Rites of Belonging: Memory, Modernity, and Identity in a Malaysian Chinese Community 9780804766883

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Rites of Belonging Memory, Modernity, and Identity in a Malaysian Chinese Community

JEAN DEBERNARDI

Rites of Belonging Memory, Modernity, and Identity in a Malaysian Chinese Community

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

2004

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford junior University Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data DeBernardi, jean Rites of belonging: memory, modernity, and identity in a Malaysian Chinese community I jean DeBernardi. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8047-4486-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Chinese-Malaysia-Pinang-Ethnic identity. 2. ChineseMalaysia-Pinang-Rites and ceremonies. 3. ChineseMalaysia-Pinang-Societies, etc. 4· Pinang-History. 5. Pinang-Religious life and customs. 6. Pinang-Sociallife and customs. I. Title. DS595.2.C5 D43 2004 305.895'105951-dc21 2003024498 Printed in the United States of America Original Printing 2004 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 13 12 11 10 09 o8 07 o6 05 04 Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/12.5 Minion

Photograph on page iii: The Kong Hok Palace, George Town, decorated to celebrate the coronation of a British king, possibly that of George V in 1911. (Photo: Kong Hock Keong archive)

Acknowledgments

I have many to thank for support and assistance in the writing of Rites of Belonging. A grant from the East Asian Studies Program at the University of Chicago supported a pilot study for a project on Penang Chinese folk religion in 1978; thereafter, from 1979 to 1981, a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Fellowship and a Training Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health funded two years of ethnographic research in Penang, Malaysia, on the topic "Ritual and Change in a Malaysian Chinese Community:' I began archival research on the history of Chinese religion in Penang in 1991 as a Luce Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Cornell University, and I continued that research in archives in London and Singapore with research grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Southeast Asian Council of the Association for Asian Studies. I have taken the opportunity afforded by subsequent research trips to deepen my understanding of archival and ethnographic issues explored in this monograph and gratefully acknowledge research support received from the Canada Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Center; the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, the Faculty of Arts, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. The Social Science Faculty at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang (1979-81), the Department of History at the National University of Singapore (1991, 1993), the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore (1995, 1997, 1999 ), and the Centre for Advanced Studies at the National University of Singapore (1999) extended the favor of institutional support during periods of research in Malaysia and Singapore. For their practical and collegial support I would like to offer particular thanks to Dean Kamal Salleh and Wazir Jahan Karim of Universiti

vi I Acknowledgments Sains Malaysia; Paul Kratoska and Edwin Lee in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore; and Raymond Lee of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Malaya. For allowing me access to their library and archival collections I also would like to thank the library staffs at the Wason Collection, Cornell University; the Public Records Office, Kew Gardens; Rhodes House, Oxford University; the School of Oriental and African Studies; the British Foreign Office; the National University of Singapore; the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; the Singapore National Archives; the University of Malaya; the Resource and Research Centre of the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall; the Singapore Freemason's Hall; and the Stephen A. Kent Collection on Alternative Religions at the University of Alberta. I published an earlier version of Chapter 4 in Linguistic Form and Social Action, a special issue of Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, and benefited from editor Jennifer Dickinson's insightful comments and suggestions (DeBernardi 1998). At the invitation of Professor Leo Suryadinata, in 2001 I presented a paper entitled "Malaysian Chinese Religious Culture: Past and Present" at the conference "Ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia: A Dialogue Between Tradition and Modernity" (DeBernardi 2002). The event afforded the opportunity for dialogue with scholars whose input was invaluable as I made final revisions to this monograph. I am deeply grateful to many people who have assisted me in my research efforts, including Chang Yong Mee, Ch'ng Oon Hooi, Mr. and Mrs. Chuang Keng Hee and family, Robert Goh, Philip and Miki (nee W. A. Goh) Hoalim, Khor Gark Kim, Kua Kia Soong, Lee Say Lee, Lim Peng Eok, Lim Teck Ghee, Low Boo Pheng, Low Boo Jin, Low Jiu Liat, Poh Eng Lip, Poh Teh Teik, Hardev Singh, Tan Gaik Suan, Twang King Hung, Wong Suchen, Khoo Salma Nasution [Khoo Su Nin] of the Penang Heritage Trust, Lim Yam Koi and Chaw Check Sam of the Penang Chinese Town Hall, E. F. Mullan and Yeo Tiam Siew of the Singapore Freemason's Hall, Ong Seng Huat of Penang's Malaysian Daoist Culture Research Center, the staff of Poh Hock Seah, Abbess Wu Chengzhen and Wu Xinxuan of Wuhan's Eternal Spring Monastery, Abbott Li Guangfu ofWudang Mountain's Purple Empyrean Palace in Hubei Province, P.R.C., and the many individuals who were willing to allow me to interrupt their busy lives with questions about their society and culture. Special thanks are due to Mr. Tang Hor Char of Kong Hock Keong (Kong Hok Palace) for sharing with me old photographs of the temple and chingay processions from the 1910s and 1920s and allowing me to duplicate and reprint them. Although all who participated in this study were fully informed of my intentions to publish my research findings in book form, nonetheless I have followed the convention of changing the names of most of those whom I interviewed.

Acknowledgments I vii I owe a special debt to Maire Anderson-McLean, Bernard Faure, D. J. Hatfield, Stephen A. Kent, Yeoh Seng Guan, and the anonymous reviewer who read and critiqued earlier versions of this manuscript. I thank Carol Forster, Maire Anderson-McLean, Jiang Xiaojin, and Wu Xu for research assistance in Canada and Michael Fisher and Darren Shaw for preparing the maps. The editorial and production staff at Stanford University Press merit special appreciation for their patience in shepherding this project from its unwieldy beginnings through completion, and I am grateful to Muriel Bell, John Feneron, and Paul Psoinos for their expert help. Finally, for their encouragement and loyal support I owe much to teachers, colleagues, students, friends, and family, including Sharon Carstens, Paul Friedrich, Frank Reynolds, Cornelia Ann Kammerer, and Leo DeBernardi. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to two ancestors: my grandfather, John Waldo Carter, and historian Joseph Levenson. As a young man my grandfather "jumped the fence" and ran away to sea, eventually becoming a captain and master navigator. Although I never met him, my mother's stories about him instilled in me a deep curiosity about the world that lay beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. I also never met Joseph Levenson, but as an undergraduate discovered his brilliant study Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, which resonated deeply with my own experience of the tension between religion and modernity. Had I not read it, I might have lived a very different life.

Contents

Preface A Note on Romanization

Introduction

Xlll XV

1

Part One: Religion and Society in Colonial Penang 1 The Localization of Chinese Society in Colonial Penang 2

''A Very Irreligious but Most Superstitious People": Trust, Tolerance, and Control in the Straits Settlements, 1786-1857

15 38

3 Belonging and Boundaries: European Freemasons and Chinese Sworn Brotherhoods

54

4 Rites of Belonging: Initiation into the Chinese Sworn Brotherhoods

79

Part Two: Religion and the Politics of Ethnic Revival in Contemporary Penang 5 Rights of Belonging: Citizenship and Ethnic Nationalism

m

6 Time, Space, and Social Memory

130

7 The Politics of a Religious Revitalization: The Hungry Ghosts Festival

156

8 Performing Magical Power: The Nine Emperor Gods Festival

182

Conclusion

217

x I Contents

Appendix: Chinese Festivals Celebrated in Penang, Malaysia Notes Bibliography Glossary of Chinese Terms Index

229 237 271 297 305

Maps and Illustrations

Maps Penang Island, circa 2000 Southeast Asia and southern China The Straits Settlements in the nineteenth century George Town, 1807-8 Penang Island site locations, circa 2003

