sixty combinations given below also includes the full title of the deity, the Spirit of the Year, the Taisui. Each title begins with the two characters from the 10 stems and 12 branches. These are followed by the two characters Tai Sui, and in turn the next two characters are the individual name of the spirit, followed by the final three characters for the Great General. Therefore, the first is Jiazi Taisui Jinbian Da Jiangjun, Jiazi being the first group of the sixty Taisui, followed by his name Jinbian, and finally the title of the Great General. However, the romanisation gives two words only out of the full title. The romanisation therefore only provides the first two [the stem and branch], followed by the personal name. The iconography of the Sixty varies considerably though the individual images in the two modern sets in Taipei do have very similar features. These range from military, civil and Daoist and Buddhist robes and caps to carrying spears, unsheathed swords, kerchiefs, fruit, small bowls of lustral water, tablets, brush pens, pearls and fans. The list, apart from the number within the bracket, obtained from the Daoist centre in the Baiyun Guan in Peking, provides sequentially the years of the sexagenary cycle. However, the images of the sixty Taisui in temples seem to be placed haphazardly along the altars. Also, the personal names of the spirits in each temple set can be different or allocated to a different year. A few are the same in every set, for example the first, Jiazi with the personal name of Jinbian, but the majority are different. The numbers in brackets are the order in which the images of the Taisui are placed in the folk religion temple in Pudong, Shanghai. Thus, the first item gives us: [the Shanghai number] Jiazi Taisui Jinbian Da Jiangjun Jiazi Jinbian and the years within the Sixty Year Cycle. [1] 甲子太歲金辨大將軍 [2] 乙丑太歲陳財大將軍 Jiazi Jin bian 1924 1984 Yichou Chen cai ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 161 and 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. 4 A 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. In 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, An 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. Disappointingly, 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 163 to teach him a lesson. In yet another rendition it is suggested that he had the crab painted on his forehead by his fellow pupils as a joke whilst he was asleep and who, at the same time, stuck two willow branches behind his ears. When he woke up his chagrin was so great that he committed suicide. Another story maintains that he was a most beautiful child and his sister-in-law in a fit of jealousy painted a crab around his mouth whilst he slept preventing his soul from returning [meaning that he died as a result because Chinese know only too well that one's soul roams far and wide whilst one is asleep]. The Jade Emperor took pity on him and, so the story goes, adopted him as one of his sons, or in another version, allowed his soul to return to his body. In yet another legend he was a Suzhou man who supported troupes of actors. Another legend, related in a Chaozhou temple in Indonesia, tells of a boy who had been working in the fields, stomach empty and very hungry. He fell asleep at the side of the field whereupon a small crab crawled into his open mouth giving him sufficient sustenance to continue. He grew up to be a good farmer, a good neighbour who helped protect his community and who loved music more than anything else. He was, however, conscripted into the army and sent north to fight the Xiongnu [Huns] of central Asia, where he rose in rank until as a marshal and undefeated he returned to his home in Fujian province. He was deified after death as a local community protector. One of the major factors of his victories over the Xiongnu had been the impressive uniforms he had provided for his men which completely over-awed the central Asian barbarians. These uniforms became the stuff of actors' outfits and because of his love for music, and as the crab had saved his life, his image has the crustacean painted around his mouth and he is now the patron of actors and musicians [Photograph 10]. The legend of the Marshal Tian, better known as San Tian Dou Yuanshuai, the third of the three Tian brothers, another form of this deity, has also been confused by devotees somewhere along the line with the well-known legend of the 360 musicians and the Pestilence Wangye. In the Tian Brother's story they were said to be musicians engaged by the Xuan Zong emperor as his music masters. The emperor, whilst sick, dreamed that their playing had restored him to good health which on waking he found to be true. He then ordered them to stop a plague which was ravaging Fujian province, which again they did and were deified by the Celestial Master Zhang, the Daoist deity. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 165 In 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. His 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. No 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. Both 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. We 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: Zhang 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n PATRON DEITY OF PROSTITUTES ZHU BAJIE 豬八戒 195 KEITH STEVENS Zhu Bajie is better known to Westerners as Piggy or Pigsy. He is one of the three assistants to the Tripitaka [the Chinese monk, Xuanzang] who, in 629 AD, together with the Monkey King [Qitian Dasheng], set out with the monk as his escort and aides on his hazardous and enthralling trek to India to collect the sacred Buddhist scriptures. These were the heroes of the romance the Journey to the West. He is also known by his name in religion - Zhu Wuneng - Seeker after Strength. In the story Pigsy was the former Superintendent of Navigation of the Milky Way, banished to be reincarnated on Earth for assaulting one of the daughters of the Jade Emperor. Unfortunately a mistake was made and he entered the womb of a sow and was born half-man and half-pig. He was ordained a priest by Guan Yin and is portrayed on altars and in murals as a composite deity, a human with the head of a pig. He carries a five-toothed rake as a defensive weapon which he used to good effect during the long and arduous journey escorting the pilgrim monk, Xuanzang. Although he is usually regarded China-wide as the epitome of gluttony, in Taiwan he is also revered by prostitutes who call on his divine title Shoushou Ye, offering him incense and chants morning and evening whilst calling on him to bring them rich guests, foolish and witless, to be fleeced. An image, one of a number on loan from devotees, depicts him sitting holding a virtually nude woman in his arms alone on one of the side altars in the City God Temple in Chia I. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 46 muddy 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. Chinese 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. Only 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. Hainanese 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. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 48 between Han ethnic groups but also both inter-ethnic fratricide and distrust, prevented legends of one ethnic group about their deities being passed to another. The stories of the minority Hainanese are therefore known to few non-Hainanese Chinese. Folk Religion Deities on Altars in Hainanese Community Temples Deities worshipped by Hainanese, both in their temples and on their household altars, can be categorised into eight groups: The first are the deities revered China-wide such as Guan Yin, Guan Gong, the City God, the Earth God, the Gods and Goddesses of Climate and Time and the patrons of trades and professions. As these are not uniquely Hainanese deities I will not refer to them again. There are two exceptions: the first is a deity identified as either the popular and frequently noted deity, the Thunder God, Lei Gong, or Lei Zu, the President of the Ministry of Thunder. He has been noted on two Singaporean Hainanese temple altars where he was only known as the Chief Leader of All the Heavens, Wantian Zhushi, His title was displayed on the temple list in two other Hainanese temples, one in Pontian in southern Malaysia, and the other near Kranji in northern Singapore. His image depicted him with his usual attributes a bird's beak, an axe or hammer held aloft and a chisel in his left hand. In one of the two temples, in Paya Lebar Crescent, he was riding either a tiger or a Qilin a mythical beast, and according to the temple custodian he is the only deity permitted to do so. He was identified by temple keepers as Lei Gong and his image co-located with that of Doutian Fushuai, said to be Lei Zu. However, in the other temple, at Rumba Bomba Circus, he was also portrayed astride what looks like an unusual tiger and here he was identified as Lei Zu. The second is Ma Zu Qiong, the Respected Mother of the Hainanese3. Although Tian Hou, the patron goddess of seafarers along the entire coast of China, is revered throughout Hainanese communities, she is also known in a number of Hainanese temples by this unique title. The usual title by which Tian Hou is known in most Hainanese temples is Nantian Shengniang Tian Hou, The Saintly Lady of the Southern Heavens, 南天聖娘天后. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 58 claiming that the Society used to worship ‘openly' in Hainanese temples before convening a meeting. One hundred and eight is also a Buddhist number, the number of the beads in a rosary, the number of passions and delusions, and the number of tolls of the monastery bell at dawn and dusk. A further connotation of the number 108 is reflected in the number of times temple keepers claimed that the Brothers were the 108 heroes at Liang Shan Po in the classic novel, Shuihu Chuan, 'The Water Margin,' but when pressed, in every case they admitted that this had been no more than a guess. The Brothers are also known as: Yibai You Ba Gong 一百有八公 Yibai You Xiongdi 一百有八兄弟 and Yibai Lingba Xiongdi Zhonghun 一百零八兄弟忠魂 Lu Bode and Ma Yuan are two generals revered in Hainanese temples, often on the same altar, with both bearing the same honorific, the Wave Conquering General, [Fupo Jiangjun13]. The first general, Lu Bode, subjugated large areas of what today is Guangdong province during the Earlier Han [ca. 120 BC]. A native of Pingzhou, he served with distinction under He Chubing who became the president of the Board of War. In BC 120 he subjugated large portions of what is today Guangdong and Guangxi, and received further honours. The second general, Ma Yuan [14BC - AD 49], was also awarded the title of the Wave Conqueror for the pacification of the southern region some hundred years later. Popular in Guangdong province he used also to be particularly honoured in Guangxi where he was revered as a river god, "The Wave Conquering General - Fupo Jiangjun' and in Hengzhou in Hunan he used to be the main deity in a small temple where he was worshipped as the protective deity at the local river rapids. Ma Yuan, also known as the Vanguard General, Xianfeng14 led a further southern expansion of the Han empire and has been popularly worshipped from about the fifth century AD by Han settlers ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 77 a] Changhua