14 16

18 43 132

Illustrations The Kong Hok Palace decorated to celebrate the coronation of a British king, possibly that of George V in 1911 Stone inscription at Kek Lok Si The Kong Hok Palace and the Chinese Town Hall before 1928 Decorated chingay float honoring Guanyin, 1928 Picture postcard of the Pagoda of Ten Thousand Buddhas at Kek Lok Si, 1930s Kek Lok Si in 2001 St. George's Anglican Church Stone lion and George Town resident at the Kong Hok Palace The Kong Hok Palace at Chinese New Year Altar to the Lord of Heaven, Ayer Itam Tua Pek Kong procession, Ayer Itam Graves of Tua Pek Kong and his sworn brothers, Sea Pearl Island Temple The entry to the Tua Pek Kong Temple on Armenian Street

m 13 29 31 34 34 44 109 138 144 150 151 153

xii I Maps and Illustrations

Roadside offerings to the wandering ghosts The King of Hell and his four assistants Emblem of the Universal Ferry (Central Primordial) Committee Hungry Ghosts Festival banquet in Ayer Itam market New Penang Chinese Town Hall Contemporary chingay procession at Pesta Pulau Pinang Possessed spirit medium in procession, Nine Emperor Gods Festival Possessed spirit medium cuts his tongue for blood for charms, Nine Emperor Gods Festival Image of Nazha, the Baby God, at a Nine Emperor Gods temple Spirit medium performing fire ceremony Spirit medium leads worshipers through the Southern God Peace Pass Sending off the boat at the conclusion of the Nine Emperor Gods Festival The Three Religions Bushel Lamp

161 163 167 170 174 177 184 194 197 199 201

202 205

Preface

When I began ethnographic research on Penang Chinese popular religion in 1979, I had little idea how challenging the project would be. I knew that the Chinese in Penang celebrated the festival events of the traditional lunar calendar on an unparalleled scale and chose urban George Town as my research site. In my first months in Malaysia I realized, however, that I would never be able to write a social and cultural analysis of the Penang Chinese in the style of Bronislaw Malinowski's memorable monographs on the Trobriand Islands or E. E. EvansPritchard's classic studies of the Nuer. Indeed, Penang was extraordinarily complex. I had few guidelines or models for doing ethnographic research in a heterogeneous urban community or for writing about the politics of culture in a modern nation-state. In the two years that followed, I drove to every part of Penang Island-from downtown urban neighborhoods to spirit-medium temples in remote plantations-to study the periodic events of the festival cycle and the regular trance performances of spirit mediums. Some whose help I sought tolerated my presence but declined to interact with me, whereas others debated with me as if I were a critical observer who had attacked their "superstitious" beliefs. More than a few Penangites, however, concluded that I was correct to come to Asia to study spiritual things, since Western society was chaotic and lacking in spirituality. People also noted that I "ate Chinese" (Hokkien: chiah Tiongkok), meaning that I lived with a Chinese family on a back lane where no European had ever lived before and that I spoke Chinese languages. I had studied Mandarin to prepare for my research, but the Chinese in Penang speak not only their languages of education (English, Mandarin, and/or Malay) but also dialects of three different Chinese languages, using Hokkien as their lingua franca. My Mandarin remained standard, but for many months I

xiv I Preface worked daily with a private tutor to learn how to speak the Penang variety of Hokkien, a form of Southern Min creolized with Malay and English. Once I had gained a modest level of proficiency in this local variety of Hokkien, which unmistakably identifies the speaker as a Penangite to Hokkien speakers elsewhere, the rumor flew that I was not European at all but a Eurasian with an unidentifiable accent. Trained as a symbolic anthropologist, I persistently sought narratives and exegetical meanings from a wide range of Penangites-from diviners, spirit mediums, and Daoist priests to temple committee members and politicians. Until I conducted a summer of research in Taiwan and Fujian province (People's Republic of China) in 1987, however, I was not fully aware of how diversely history and politics had shaped Penang society or how greatly the Penang Chinese had transformed their traditional culture. The fifty-year Japanese occupation of Taiwan and the traumatic events that followed the Guomindong occupation after Chiang Kaishek lost the mainland have shaped the political attitudes and aspirations of the Hokkien Chinese of Taiwan, just as Communist rule and, more recently, fast-paced development have dramatically altered life for Hokkien Chinese in Fujian province. Similarly, more than a hundred and fifty years of British rule and the creation of the new nation-state of Malaysia have shaped Penang Chinese social memories, ritual practices, and sociopolitical strategies. Consequently, I decided to conduct archival research to learn more about the organizations and events of popular religious culture in the colonial period. Although they like to describe themselves as a traditional, conservative people, the Penang Chinese are quite modern in the way that they have refashioned themselves and their traditional culture in this cosmopolitan urban community. They did so first as participants in the global ecumene established under British colonial rule, then as citizens of the nationalistic, postcolonial Malaysian state. I write with some nostalgia, however, since new movements have replaced the revitalization of Penang's local religious culture that was so conspicuous a feature of the 1970s and 1980s, and new tides of modernization threaten to replace two-story shophouses, temples, and the mansions of millionaire's row with high-rise towers and shopping malls.

Acknowledgments

I have many to thank for support and assistance in the writing of Rites of Belonging. A grant from the East Asian Studies Program at the University of Chicago supported a pilot study for a project on Penang Chinese folk religion in 1978; thereafter, from 1979 to 1981, a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Fellowship and a Training Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health funded two years of ethnographic research in Penang, Malaysia, on the topic "Ritual and Change in a Malaysian Chinese Community:' I began archival research on the history of Chinese religion in Penang in 1991 as a Luce Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Cornell University, and I continued that research in archives in London and Singapore with research grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Southeast Asian Council of the Association for Asian Studies. I have taken the opportunity afforded by subsequent research trips to deepen my understanding of archival and ethnographic issues explored in this monograph and gratefully acknowledge research support received from the Canada Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Center; the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, the Faculty of Arts, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. The Social Science Faculty at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang (1979-81), the Department of History at the National University of Singapore (1991, 1993), the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore (1995, 1997, 1999 ), and the Centre for Advanced Studies at the National University of Singapore (1999) extended the favor of institutional support during periods of research in Malaysia and Singapore. For their practical and collegial support I would like to offer particular thanks to Dean Kamal Salleh and Wazir Jahan Karim of Universiti

Introduction

W

HEN MAL A Y s 1 A achieved independence in 1957, the multiethnic, plural society that the British had built under imperial rule became a modern nation-state. The Chinese community that developed in colonial Malaya was almost equal in numbers to the indigenous Malays but controlled much of the country's commercial wealth. In response to the fear that the indigenous majority would be overwhelmed by this powerful immigrant minority, the country's leaders resolved to use the political process to protect and promote Malay interests. Consequently, the new nation's constitution based Malaysia's national identity on Malay language and culture, including the practice of Islam, and protected the special rights of Malaysia's "children of the soil" (bumiputeras). Although many Chinese became citizens of the new nation, the stereotype persisted that they were unassimilated outsiders whose deepest loyalties were to China rather than Malaysia. In Malaysia-as in many postcolonial nations-ethnic identity became the master principle on which the new nation's political system was founded. Malaysians formed ethnically based political parties-the United Malays National Organization, the Malayan Chinese Association, the Malayan Indian Congress-to govern the newly independent nation. Then in 1965, the Federation of Malaysia separated from predominantly Chinese Singapore, ensuring that the Malays formed the majority, albeit by a slim margin. But when Chinese bragged of their victory in a 1969 election, roving gangs retaliated by torching Chinese shops in the streets of Malaysia's cities, and an unknown number of Malay and Chinese youths fought to their deaths. After this tragic event, the leaders of this new state further rewrote its social contract to promote the economic and educational interests of the Malay majority to the disadvantage of minority groups. Malaysian Chinese began to fear cultural loss

2

I Introduction

and assimilation. When Vietnamese Chinese fled communist Vietnam in the 1970s, they watched and wondered if someday they and their children would be driven out of their adopted homeland. In the 1970s and 1980s, Malaysian Chinese leaders sought strategies by which to unify their community and rallied to influence the government to adopt more inclusive, multicultural policies. In this period, many Penang Chinese also turned to the organizational strategies and ideologies of popular religious culture as a source of strength and cohesion. Malaysian political scientist and activist Chandra Muzaffar observed with some alarm that religious polarization had become "the new channel, the new conduit for transmitting ethnic fears and insecurity" (Chandra Muzaffar 1984: 124). Noting the visible heightening of non-Malay religious consciousness, A. B. Shamsul observed that "the significance of the religious factor in Malaysian politics has reached a level of intensity never before witnessed" (Shamsul1994: 113). Although we may regard this revitalization of Chinese popular religious culture as a reflex of ethnic politics in the postcolonial period, a form of reactive nationalism, perhaps, the use of religion to construct identity, value, and a sense of belonging in the idiom of the sacred is deeply rooted in the historical experiences of the Penang Chinese. When Chinese emigrated from southeastern China to this colonial port city, they joined a heterogenous, cosmopolitan community whose population included British and Malays, but also Burmese, Javanese, Arabs, Sikhs, Tamils, and Parsees. Chinese freely borrowed from these ethnic others, transforming their own style of life, but many remained loyal to the practices of their religious culture, which blended ancestor worship with cosmological and ethical frameworks derived from Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. In the colonial period, many British found it incomprehensible that Englisheducated Chinese would continue to participate in traditional practices. Colonial officer and Sinologist Victor Purcell, for example, marveled at "the adherence of most Chinese to the religion of their forefathers," noting that even Penang Chinese educated in English universities remained Buddhist (Purcell 1967 [1948]: 128-29). His comments echo those of Superintendent of Police Jonas D. Vaughan, who noted of nineteenth-century Penang that "[t]he Chinese are so attached to the habits of their forefathers, that notwithstanding an intercourse in the Straits for many generations with natives of all countries they have zealously adhered to their ancient manners and customs" (Vaughan 1971 [1879]: 2). Authors like Vaughan and Purcell assumed the antiquity of Chinese popular religious culture, failing to realize that Chinese traditional culture had taken new forms and meanings within the historical contexts of colonialism, globalization, modernization, and nationalism. As in many parts of the British Empire, ethnic consciousness developed in

Introduction I 3 colonial Malaya as the consequence of "encounters between peoples who signif[ied] their differences and inequalities-in power, economic position, political ambitions, and historical imaginings-by cultural means" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997: 388). As I discuss in Part I of this study, Chinese temples and festivals assumed exceptional importance in Penang precisely because they were a means to establish a social presence for the Chinese immigrants, to organize their social life, and to display their economic prowess. Far from being an inert tradition that was unself-consciously transmitted, the Confucian cult of memory also took on new meanings as a form of racial pride. The descendants of these early immigrants continue to defend Chinese language and culture in the modern state, in which they now are a large ethnic minority.

Identity and the Invention of Tradition Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini have argued that scholars who study overseas Chinese communities tend to reify "Chinese identity;' focusing on "intrinsic and timeless features of Chinese culture, which persist even in the midst of non-Chinese society" (Ong and Nonini 1997: 8). They correctly conclude that because Chinese social strategies often take traditional guises, scholars have failed to notice the newness of their social arrangements. Consequently, they propose that we view concepts like "Chinese culture, Chinese family values, guanxi [social relations], 'Confucian capitalism,"' and so on, as "discursive tropes" that "constitute Chinese identities and transnational practices." They conclude that these discourses and their connections to power are themselves in need of study (Ong and Nonini 1997: 9). 1 Many scholars now emphasize the strategies by which leaders use culture, history, and language to construct the experience of a shared heritage. 2 Eric Hobsbawn coined the term "invented tradition" to name this phenomenon, defining it as "a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past" (Hobsbawn 1983: 1). Although the term "invented tradition" may overstate the novelty of the practice, which is not confined to the modern world, nonetheless it captures the seemingly paradoxical fact that people often refashion and may even wholly invent traditions to suit their needs. We may ask, however, how communities or governments decide which elements of tradition or the past are to be transmitted. The ideologies of nationalism, modernism, multiculturalism, and religious fundamentalism suggest different conclusions about how the past should be preserved in the present-or, indeed, if it merits any place there at all.

4 I Introduction

Although the modernist may decry or trivialize the nationalist's invocation of history, for many the past provides materials for the construction of modern identities that draw on tradition for legitimation. For example, Chinese immigrants to port cities like Penang formed secret sworn brotherhoods like the Heaven and Earth Society for their protection, and new members submitted to an elaborate ritual of initiation. (See Chapters 3 and 4.) The men who scripted these deeply traditional rituals took an ancient Asian symbolism of political authority-that of the exemplary royal city imagined as the pivot of the universe-to validate new social and political arrangements. In so doing, they captured some of the magical power of Chinese cosmology and ritual process. In the recent revitalization of religious culture, Chinese community leaders also have turned to the symbols and social organization of religious culture. Whereas some Penang politicians made use of the territorial organization of the Hungry Ghosts Festival to promote Chinese unity in the pursuit of shared community goals-including education, health care, and the rebuilding of the Penang Chinese Town Hall-the organizers of the Nine Emperor Gods Festival mobilized a ritually defined sense of unity, distinguishing insiders from outsiders in a logic of sacrality and purity. Penang Chinese religious culture reproduces traditional structures of thought and practice, but it also enters into social process, including the identity projects of modernity. The Ritualization of Change Although both have roots in traditional forms of social organization, I propose that we consider both the formation of popular religious institutions like the Heaven and Earth Society in colonial Penang and the contemporary revitalization of popular religious culture as social movements designed to create and sustain unity. Most theorists of social movements focus on contemporary political movements that demonstrate people's ability to self-reflexively seek social change. Ideology, rather than culture, is a key tool for understanding these movements, and important elements in that ideology include a definition of the actor herself or himself (the insider), the identification of the group's adversary (the opponent), and an indication of the goals and objectives for which people struggle (the hoped-for outcomes). Often people seek to regenerate the present through a mythic reaffirmation of the past, and Alberto Melucci concludes that "[a] movement joins past and future, the defense of a social group with a demand for transformation" (Melucci 1996: 351). At the same time, however, socialmovement theorists tend to dismiss religious revivalism as an escapist form of resistance that offers participants regressive utopias or reinvented rituals in place of effective mobilization to create a new political order (Melucci 1996: 171-72).