Laoye Shen It seen in Singapore on a Hainanese wayyang street theatre altar connected in some way with the major China-wide deity Hua Guang Dadi. b] As with small folk religion temples in all southern Chinese communities there are very minor deities on their altars about whom nothing is known. The following stand on a side altar in a small Hainanese temple on the Tampines Road in Singapore and are largely ignored though they are prayed to by a few devotees, more in passing rather than specifically for protection: main deity: The Marquis of the Heaven of the Buddhas, Fo Tian Houwang Soldier astride a red horse, wearing green and gilt armour, with a pink face, black beard and a sword raised in his right hand. flanked by: Shata Zunwang Qi Guan and Soldier astride a white horse, with green-gilt robes, black beard, brown face and sword raised in his right hand. Yongmeng Yatou Wang San Guan Soldier astride a black horse, with green-gilt robes over his armour, black bearded and a sword raised in his right hand. Conclusion There are some seventy to eighty major Han Chinese folk religion deities to be found in every part of China, and Hainan is no exception. However, in Hainan as in every local community, be it province, county, town or village, and even ethnic group, there are also local deified heroes and worthies not seen beyond their immediate area. Taken all in all, the range of deities on Hainanese altars is much the same as in all the other southern Chinese Han ethnic group temples. Hainanese communities, however, do have a number of uniquely Hainanese cult deities both on Hainan island as well as within Hainanese communities in south-east Asia. Although their legends are unique to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 232 the former found in CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 5). There is no written record of Ho's sermons, but one could search certain passages of his commentaries to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark for suggestions. 62. Both the cults of Guanyin and Guandi (or Guangōng) have been very popular in different periods of Chinese history, the former originally a Buddhist bodhisatva and the latter originally a military general made famous in the early Weijin period novel, Three Kingdoms, and later honoured as a warrior spirit. Devotion toward them both is still a regular feature of traditional Chinese practices. For initial information, see articles and cross references on Guanyin [Kuan-yin] and Guandi [Kuan-ti] in Jonathan Z. Smith, ed., The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (San Francisco: HarperCollins Pub., 1995), p. 647, and a fuller article involving the origins and reverence shown to Guanyin in Raoul Birnbaum, "Avaloketsvara," Mircea Eliade, ed. The Encyclopaedia of Religion (Chicago: MacMillan Pub. Co., 1987), Vol. 2, pp. 11-14. See broader discussions about the influence of the cult of Guanyin in the past and present in John E. C. Blofeld, Bodhisatva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin (Boston: Shambhal, 1988), Wen Guangxi, Guānshìyīn pusà běnjī yinyuán (The Causes of the Various Expedient Manifestations of the Bodhisattva Guānyin) (Hong Kong: Library of the Tripitaka Temple, 1986), Tay C. Y. (M. Zhèng Sēngyǐ), Guānyīn: Bàngè yǎzhōu de xìnyǎng (Guanyin: A Faith [Expressed throughout] Half of Asia) (Taipei: Hui Chu Pub., 1993). Recent studies on Guandi include Hong Shuling, Guangōng mínjiān zàoxíng zhī yánjiù: yǐ Guāngōng chuánshuō wèi zhōngxīn de kǎochá (Studies of the Models Of Guāngōng Found among the People: Investigations taking the Traditional Stories about Guāngōng as the Central Focus) (Taipei: Taiwan National University Pub. Co., 1995). 63. "Sabbath culture" is a technical term I developed in Striving for "The Whole Duty of Man" in order to describe the Chinese Christian form of life which had been adopted and transformed from Scottish Dissenter precedents. It involved resting from all normal work on the Christian Sabbath, devoting oneself to church worship in Christian community for part of the day, and doing works of charity and witness at other times, whether with family, church friends, or by oneself. 64. In his "Reminiscences" Legge tells how Ch'ea at first found the German missionaries being treated meanly by a group of local people, and so he rushed up to the crowd, yelling at them not to disturb them but to listen, because "they are servants of the Most High God". See Reminiscences, p. 15. 65. See EMMC/MM 24 (February 1860), pp. 39-40. 66. Days before Ch'ea's murder the two men were together again in a boat, and Legge noted how Ch'ea made it his personal goal to speak to each of the crew members about spiritual matters. His evangelistic approach was thorough and consistent, positively impressing Legge especially during the time when his own reappearance in Poklo was taken as a self-conscious risk (as will be described below). The very same zeal, however, was evaluated in very different terms by Ch'ea's enemies, See Legge, Ch'ea Kin Kwáng, typed manuscript, p. 6. 