Introduction I 5 Perhaps because of the Western tendency to equate modernity with secularism, few scholars have regarded ritual as a form of modernity. By contrast, the historical and anthropological scholarship on millennia! movements demonstrates that these movements often were the product of the conjuncture between colonial powers and local communities that were divided by linguistic and cultural differences or even mutual hostilities. In his study of Melanesian cargo cults, for example, Peter Worsley concluded that millenarian cults tend to occur among peoples-aboriginal communities or peasants, for examplewho experience oppression at the hands of another class or nationality (Worsley 1968: 227-28). Faced with a common opponent who threatens to absorb or defeat them, their leaders seek strategies to overcome their lack of unity through new forms of social integration. Consequently, the millenarian movement brings people together in a united relationship of antagonism to a shared opponent. Precisely because they are so deeply divided, these groups require an ideology to provide them with a basis for unity, and in millenarian movements this ideology takes religious form. Leaders project common values onto the supernatural, seeking to remove these values from the realm of discussion and debate. Concurrently, they develop common symbols that transcend local divisions to serve as a basis for unity. Chinese sectarian movements, for example, often expressed a wished-for unity in the symbolism of the Dao, the unitary source of all things, sometimes anthropomorphized as the Bushel Mother. In this quest for symbolic sources of unity, the deities protective of local territories and communities became absorbed into spiritual hierarchies, imagined as local administrators or assistants subservient to more powerful, universal gods. 3 At the same time, the ideologies of groups like the nineteenth-century Heaven and Earth Society projected the image of the group's enemies onto this supernatural screen as archetypal demonic opponents. The Heaven and Earth Society's legendary history and ritual of initiation fused political goals with millennia! aspirations, identifying as their opponents and demonizing China's "barbarian" Manchu rulers. Indeed, the group's slogan "Overthrow the Qing [dynasty] and restore the Ming" (Fanqing fuming) simultaneously meant "Overthrow darkness and restore light." Members joined with the group's ancestors and gods to form five divine armies, allied against their imagined enemies. (See ter Haar 1998.) For universal savior gods and demonic opponents to serve as sources of ideological unity, however, their promoters must teach their often allegorical meanings through narratives, visual representations, and the ritual process. Indeed, whereas many authors view ritual as a formalized, inflexible form of social action that transmits tradition and confirms traditional forms of authority,

6 I Introduction

ritual also provides the organizers of new social movements with a vehicle for change and the promulgation of new symbols and values. During the French Revolution, for example, radicals developed a revolutionary cult in which "a new calendar, new images, and new kinds of processions worked to create a new man by laying a new social foundation for his existence" (Hunt 1988: 30). In order to lay this new social foundation, the revolutionaries created a calendar of significant dates, abolishing Catholic feast days, and emphasized horizontal space and egalitarianism in their gatherings. They also sacralized their revolutionary oath, since the oath made the act of creating a social bond visible, and therefore was fundamental to the formation of a new social contract (Hunt 1988: 29; see also Ozouf 1976). Like the French revolutionaries, members of the Heaven and Earth Society also sacralized their social contract with an oath. Instead of creating a new calendar, however, they represented their opposition to China's Qing dynasty by using the calendar of the Ming dynasty that they sought to restore (Stanton 1900: 42). Lynn Hunt's study of the French Revolution suggests that political leaders use ritual process and the sacred to (re)construct communities since these require "a new cognitive basis, new categories of definition" (Hunt 1988: 30). Ritual is an appropriate medium through which to promote these new categories of definition and to ensure that individuals experience them as objective and compelling. As Emile Durkheim pointed out, in the collective effervescence of ritual practice concepts take on an emotional charge, and people experience them as transcendent and binding: [S]ociety cannot make its int1uence felt unless it is in action, and it is not in action unless the individuals who compose it are assembled together and act in common. It is by common action that it takes consciousness of itself and realizes its position; it is before all else an active co-operation. The collective ideas and sentiments are even possible only owing to these exterior movements which symbolize them. (Durkheim 1965 [1915]: 465-66)

Because people learn collective ideas through movement and common action, the religious cult and its ritual practices are essential: "The cult is not simply a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly translated; it is a collection of the means by which this is created and recreated periodically" (Durkheim 1965 [1915]: 464). The collective celebration of invented rituals is designed, then, to ensure that the new cognitive order forming the basis for the group's shared collective representations achieves "an extended and prolonged empire over intellect" (Durkheim 1965 [1915]: 486). The "empire" of ritual practice is ruled not only by Durkheimian collective representations but also by leaders who seek to use ritual practice to generate emotional solidarity and identification with a larger group (Collins 1988: 117).

Introduction I 7

The Heaven and Earth Society's ritual of initiation, for example, was strategically crafted to instill sentiments of respect toward leaders, of in-group solidarity and a sense of belonging, and of shared antipathy toward opponents. In contemporary Penang, traditional forms of ritual and social practice confirm local authority structures and community boundaries, but these coexist with modern forms of authority and belonging-the political party, the workplace, and the nongovernmental organization. At the same time, Penang's history is interwoven with the history of the growth of global capitalism, and this multicultural settlement was an early participant in "the modern culture movement." According to Sahlins, this movement is one aspect of a larger process of structural transformation in which we find globalization leading to the syncretism of traditional and modern elements. As a consequence, local communities select and elaborate traditional cultural practices-like the potlatch, or the Straits Chinese religious processions known as chingay-to show to others their difference and uniqueness. The process of interaction and syncretization has resulted in "the formation of a world system of cultures, a 'culture of cultures' with all the characteristics of a structure of differences" (Sahlins 1994: 389). For example, when Penang community leaders made use of the grassroots territorial organization of the Hungry Ghosts Festival in the 1970s and 1980s to raise funds for community projects like the support of Chinese independent schools, they took traditional forms of community identity-collective worship and feasting-and used them to mobilize support for their modernist projects and the goal of greater Chinese unity. As social reformers, these leaders openly criticized as superstitious and unprogressive the Hungry Ghosts Festival's costly, grand-scale rituals, which several generations of educated Penangites have denounced as a pointless, wasteful extravagance. They preferred instead to sponsor cultural shows of music and martial arts during the Moon and Lantern festivals, displaying performance genres that today represent the essence of Chinese culture at multicultural festivals worldwide. But there is still space in Penang society for more traditional cultural practices-ritual, myth, and symbol-that also mobilize a sense of identity. Penangites transmit social memory through these practices, and rituals that recall the past-including the memory of collective grievances-provide them with a "theatre of memory" (Feuchtwang 1992: 20). Indeed, Paul Connerton has argued that if social memory exists, we will find it in commemorative ceremonies whose ritual performances convey and sustain knowledge of the past at the same time that they inculcate habits in participants (Connerton 1989: 4-5). Rituals of commemoration are not of course always religious in design: the student protesters at Tiananmen Square drew strength from their commemo-

8 I

Introduction

ration of the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement (Schwarcz 1991), and in 1987 many Taiwanese remembered the forty-year anniversary of a

demonstration that the Nationalist government had dispelled with bullets, killing many young Taiwanese students. Such events not only are recalled by those who experienced them but are constructed as collective memories and passed on to a new generation. (See also Jing 1996, Halbwachs 1992.) Diverse means exist to promote social memory, from oral narratives to historical texts, from museum displays to miniseries. Ritual action is a powerful means by which to shape social memory, however, since it draws on poetic and dramaturgical forms to create vivid images of the past and to formulate attitudes toward historical actors and events. As Victor Turner noted, following Monica Wilson, people often cast their most enduring ideas in performance, and thus ritual may reveal deeply held values (Turner 1969: 6).

The Localization of Chinese Popular Religious Culture in Time and Space Unquestionably, the identity projects of modernity involve the elaboration of discursive tropes, including politically motivated attempts to construct social unity in the tropes of Chinese civilization. But Penang religious culture also encompasses an imaginative and poetically compelling cosmology, mythology, and theodicy, some elements of which we may trace back for millennia in Chinese history. 4 These enduring structures of classification and action connect Penang Chinese traditionalists to a social, cultural, and economic way of life, and their acceptance and reproduction constitute one form of identity maintenance. Anthony D. Smith (1981, 1986, 1999) convincingly demonstrates that many ethnic groups derive a sense of identity and shared destiny from deep cultural, historical, and territorial roots. Consequently, the culturally conservative practices of traditional culture do far more than mark out social boundaries in contemporary identity politics: It is this wider tradition and life-style that provides an image and language of"our community" and whose profile is sharpened by contact with "other communities." All the elements of that tradition and culture-the myths, symbols, values and memories encoded in laws and customs, institutions, religions, art, music, dance, architecture, family practices and language-help to bind families together in a community of ancestry; a totality of expressions and representations (and not just the linguistic codes that for some scholars form the symbolic "border guards" of the group against the stranger), a totality that gains with every generation and evokes a veneration and a respect of ancestors and the past. (Smith 1986: 49)

Introduction I

9

In contemporary Penang, many Sino-Malaysians localize, perform, interpret, and transmit an understanding of Chinese history, philosophy, and cosmology through the diverse media of local religious culture, including temples, festivals, sacred texts, and ritual performances. In this study, I investigate Penang Chinese religious culture as a structured field of representations, but also as a localized ritual practice, and as a historically situated social process. Symbolic action is, after all, "a duplex compound made up of an inescapable past and an irreducible present" (Sahlins 1985: 151-52). In Penang, that "inescapable past" includes systems of symbolic classification deeply etched in linguistic structures and the habits of everyday life, but also the more formalized systems of classification that inform ritual practice. The past also includes, however, this diaspora community's memories of their experiences of conflicts in China and Southeast Asia that put their community at risk-conflicts that Penangites now recall in narratives of spiritual warfare and acts of ritual commemoration. At the same time as I explore the processes by which the Malaysian Chinese have localized their religious culture in the time and space of Penang, I also seek to develop more satisfactory ways of discussing the relationship between China's elite and popular religious traditions. In the literature on Chinese religion, scholars commonly polarize the contrast between the two. Many use the term "folk religion" to describe local religious practices, often assuming them to be nothing more than a chaotic jumble of superstitious practices and improvised ritual remedies. But rather than polarizing elite and popular religious forms, we should explore how people at all levels of society and in all ethnic groups interact with and conceive of one another in light of religious institutions, practices, and ideologies. 5 (See Davis 1982.) Even though it may be performance-oriented, Penang religious culture draws deeply on the cyclical cosmology that forms the basis for the Book of Changes (or Yijing) and the concept of the Dao or moral path taught in Laozi's Daodejing. Temples also commonly distribute sacred texts like the Heart Sutra and classical morality books like Taishang's Treatise on Action and Retribution (Taishang Ganying Pian). Vernacular literature deeply informs the religious imagination, and novels that use allegory to convey their religious messages continue to inspire the imagination of those who practice Chinese religious culture (Dudbridge 1978; Elliot 1955; Esherick 1987; Shahar 1996, 1998). 6 Whereas the authors of popular novels translated their cosmologies into allegorical didactic stories, the inventors of ritual forms expressed it in visual symbols and magical operations that sought to restore harmony and balance in a disordered world. In their everyday ritual practice, for example, mediums

10

I Introduction

"dance the gods" (thiausin, tiaoshen ), including the spirits of the heroes of vernacular fiction: the Emperor of the Dark Heavens, the Third Prince, the God of War, the Vagabond Buddha, and the Great Saint (popularly known as the Monkey God). Possessed by the spirits of divine kings, princes, generals, and Buddhist saviors, spirit mediums wage spiritual warfare against the chaotic forces of illness and misfortune, imagined in an idiom of the demonic. Textual sources may provide the most reliable vehicle for the transmission of Chinese cosmology, but ritual officiants-Daoist priests, Buddhist monks, or the gods possessing their spirit mediums-translate the basic elements of that cosmology into ritualized practices and performances. These practices embody abstract structures of action and feeling in the individual's experiences, including the experience of place and time. The events of the contemporary lunar festival cycle, for example, define a sacred geography and a sacred calendar that coordinates festivals, rituals, banquets, and reunions, thereby contributing to the "spatiotemporal production of locality" (Appadurai 1996: 180-81). Overview Under British rule, Chinese immigrants to Penang localized their diverse community by developing institutions for self-government, including the Kong Hok Palace-a temple that served as a community tribunal and council-and their secret sworn brotherhoods. These institutions interwove the political and the religious, the sacred and the profane, in order to achieve models of universal order. 7 Community leaders used the ritual process to organize societysometimes claiming the charisma of divine election for themselves-mapping space to reproduce a sacred geography, and synchronizing time to the rhythms of their lunar calendar. The Chinese immigrants reproduced their way of life, however, in the space of the Straits Settlements, and during the time of British colonial rule. Penang's European elite, many of them Freemasons, affirmed the Enlightenment values of cosmopolitan brotherhood, truth, and religious tolerance. Their commitment to religious tolerance, however, sometimes conflicted with their reformist spirit. Many found Chinese local religious practices superstitious and disruptive of public order, and some argued that rationality and the greater public good should take precedence over tolerance. At the same time, the British recognized that the Chinese community used their religious culture to reproduce a competing authority structure that the colonials regarded as an imperium in imperio-an empire within the empire. In Part I of this study, I examine the development of the heterogeneous Penang Chinese community, along with the conjuncture between the British

Introduction I

11

and Chinese communities whose leaders competed for control of this urban settlement. I investigate the dialogue between these two communities-both seeking to localize their own notions of propriety, authority, and sacralitythrough the analysis of two conflicts: the 1857 Penang Riots and the 1890 suppression of the Chinese secret sworn brotherhoods.R As Sally Falk Moore notes, "events of articulation" like these are "the crossroads where many different interests and visions of things intersect," and may infuse cultural categories with new meanings (Moore 1994: 364-65). In seeking greater measures of control over the Chinese performance of periodic festivals and the sworn brotherhoods' form of the Asian theater state, the British colonial government sought to superimpose European notions of public civility, virtue, rationality, and authority on the heterogeneous urban community that they had created. Although they may have suppressed the sworn brotherhoods and their elaborate ritual performances, they did not succeed, however, in preventing the symbols and practices of Penang Chinese religious culture from having continued empire over imagination. After independence, the Penang Chinese community exchanged an identity as British subjects for citizenship in the new Federation of Malaya. The new social contract of nationhood developed in 1957 lent constitutional support to a division between the privileged core nation of indigenous Malays and immigrant outsiders, and maintained ethnic divisions set during the colonial period. Where nineteenth-century British fears that the Chinese had formed an empire within the empire sparked a literature investigating the Chinese secret societies, the postcolonial literature now regarded Chinese populations outside the political boundaries of China as "Overseas Chinese"-sometimes hinting that these immigrant communities were a potential fifth column for Asian communism-and examined the paradoxes of their position as an economically powerful but often politically marginalized minority in the new nations of Southeast Asia. 9 In the postcolonial period, a policy of religious pluralism and tolerance has continued, but Islam is central to the definition of Malay ethnicity and Malaysian national identity. Consequently, many non-Malay minorities, including the Chinese, strongly feel that current political policies marginalize their cultural expressions. In this period of political uncertainty, many Chinese have turned to fortifying their cultural, linguistic, and religious institutions. In Part II, I explore the revitalization of Penang Chinese religious culture but also investigate the continuities and enduring structures that make religious culture an important vehicle for identity maintenance. I focus on events of the festival cycle that draw the community together--or at least those who follow the practices of local religious culture-in the first, seventh, and ninth lunar months,

12

I Introduction

and I consider Penang Chinese religious culture as a structured cosmology, a form of social memory, and a social process. Let me turn now to Part I of this study, in which I explore the development of this ethnically diverse community and the role that religious culture has played in interethnic conflicts and competitions.