67. When in the presence of the mandarin Wang, Legge and Chalmers spoke Cantonese, and this was assumably translated into either Mandarin or guanhua by Ch'ea (a more literary form of the Mandarin used among the Chinese gentry) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 258 Shanghai did not possess, and were undoubtedly conducive to health by promoting exercise. In winter the climate is bracing and healthy though fever and dysentery were to be dreaded in summer'. There are a number of highlights for foreign visitors beginning, perhaps, with the former foreign concession, though nowadays more than seventy years on, it is difficult to discern. Outside the Chinese old city with its modern main roads, cobbled side streets and a stone pagoda said to be 13th century Yuan dynasty, though its present condition suggests that it has either been well restored or completely remade within the last century, there are the fourth century Jin Shan temple and pagoda; the Grand Canal; the former British Consulate; the home of Pearl Buck, as well as the sites of the storming of the town by a British brigade on 21st July 1842 during the First China War [commonly referred to as the Opium War]. There are also the remains of the lengthy trench dug by the Taiping rebels to protect the city from recapture by Imperial forces as well as the ruins left after the destruction of the city by the Taipings during the 1850s. And for those who have read a little Chinese literature or attended Chinese opera the widely-known tale of the White Snake Lady is also part of the story of the Jin Shan temple. Before waxing too lyrically about its glories let us remember that Zhenjiang is the vinegar capital of China, with, if the wind is in the wrong direction, an evocative sour tang forewarning approaching visitors long before they are anywhere near to the city. The majority of Chinese when confronted with the name of the city almost to a man voice the single word 'vinegar' or to the connoisseur 'brown rice vinegar'. Zhenjiang was a treaty port with a foreign concession for sixty-eight years, from the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1860 until 1928, one of the minor footholds foreigners had obtained from China in one of the 'unequal treaties' and the base for numerous foreign interests. There were great hopes for the place and Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, even anticipated that eventually it would eclipse Shanghai as a commercial centre. Despite numerous westerners passing through the place down the years only a few spent full tours of duty there. Many of the temporary visitors were the lesser employees of major western companies such as BAT and Butterfield and Swire, whose regular tours to the many small ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 262 War 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. In 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. Our 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 + be referred to hereafter simply as Zhang and Xu. The 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 264 About two miles west of Zhenjiang railway station, on rising land, there was a temple called Xiu Wang Miao, the Temple of the Xiu Kings, dedicated to the memory of the Xiu dynasty of Nantang. Lu Xiufu [AD 1238 - 1279] was a native of Zhenjiang, and a statesman and military commander during the latter years of the Southern Song. He had been appointed to the Court of Imperial Family Affairs, a form of Minister of Protocol, during the reign of Song Gong Zong [ca 1276]. He is remembered as a man of integrity and a devoted Minister who, when the Mongols were on the point of capturing Hangzhou, was sent in an attempt to reach an accommodation with them. This ended in failure. The Court was persuaded by Wen Tianxiang [one of the Three Loyal Generals of the Song] that the imperial heirs should be sent to the coast of south China, to Fuzhou and later to Quanzhou to ensure their safety. The emperor and his mother were captured by the Mongols and taken to Beijing, whilst Lu followed the Court in its retreat to the south. Lu met up with Zhang Shijie [the third of the Three Loyal Generals of the Song] in Wenzhou to rally support for the imperial cause, but had to flee on south to Fuzhou where they joined the forces of Wen Tianxiang. The senior heir was enthroned in Fuzhou as the Song Jing Yan emperor. At this point, following a reorganisation, Zhang and Lu became deputies to Chen Yizhong, the Commissioner of Military Affairs and Grand Counsellor. The new emperor was forced to flee further and further south pursued by the Mongol forces until he reached the area of present day Kowloon where Lu Xiufu rejoined the force from Chaozhou. The Mongol fleet having captured Guangzhou destroyed the forces of Zhang Shijie thus driving the Song Court out to sea. A typhoon struck the fleeing Song fleet and even though the ship carrying the young emperor was sunk he was rescued but died from shock and exposure near the Leizhou peninsula in mid-1278. Lu and Zhang stood firmly against any talk of surrender and ensured that the younger heir, a boy of six, was made emperor. Zhang became the Junior Guardian whilst Lu was Grand Counsellor. The next year the Mongol forces having been reinforced compelled the last of the Song forces to attempt to escape. Lu is said to have committed suicide but the official records do not reveal how the last of the Song, the boy of seven, died. The popular version claims that Lu, the hero from Zhenjiang, leapt into the sea with the boy in his arms. An imperial hostelry, the Danyang Guan, was founded in Zhenjiang Page 330 Page 331 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 274 There also used to be an early Buddhist shrine dedicated to the former abbot of renown, Fa Hai, concealed in a cave on the hillock. In recent times the few foreign tourists visiting Zhenjiang have been perplexed by the description of Jin Shan being an island when it is so obviously part of the mainland. The reason is all too obvious. Alluvial silt left by the Yangzi floods down the past hundred and fifty years has not only completely joined the island to the mainland but also reclaimed part of the River, land now used for agriculture. 