CHAPTER ONE

The Localization of Chinese Society in Colonial Penang The sight of the Asiatics who have crowded into George Town is a wonderful one, Chinese, Burmese, Javanese, Arabs, Malays, Sikhs, Madrassees, Klings, Chulias, and Parsecs, and still they come in junks and steamers and strange Arabian craft, and all get a living, depending slavishly on rzo one, never lapse into pauperism, retain their own dress, customs, and religion, and are orderly. One asks what is bringing this swarthy, motley crowd from all Asian lands, from the Red to the Yellow Sea, from Mecca to Canton, and one of my Kling boatmen answers the question, "Empress good-coolie get money; keep it." 1 Bird 1967 (1883): 255

P

uLA u PEN AN G is a small, mountainous island off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, fifteen miles long by nine miles wide. The east coast of the island is the site of Penang's harbor, formed by the narrow channel that separates the island from the mainland. The main urban settlement on the island, George Town, sits close to this harbor on the northeastern promontory of the island. Beach Street holds the massive commercial buildings in which colonial England conducted its trade, but other major streets are crowded commercial avenues whose side streets are filled with two-story Asian shop houses with fivefoot walkways. Despite new high-rise shopping malls, Chinese small shopkeepers still sell an impressive array of silks and synthetic fabrics, inexpensive clothing and luggage, gold and jade jewelry, and Chinese herbal medicines. Penang's beaches are famous in Asia, and Malay royalty and Chinese millionaires built their mansions on expansive estates along a seaside drive west of urban George Town. Farther north, past Tanjung Tokong-a small fishing village now engulfed by high-rise apartment blocks-mile after mile of well-appointed resort hotels line the coast, vying for the custom of Malaysian and international tourists.

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% bai menjiao (pai muikha) worship at the foot of the door (placate ghosts) ff~~Jlll!J baishen (paisin) worship saints ff,[r$ bang (pang) group, e.g. a dialect group 1~ Baofu She (Po Hok Sia [Poh Hock Seah]) Precious Prosperity Society Wfflll'i~r± Baosheng Shangdi Life-Protecting God f:f:'j=_t'rj1' Baoyu Xianyan (Po Su Sian Giam) Jewel Island Spirit Clifft:;'li@!{Lli;15 Baoyue Gong (Po Keh Keong) Jeweled Moon Palace Jf J'l g Beidou (Paktau) Northern Bushel :lt4 Beifang Zhenwu Da Jiangjun Northern Quarter Perfected Warrior Great General :lt:!J~:ltt*~~

Beiyouji (Pak Iu Kee [Park Yew Keel) Journey to the North ;(t~§c benming constitutive astrological fate :z!s:$ Binzhou Huaren Dahuitang Penang Chinese Town Hall :fl1•1•1'1!liAA~1it Binzhou Qingzhu Zhongyuan Jie Weiyuanhui Central Primordial Festival Committee 11!:11'1 cp ft~IJ 12 ff'rrftr buyun (po·un) mend fate h#~ Caishen (Chai Sin) Wealth God ~7)'ffl$ Chen Jinnan ~t~r¥! Chen Shengwang (Tan Seng Ong) Holy King Tan ~t~.I chenggao pole f1}~ Chenghuang Miao (Seng Ong Bio) City God Temple t]ilG£ lii chi Zhongguo (chiah Tiongkok) 'eat' Chinese iJZ:cp~ chong (chhiong) collide yrp

298 I Glossary of Chinese Terms

chongde (chhiongtioh) spiritual collision yrpj~ Chongyang lie (Tiong long Choeh) Double Yang Festival, the ninth day of the ninth lunar month

~f%fjj'j

da (toa), xiao (se) large and small jc, 1h Da Shiye (Tai Su Ia) Great One 7c±$ Da Zongli Great Prime Minister];:~)]! Dabo (Toa Peh [Tua Pekl) Paternal Elder Uncle }c{B Dabo Gong (Toa Peh Kong [Tua Pek Kong]) God of Prosperity 7d60 daci (tapsu) thank-you speech Dadi Gong (Tai Te Kong) Great Emperor God -jc$:0 Dage (Toako) Elder Brother jcilf damen gate :A:F5 Damo Bodhidharma iiJ* Dashi Yeye (Tua Se la-ia) Grandfather Ambassador jc{R$$ daxie ganqing (tapsia kamcheng) return thanks and gratitude 1§:lm!~'[f'J Dazong Gong Great Ancestor 7c!G0 dao (to) Dao j]i: daode (totek) virtue j]i:j,~ Daodejing (Totekkeng) Daode ling .ii;H~k3li dejiao moral uplifting or teaching virtue (describes modern syncretic religious associa-

awt

tions) f,~f!z delasam (tioh lasam) get 'dirty' or impure, encounter a ghost f~D denggao climb to the heights :,;l~ Diguan (Te Koan) Lord of the Earth J:~g Dimu (Toema) Earth Mother t\HE: Diwang Emperor King

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diyida (teit toa) biggest~-:;;\: diyu (te gek) the prisons of earth, hell t~J~ Dizang Wang (Te [Tay] Chong Ong) Bodhisattva ruling hell .f:~lJ\1(=£ Dizhu Gong (Techu Kong) Lord of the Earth t~±:L> Dongfang Eryuanshuai Second Commander of the Eastern Quarter J,f!:]j =5Ggi(J dongzhi (tangchi) winter solstice~~ Doumu (Taubo•) Bushel Mother 3./--"ff.l: Doumu Gong (Taubo· Keong) Bushel Mother's Palace -'}"ff.l:;§ Er Taizi (Ji Taizhu) Second Prince erban chiao (jipan kio) two plank bridge -_:f&:fr!ij Erbo (Jipeh) Second Uncle =fu fagao (hoat koe) rising cakes ,Ji~ Fanqing fuming Overthrow the Qing [dynasty} and restore the Ming &:Yf!ij[Sjj fanren (hoan-a) Malay fi A feng (hong) award with official title .M Fengfu Taizi (Hong Hu Thai Chu) Feng Mansion Crown Prince /,\'§if1:t:-f fengshui (hongchui) geomancy @Rl]( fengsu xiguan customs and practices ~{:fr~~ln Fodan (Hut Tan) Buddha's birthday, Wesak Day{~~ fu (hu) magical charm 1-4 Fu Lu Shou (Hok Lok Siu) star gods of prosperity, status, and longevity WrM~r!k~

=:t:r

GlossaryofChineseTerms I 299 Fude Ci (Hok Tek Si) Ancestral Temple of Prosperity and Virtue millt~mjj_J Fude Zhengshen Miao (Hok Tek Cheng Sin Bio ) Temple of the God of Prosperity, Virtue, and Morality ~llH~IEffi$l!l Fuhou Gong (Hok Hau Kong) Marquis Fu [Prosperity} mEil{:i!!=:L-> Fujian (Hokkien) Fujian m!il~ Fuxing Gong (Hok Heng Keong) Prosperity Palace ~Ill~'§ gaiyun (koe-un) change luck c)Z:Jli ganqian (kamchi) thanksgiving money~~ ganqing (kamcheng) gratitude, attachment ~ll'l' ganxie (kamsia) thanks ~ilM ganzhe (kamchia) sugarcane, puns with 'thanks' (ganxie) t!Mli gaodeng Song Mount Song high lamp iWii:til:~ Gaoqi Miao High Mountain Stream Temple iWii~J!Ji gongde (kongtek) merit and virtue; also a Daoist ceremony to transfer merit to the dead

Jhf-1 gongfu (konghu) kungfu JjJ7;: gongsi (kongsi) kongsi 0 j'\j guan (koan) pass, obstacle ~),1 Guan Yu name of the individual deified as the God of War lii]~;j Guandi Ye (Koan [Kuan] Te Ia) Emperor Guan, the God of War I#J'riJ'i& Guangong (Koan [Kuan] Kong) Lord Guan, the God of War ~J,l0 guanmen (koanmen) gate-pass liilF~ Guansheng Dijun Sacred Lord Emperor Guan, the God of War ~~~'r'ji;g guanxi connections !Ul{* Guanyin (Koan [Kuan] Im) Goddess of Mercy If!if Guanyin Ma (Koan [Kuan] Im Ma) Goddess of Mercy Wifkll5 Guanyin Pusa (Koan [Kuan] Im Pho sat) Goddess of Mercy lf!ifi?fl:i' Guanyin Si (Koan [Kuan] Im Si) Goddess of Mercy Temple Wif~ Guanyin Ting (Koan [Kuan] Im Teng) Goddess of Mercy Pavilion fi[;30 Guangze Zunwang (Kongtek Chunong) Vast Favor Venerable King !J'i'l'\#:E Guangdong Fujian Gong (Kngtang Hokkien Keong) Guangdong-Fujian Palace JJJl[~/ll~'§

Guangfu Gong (Kong Hok [Hock] Keong) Wide Blessings Palace !J'm!ll'§ gui (kui) ghost )l Guijie (Kui Choeh) ghost festival m.rm Guiwang (K ui On g) King of Ghosts ml:E guoyun (ge-un) pass over [bad] luck i&Iili Haishan (Hai San) Sea and Mountain [Society} iitirli Haizhuyu Dabo Gong Miao (Hai Choo Soo Toa Peh [Tua Pek] Kong Miao) Sea Pearl Island God of Prosperity Temple )~l'lf;l!fli!:*:180l!l hao xiongdi (ho hia"ti) good brothers, a euphemism for ghosts ftHtSfl Hesheng (Ho Seng) United Victors ;fOijJ$ hei shehui (o· siahoe) black society, secret society !\li\ffr±',W( Hong (Hong) flood, vast ijt Hong Haizi (Ang Gina) Red Child HT~-T hongdou (angtau) red bushel *I4 honggui (angku) red tortoise

Hm

300

I Glossary of Chinese Terms

Honghua Ting (Anghoe Teng) Red Flower Pavilion H1E¥ honglu (anglo·) red furnace Hill hongmao gou (angmo·kao) red-headed dog (slang for European) *I=BJbJ Hangmen (Angmui) Vast Gate t:!l;f,f she (sia) society ffr± shen (chhim) deep i':# shen (sin) saint ffi$ Shennong Shengdi or Dadi (Sin Long TaiTe) God of Agriculture ffi$!!t"'!tci(j or ;k$ Sheng Wang Holy King ~::E shengjiu (sengkhao) rattan lots "t!'IUI Shi Gongsi (Chap Kongsi) Ten Kongsis -h."; a] Shi Tougong (Su Tokong) Commissioner God [Tokong} f~ITY!0 shiwu yewan ( chapgo• me) fifteenth day of the first lunar month -1· Ji -PZ~ shou guan longevity pass iif;fm Shoutian Gong (Siu Thian Keong [Siew Thean Keongl) Receive Heaven Palace "ftl('g shouzhi Shaolinsi kaishan qi, yi ye Dazong Gong heshang qu [those who} received an

official title at Shaolin temple founded the sect ["opened the mountain"} and arranged it; [we are} one in the district of our Great Ancestor and the monks §'t~i;j:'J>.f.f~lfflll!'l'1\ ~ili::k'-*0fDf;\till!

Shuiguan (Chuikong) Lord of Water 7}:'§ Shuimei Gong (Chui Bee Kong) Water Beauty Palace 7}-:.~g Su Hongguang Revive Vast Brightness ~i;!l;:l't Sun Tai Zushi (Sun Thai Cho·su) Sun [Monkey} the Great Founder JJi\ sung shen (sang sin) send the gods !2'5ffi$ taiji (thaikek) Great Ultimate j,;::fuj Taiping Xu (Thai Peng Hu) Marketplace of Great Peace j,;:zp::fM

[ji\Jl~]

A:ffil:iili!i

Glossary of Chinese Terms I 303 tairen (thaijin) great man, term of address for a mandarin X.A. Taishang Laojun (Thai Siong Lo Kun) Very High Old Lord, name for Laozi ~J:~'fli Taishang Laojun Miao (Thai Siong Lo Kun (Thai Seong Loh Koon] Bio) Very High Old Lord Temple X.J:t:;tJ; lfJJ Taisheng Ye (Thai Seng Ia) Great Saint l,(~fri" Taisui (Thai Soe) Great Year, governor of the Ministry of Time ;t::::Jii)2 Taiyi the One, vital energy)\_-· Tang Seng Fozu (Tong Cheng Hut Cho·) Monk Tang the Buddhist Ancestor Hfilllff!ll Tao Deda Peach Greatness of Virtue fjtff::k Tian Youhong (Thian lu-ang) Heaven Protects the Hong :R.#i'&i tiandi (thian te) Heaven and Earth; Heavenly Emperor ;R_:f:fu; :R.W Tiandihui (Thian Te Hoe) Heaven and Earth Society; Heavenly Emperor Society ;R_:f:fu"\¥1r;

:R.W1'! tiangao (thi"koe) sweet cake; heavenly cake &t~; 7::,'~ Tiangong (Thi"kong) Lord of Heaven T'._!.} Tiangong Tan (Thi" kong Toa" (Thnee Kong Thnual) Lord of Heaven Altar )('§f!l tianguan heavenly gate 7:.~ Tianguan (Thi" Koan) Lord of Heaven :k§ Tianhou (Thian Ho·) Queen of Heaven :;RJ§ Tianjun (Thian Kun [Choon]) Heavenly Lord ;R.f!; Tianshang Shengmu (Thian Siong Seng Ma) Holy Mother in Heaven A.J:~£3: tiantai heavenly terrace 7:."1 tiaoshen (thiausin) 'dance the gods,' go into trance Jlitffitfi Tongqing She (Tong Kheng Sia [Seah]) United Celebratory Society 111JJJ';fr± toujia (thauke) leader ~ii* Tudi Gong (Tho·te Kong) Lord of the Earth ±:f:lli0 Wan Daofang (Ban To Hong) Myriad Dao Virtue ~ill35' Wan Daolong (Ban To Leng) Myriad Dao Dragon mill~~ Wan Yunlong (Ban Hun Leng) Myriad Cloud Dragon fj;~~i!. wang (ong) king ::E Wang Sun Yeye (Ong Sun Ia-ia) Grandfather Descendant of Princes; alternately, the surname Sun (Monkey) surrounded by the characters wang and ye, which together mean 'Divine King' ::El*fri"fri" wangchuan (wangkang) king's boat ::Effl'd wanglai; huangli (both pronounced onglai) prosperity is coming; pineapple HI* ; !1fi~ wangye (ongia) divine king ::Efri" Weilingshi Dashi Great Master of Epidemics ~'§Bi'f::kniil weiyue (be geh) year's end (end month) ~H wen literary ;t wenhua culture, civilization x{t wenggong(angkong)gods~0

wu military J1t Wuchangbo (Botia" Peh) Inconstant Uncle ~11\{8 Wudang Shan Wudang Mountain :rlt~rlr Wugong Five Lords 'I rli' Wusheng Laomu Unborn Old Mother J!(litf::~£3: wuwang guguo forget not your old country ~;,s;IO(~