19th century western accounts of the town usually tended to begin with a description of the view from the Yangzi of the pagoda of the temple on the island of Jin Shan or, during the storming of the town by British forces in 1842, of troops being disembarked on the mainland across the strip of water at that time still separating Jin Shan from the mainland. According to Doré's description of the Jin Shan temple following his visit during the early days of the twentieth century, "the visitor was confronted on entering with the Falstaffian figure of the Buddha Maitreya [Mile Fo], the Buddha of the Future, squatting in his turret as guardian of the precincts. Behind him opens out a vast vestibule at the sides of which are four gigantic statues - about fifteen feet in height - of the Four Heavenly Kings, Si Da Jingang, inner guardians of the monks and the monastery. Crossing the inner court, one entered the great Hall. On the altar were two Buddhist triads. Facing North are gigantic statues of Sakyamuni, Yao Shi Fo and Mile Fo, the Buddhas of the Present, Past and Future. Beside Sakyamuni in the centre, stand his two disciples, the old Kasyapa and the young Ananda. Right and left of the altar are the two guardians Li, the Pagoda-bearer and Wei Tuo. Facing South is the Triad San Da Shi: Guan Yin, Wen Shu and Pu Xian. Guan Yin rides over the waves on a sea monster; near by are the rocks of her sacred isle, Pu Tuo and, in between these, sundry immortals and Buddhas were housed. The Golden Boy, Shan Cai and the Naga Maiden, Long Nu are conventionally in attendance on Guan Yin whom the authorities in the temple recognise as formerly having been a god - not a goddess". The second large Hall was the Hall of the Yangzi Spirit, Jiang Shen [Spirit of the River]. Serving as a military barracks at the time of Doré's visit “it retained of its former glories only one ordinary-sized statue of the god, in a lateral niche, viz. a fish about three metres in length carved in wood with a copper plaque providing the honorific ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 431 THE WRESTLING PRINCES KEITH STEVENS Down the years I have visited many, many Chinese temples in my search for images of the deities and their legends. One near the coastal town of Muar in western Malaysia contained a pair of deities well known to me standing on the altar table before and below the main altar. The image consisted of a pair of conjoined deities - the Taibao Sheren, a Fujian local popular religion Daoist cult, involving a pair of youths, princes, so the story goes, who in image form are depicted standing together, legs apart, holding on to each other either with one arm around the other's shoulders or clutching a part of the other's anatomy, such as the knee, as if wrestling. In this instance the Taibao possibly means The Great Guardian, an old dynastic title for one of the most senior of the Chinese imperial advisers rather than the Great Protector which is the literal meaning. Sheren was a quasi-official title for "independent kinsmen” in other words "hangers on.” Individually the two youths bear the names of Kang and Ruan though they were identified in two temples in southern Malaysia simply, one the Sheren as the Civil Protector, Wenbao and the other, the Taibao as the Military Protector, Wubao. They are worshipped for general good fortune and have only been identified in small Chinese temples within Fujian communities in Singapore, Malaysia, southern Thailand and in two or three temples in Taipei and Kaohsiung counties in Taiwan. In this rural temple near Muar Kesang the main deity on the altar is a seated matron known as Liu Jia Zhenren. For Yuan Jian Zhenren, not seen anywhere else and said to be the mother of the two youths. Before and below her image are two sets of the youths, portraying them as wrestlers with leather shin-guards and wrist strengtheners, with one of the pair grasping the other firmly by the leg. The two are believed by some to have been Indian princes brought to Fujian more than a thousand years ago and little more, apart from their surnames, would appear to be known at any of the temples in which these images have been seen. However, in one temple in Taiwan they were said to be the sons of a wealthy man. One son had shown great aptitude and had been sent to study in the capital, and was white J ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 432 skinned, whilst the other had been put to work supervising the father's labourers in the fields and whose skin had been burned black. The elder was said to be depicted at thirteen years of age whilst the second was two years younger. Ruan, the younger prince, is portrayed with a fierce expression whilst the elder has a gentler look despite not having any eyebrows. Both tend to be depicted with white [pink] or black skin, and are barefoot. Both are dressed simply, in trousers and a small apron. They wear golden bracelets on their forearms and their head-dress consists of a gilded crown from which protrude long peacock's feathers. A tiny matshed seaside shrine at Port Dickson, also on the west coast of Malaysia, contains a small composite image of the youths, most certainly wrestling, one grasping the other by his queue and an arm. In a temple in Singapore the keeper was adamant that the two youths only spoke Hindi and that many of the devotees in his temple praying before them were Singaporean Indians who regularly consulted the Hokkien [Fujian] spirit medium in the temple. In every day life the medium only spoke Hokkien and therefore had to work through a spirit interpreter. The Indian devotees, he added, could only understand their mother tongue, Tamil, one of the Dravidian languages of southern India and who seemed to be able to converse with the deities through the medium without any trouble 'as the medium in his trance spoke Tamil'. In one temple in Fujian recently a local Chinese explained that they were homosexuals presumably a guess inspired by their pose. However, you can imagine our reaction when in a village temple in Kaohsiung county in southern Taiwan we saw what appeared to be the standard image of the pair, swathed as usual in silken robes donated by devotees, being “undressed" by the leering temple custodian to reveal that the dark skinned youth was holding the white skinned by the forearm and his queue whilst the white skinned youth had one arm around the shoulder of the black skinned one, but was holding the black skinned youth's penis with the other hand. The custodian fell about when he saw how disconcerted we were. The village elders left their card playing on the temple veranda to join in the general laughter which encouraged village children to rush in to see what was happening. They were chased out but not before several had managed to see the image and were unable to get out fast enough to tell the others what they had seen. The custodian explained that someone had ordered the image to be carved this way some years ago, possibly as a joke, and very few devotees ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 15 HOW OLD IS SHANGHAI'S LONGHUA TEMPLE? ERIC N. DANIELSON · Shanghai's Longhua Temple (Longhua Si) is a functioning Buddhist temple with a large resident monk population belonging to the Chan sect (Chan zong) of Mahayana Buddhism. It is by far the largest one in Shanghai, and probably counts among the largest in China. Located southwest of the Xujiahui shopping district, the main temple complex sits on the north side of Longhua Lu, while its seven-story pagoda stands by itself across the street on the south side. Although it has often been said by many authors that this is supposedly the only pagoda in Shanghai, that is true only if one has a very narrow definition of what Shanghai is. Within the Shanghai Municipality (Shanghai Shi) there are a total of 16 historic pagodas, the other 15 being of equal age and historical authenticity but located out in the surrounding counties of Songjiang, Qingpu, and Jiading. The temple's long history Longhua Si undoubtedly has a long history, but the question is how long? The answer is debatable. In all likelihood, it is about 900 years old, rather than the 1800 years sometimes claimed for it. Very little evidence exists to support the often heard claims that the temple and pagoda were supposedly first built in 242 A.D. and 247 A.D. by Sun Quan, the King of Wu, during the Three Kingdoms (San Guo). Furthermore, maps of Shanghai's geological history contained in Zhou Zhen He's 1999 Shanghai Lishi Ditu Ji show that most of this area was underwater until the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Some sources also make vague claims that the temple was built by the Tang Dynasty Empress Wu Ze Tian sometime during her reign (690-705 A.D.), but later destroyed at some unspecified date during the rebellion of Huang Zhao (879-884 A.D.) against the Tang Xi Zong Emperor (873-888). The first specific year to appear in most accounts is a supposed rebuilding of a new temple on the same site as the earlier San Guo and Tang temples by the Wu Yue regional kingdom in 977 A.D. If these earlier versions of Longhua Temple did in fact exist, they were ephemeral and have left no lasting traces. Substantial documented evidence of the temple's origins begins to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 16 appear during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126). In the year 1066 the Northern Song Emperor Ying Zong (1063-1067) built a new Big Buddha Hall (Da Fo Dian) and the New Precious Pagoda (Xin Bao Ta) on this same site. Although at that time it was named Kong Xiang Si, it is from this date that Longhua Temple's history can accurately be traced through a continuous progression of events up to the present day. In fact, it is even possible that the 11th Century Xin Bao Ta is the same pagoda which still stands today, albeit after having been repeatedly repaired and restored countless times. During the Li Zong reign (1224-1264) of emperor Zhao Gui Cheng at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), four boundary stones were erected in 1262, one in each of the four corners of the temple's property. Two of these supposedly still exist today, and one of them can actually be seen in the Mu Ta Yuan, lying on the ground beside the Tao Ming Chan Si Mu Ta. In the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) the temple was given several land grants which added considerably to its territory. However, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty the temple buildings were completely destroyed during a battle, except for the Bao Ta pagoda, which is recorded as somehow miraculously surviving the conflagration, as it supposedly would in many similar situations throughout the temple's history. The third Ming Emperor Yong Le (1403-1424) completely rebuilt the temple from the ground up between 1410-1416, and also changed its name from the Northern Song Dynasty name of Kong Xiang Si to the present day name of Longhua Si. Later, the Shan Men front gate was built between 1506 and 1521. The structures built by Yong Le importunely had a short life span of only 140 years as the whole temple was destroyed during an invasion by Japanese Wako pirates in 1553. Nonetheless, after the destruction of the Wako pirates, the Ming Dynasty began a reconstruction project which lasted for about ten years, from 1563 to 1574. However, during the late Ming Dynasty the temple suffered from neglect and only one new hall, the Scripture Storage Pavilion (Cang Jing Ge), was built in 1611. A Cang Jing Ge is used by a temple to store the Tripitaka (San Zang) scriptures. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 17 In the early Qing Dynasty Longhua Temple received considerable attention in the form of repairs to the existing buildings and construction of new ones. A major construction project started in 1647 resulted in the completion of the Abbot or Temple Master's Room (Fang Zhang Shi) and the Wei Tuo Hall (Wei Tuo Dian), as well as the repair of the Scripture Storage Pavilion (Cang Jing Ge). It will be recalled that during the Yuan Dynasty the temple experienced a massive expansion in the size of its territory, if not its actual structures. In 1672 the Qing authorities measured the size of the immediate area around the temple halls as occupying 93 mu of land, plus an additional 74 mu of open land in the surrounding area which was used to plant vegetables. It was this later open space which gradually evolved into first Longhua Park, and then the present day Martyr's Cemetery. During a 155 year period in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, from 1672 to 1827, no new construction, reconstruction or repairs were recorded. This begs the question as to why the temple was dormant during such a long period of time. Was it lack of imperial sympathy for Buddhism in general, or simply the absence of wars and destruction requiring later rehabilitation during this relatively peaceful time? After a century and a half of dormancy, the Taiping Rebellion finally provided the opportunity or the need for new construction and repairs. Between 1860 and 1862 the Taiping rebels attacked Shanghai three times, during which records say vaguely that most of the Longhua Temple buildings were destroyed. On August 18, 1860 the Taipings captured Xu Jia Hui, and it was probably then when the nearby Longhua Temple was destroyed. Although no list is provided of exactly which buildings were destroyed, we can infer from later lists of the structures rebuilt afterwards that this included the Great Sadness Hall (Da Bei Dian), the Precious Hall of the Great Hero (Da Xiong Bao Dian), the Heavenly Kings Hall (Tian Wang Dian), the Three Gods Hall (San Sheng Dian), the Maitreya Buddha Hall (Mi Le Fo Dian), the Drum Tower (Gu Lou), the Bell Tower (Zhong Lou), and the Big Buddha Hall (Da Fo Dian). Basically every previously existing key structure is mentioned as having been rebuilt after this period of destruction, with the exception of the die-hard Precious Pagoda (Bao Ta) and the Master's Room (Fang Zhang Shi), raising the possibility that the two structures which stand today are both authentic originals. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 23 The second courtyard is flanked on the left side by a two-story wooden Drum Tower (Gu Lou) and on the right by the matching two-story wooden Bell Tower (Zhong Lou). On the first floor of the Zhong Lou is a glass case holding a golden effigy of Kshitigarbha (Di Zang). Dizang is the bodhisattva who has the special power to rescue departed souls from Hell, and thus plays an important role in Buddhist funeral ceremonies. Upstairs on the second floor is the bronze bell which can be rung for a fee of 50 Rmb. On New Year's Eve this bell is rung 108 times at midnight. It is considered good luck to be there to hear it ring, and even better luck to be the one who rings it. The Zhong Lou was rebuilt by Qing Emperor Guang Xu in 1895, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862. The bell itself was made in 1894, during the 18th year of the Guang Xu reign of the Qing Dynasty. Beside the Zhong Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a partially legible inscription which has been damaged. On the first floor of the Gu Lou is a glass case containing a golden effigy of Guan Yu, the God of War. In the Ming and Qing dynasties Guan Yu had temples dedicated exclusively to him in every city in China. The former Guan Di Miao can still be visited in Shanghai's Nanshi District. The second floor of the Gu Lou cannot be ascended, and it no longer seems to contain a drum. Beside the Gu Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a lengthy inscription in very good condition. The present Gu Lou dates from an 1895 reconstruction, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862. Across the second courtyard from the Mi Le Dian is the Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang Dian). This hall dates from an 1881 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1981. The hall contains enormous gilded wooden statues of all four kings, two on each side of the hall. All four wear crowns on their heads and are dressed in heavy armor. One holds a four-string guitar and has a light green face, another holds a sword in his right hand and has a black face, a third holds an umbrella in his right hand and a small stupa in his left hand, and has a white face, while a fourth holds a snake and has a black face. This depiction is somewhat different than in the past. In the centre of the Tian Wang Dian are two glass cases containing golden effigies of two rather obscure Buddhist deities. Tian Guan Mi Le, a variant incarnation of Mi Le Fo, is depicted. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 24 as seated, holding a long-stemmed lotus flower with a small temple perched on the blossom, and has a third eye in the centre of his forehead. Wei Tuo Pusa is represented by a golden statue in which he poses wearing armor and holding a drawn sword. Wei Tuo is the protector of all Buddhist temples. On the other side of the Tian Wang Dian is the third courtyard, on the far side of which is the Hall of the Great Hero (Da Xiong Bao Dian). This hall's origins date to an 1878-1879 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebels' attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was closed for a massive reconstruction and renovation in November 2002, but had been reopened by January 2004. The interior is now nothing less than spectacular. Three large Buddhas (San Fo) are placed in the centre. Sakyamuni Buddha stands in the centre, flanked on the left by the bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Pu Xian) seated on an elephant, and on the right by the bodhisattva Manjusri (Wen Shu) seated on a blue lion. Overhead the hall's ceiling is pierced by a massive wooden dome that spirals upward, looking much like the wooden domes (Zao Jing) often found over traditional Peking Opera stages (Xiju Wutai). Behind the San Fo facing out the rear exit is a large Guanyin statue in front of a floor-to-ceiling landscaped rockery covered with smaller figurines depicting the Buddhist heaven and hell. Along the side walls stand 36 quite expressive human statues of the Buddhist saints, 18 on each side of the hall. This is an unusual number, which seems to include 16 Arhats (Luohan) and 20 Devas (Zhu Tian), and an assortment that includes such non-Buddhist figures from Chinese tradition as Confucius (Kong Fu Zi), the War God (Guan Di), the God of Literature (Wen Chang), and the Kitchen God; Hindu gods such as Brahma, Indra, and Yama (Yen Lo); as well as Buddhist deities such as the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang) and the bodhisattva Wei Tuo as well. The hall also houses one of Longhua's three bronze bells, this one dating from 1586. On the other side of the Da Xiong Bao Dian is a fourth courtyard. On the far side of this fourth courtyard is the Hall of the Three Gods (San Sheng Dian). This hall is dominated by enormous floor-to-ceiling golden statues of three Buddhas (San Fo) who appear side by side in an unusual standing position with golden flames rising up behind them. In the centre is Amitabha Buddha (O Mi Tuo Fo), to your left is the bodhisattva Da Shi Zhi, and on your right is the bodhisattva Guan Shi Yin. Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 26 which is open to the public, the Mu Ta Yuan, so named for the Tao Ming Chan Si Mu Ta, a broken stone tomb pagoda dating from the year 1667 in the reign of Emperor Kang Xi which stands in the centre. The Mu Ta is a hexagonal stone pillar on a lotus flower with a round stone ball balanced on top decorated with dragon images wrapped around it. Two faint inscriptions can be seen on either side of the pillar. Lying on the ground beside the Mu Ta is a broken piece of an ancient inscribed tablet. This is one of the original four boundary stones of Longhua's predecessor Kongxiang Temple dating from the year 1262 in the late Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Near the Mu Ta are three stone statues of a mythical animal, the Si Ge Lin Shou. These broken stone remains may be the oldest relics on the site, but their age, origin, and significance seem a mystery. In one corner of this courtyard is a corridor connecting with the Longhua Hotel next door. At the rear of the courtyard is the monk's Dining Hall (Zhai Tang), not to be confused with the separate Vegetarian Restaurant (Su Cai Guan) intended for public visitors located on the right side of the Da Xiong Bao Dian beneath the sign of the large wooden fish (pang) hanging from the rafters. Two long barracks-like halls run along almost the full length of the western side of the temple compound and are divided up into many small Buddhist chapels. The major ones include the Arhat Hall (Luo Han Dian), and the Goddess of Mercy Hall (Guan Yin Dian). The Luo Han Dian is a new addition to the temple, added sometime during 2002. It features small golden statues of 500 arhats or Buddhist saints. This chapel has become quite popular with worshippers, but one woman who had just finished praying mistakenly told the author there were 800 arhats, testimony to the newness of this innovation. The Guanyin Dian is on the left side of the fourth courtyard and features an impressive golden statue of Guanyin, who is depicted as facing in all four directions, and has 1,000 arms. Many of her hundreds of hands hold objects of special significance. In between the Luo Han Dian and Guanyin Dian is yet another hall, seemingly nameless, which although devoid of architectural splendor does have three splendid gilded Buddha statues. These three include Sakyamuni Buddha (Shi Jia Mou Ni Pusa) in the centre, Manjusri (Wen Shu) on your left, and Guanyin on your right. The interior walls of this hall are literally covered with memorial slips of paper and photographs meant to commemorate lost loved ones. It is ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 28 REFERENCES Burn, D.C., A Guide to Lunghwa Temple: with Brief Notes on Chinese Buddhism, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, Ltd., 1926. Longhua Zhen Zhi (The History of Longhua Town), Shanghai: December 1996. Pan Ming Quan, Shanghai Fo Si Dao Guan (Shanghai Buddhist and Taoist Temples), Shanghai: Shanghai Ci Shu Chubanshe, December 2003. Pan Ming Quan, Shanghai Si Miao Ying Lian Dui Lian Ji (Poems About Shanghai Buddhist and Taoist Temples), Shanghai: Shanghai Ci Shu Chubanshe, December 2003. Shanghai Tan magazine, Shanghai: October 2002, pp.38-42 on the history of Longhua Temple. Zhang Qing Hua and Zhu Bai Kui, Longhua, Guanglin Shu She, Yangzhou: December 2003. Fojiao Da Cidian (Dictionary of Buddhism), December 2002. ================================================================================