304 I Glossary of Chinese Terms

xi (se) wash 17t Xifu Ri (Hi Hok Tit) Happiness and Prosperity Day Rifrlii B Xiayuan Jie Daoist Lower Primordial Festival TJG~fj Xianfeng Vanguard jiG~ Xiansheng (Sinse") Master 1C"t Xianzu (Siancho·) Immortal Ancestor {Lllmrt Xie Bangxing (Chia Pang-heng) Thankfully the Country Prospers ~:F~~l xieyuan ri (sia koan jit) thank [the gods for] wishes [fulfilled] day ~JliJj li xiongdi brothers £$ xiuxing (siuheng) self cultivation MH'T Xuantian Dadi (Hian Thian Siong Te) Emperor of the Dark Heavens X::RJ: ';W Yanwang (lam Ong) Yama ~,:-£ yang (iong) male principle fllili yijian daji Seeing Me is Great Luck! --~:*:15 Yijing (I" Keng) The Book of Changes ~*'li yiren barbarian J!;)\ Yixing (Ghee Hin) justice and Happiness [Society] ~!m yin (im) female principle 1\i! Yuhuang Dadi (Gek Hong TaiTe) jade Emperor :=E:'il :k:\W Yuhuang Taizi (Gek Hong Thai Chu) jade Emperor Prince 'E$-_,Zcf Yulanpen Ullambana, from the Sanskrit term Avalambana ::lt:lll~ yue (ge) moon Jj yungen root of clouds '#tR yunyu clouds and rain ~ffi zayuan (so-i") round rice balls m1111 Zaojun (Chan Kun) Kitchen God Y±:B Zaoshen (Chau Sin) Kitchen God Hffl$ Zhenwu Perfected Warrior-~~ Zhongtan Yuanshuai Commander of the Central Altar (Nazha's title) r:j:lJ:flx§rtJ Zhongyi Tang (Tionggi Tng) Hall of Sincerity and justice,',!,~'% Zhongyuan }ie (Tionggoan [Teong Guan] Choeh) Daoist Central Primordial Festival r:j:lJGfl'j zhuangyi (chingay) float procession M~~ zongzi (phah chang) pyramid-shaped wrapped dumplings offered on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month ti 141-42, 207, 217 George V, coronation of, 31 Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, 156, 258m Ghazali Shafie, Tan Sri, 127 Ghee Hin

(Yixing) Society in Penang, 55, 57,

64-66, 74-78, So, 82, 84f, 244n3, 246m2, 257n23; property, 73, 75, 79, 247n34; ritual practices, So, 85-88, 160. See also Heaven and Earth Society; Philanthropy; Sworn brotherhoods

Index Ghee Hok Society, 74 Ghost Festival ( Guijie), see Hungry Ghosts Festival Ghosts (gui), 31, 40, 90, 97, 136f, 158-66 passim, 179, 194, 201, 205, 253n}8, 265n29 Globalization, 2, 7, 219f God of Agriculture (Shennong Shengdi or Dadi), n, 240n25 God of the Earth (Tudi Gong), So, 145,149-52 passim, 164, 192, 253n34, 256mo, 258n25. See also Datuk Keramat; God of Prosperity; Lord of the Earth God of Fire (Huogorzg), 77,103, 266n32 God of Prosperity (Dabo Gong), S2-83, 100, 149-54 passim, 164, 198, 217, 257n24, 25Sn26, 25Sn2Sf God of Prosperity, Virtue, and Morality (Fude Zhengshen), 100; Temple of the, 76,198,224 God of War (Guarzgong), 10, 32, So, 90,103,131, 206, 240n25, 249n3, 251lll6, 251TI2l, 252n24, 253n34, 256m6, 266n32 God of Wealth, see God of Prosperity; Wealth God Goddess of Mercy ( Guanyin), 21, 27,31-35 passim, 40f, 45, 103, 131, 139-43 passim, 147, 162, 164f, 178, 188, 193, 198, 240n28, 2531134, 2561114£. See also Chingay; Kong Hok Palace Goddess of Mercy Temple, see Kong Hok Palace

Gods, see Deities; Immortals; Buddha; and in-

dividual deities by name Congsi, see Kongsi; Five Hokkien kongsis Granet, Marcel, 256nS Graves, 42-43, 98-99, 131, 141, 15off, 154, 160 Great Ancestor (Dazong Gong), So, 82, 87, 96, 98, 102, 2641119 Great Architect of the Universe, 58, 60, 2451113 Great Saint (Taisheng Ye), 10, 131, 1S3, 199-200, 238116 Great Ultimate (Taiji), 89, 203-4. See also Bushel Mother Great Way of Former Heaven, 89, 1S5, 210, 2501113, 2561116, 267n44 Guan Yii, see God of War Guan, see Gate/pass Guangdong, 20, 24-30 passim, 56, 244n4, 2561116 Guangfu Gong, see Kong Hok Palace Guangong, see God of War Guangze Zunwang (Vast Favor Venerable King), 183, 198, 256m6

I 309

Guanyin Pavilion ( Guanyin Ting), 139, 239m6. See also Kong Hok Palace Guanyin Temple, Burmah Road, 188, 198 Guanyin, see Goddess of Mercy Guests of honor, 169ff, 173, 184, 224 Gutzlaff, Charles, 39 Hai San (Haishan) Society, 55, 69, 75, 2401127 Hainanese, 22, 172, 244n4 Haizhuyu Dabo Gong Miao, see Sea Pearl Island Tua Pek Kong Temple Hakka, 22, 71, 76, 83, 150, 172, 244n4 Hall of Sincerity and Justice, 99, 101 Harper, T. N., 240n21 Harrell, Stevan, 255n4, 2651129, 268n7 Haynes, Douglas, 26om8 Heart Sutra, 140, 185 Heaven (Tian), 62, 74, 96f, 102ff, 133-44passim, 189f, 200, 207f, 243n26, 256n9 Heaven and Earth Circle ( Qiankun Quan), 101, 196 Heaven and Earth Society ( Tiandihui), 21, 26f, 55-56,64-68 passim, 74-79, 220, 2391114; antiQing stance of, 5, 55, 57, 64, 66£, 81, 94, 98, 144; suppression of, u, 27, 70, 74-78; British perspectives on, 48, 56-74 passim, 78, 2461119; religious practices of, 55, 67, 76-Bo passim, 87-88, 106f, 247n34, 249n2f, 249n7, 253n34, 262n7; historiography of, 55-56, 81, 146,185-86, 244n6; and self-government, 64ff, 72f, 75, 2461118, 253n38. See also Ghee Hin Society in Penang; Legendary history; Oaths; Ritual of initiation; Singapore; and individual groups by name Heaven Protects the Hong (Tian Youhong), see Vanguard Heaven, earth, and water, 101, 137-39, 150, 160 Heavenly Emperor ( Tiandi), 244n3, 2571123 Heavenly Mother ( Tianshang Shengmu ), 32, 240n25 Heavenly terrace (Tiantai), 206, 267n43 Heidhues, Mary Somers, 244n5 Heritage, 3, 27, 129, 221-25 passim Hexagram, 101, 135f High Mountain Stream Temple ( Gaoqi Miao ), 94,96f Hindi, 124, 26omo Hinduism, 39, 6o, 111, 114-19 passim, 189, 210, 223, 245Ill3, 268n8 Ho Seng (Hesheng) Society, 55, 65, 75 Hok Tek Cheng Sin (Fude Zhengshen), see God of Prosperity, Virtue, and Morality

310

I Index

Hokkien, see Southern Min Hong Kong, 73, 91, 93, 245n14, 248nso Hongmen (Vast Gate), 99, 101, 253n38 Horoscope, 266n37 Hui (associations), 55, 65, 84, 244n5. See also Kongsi Hung League, 66-67, 85 Hungry Ghosts Festival, 51, 74, 8o, 128, 156-66 passim, 222, 249n2f, 260m3; organization of, 156-61 passim, 166-68, 259n6f; fundraising at, 167-71 passim, 178f, 26om4ff. See also Ancestor worship; Buddhist salvation rituals; Penang unity movement; Pudu Ignatieff, Michael, m Immigrants, Chinese, 1-4, 20-26 passim, 113, 122, 124; and self-governance, 10, 26-29, 37, 56, 72, 79, 83f, 220, 239n14. See also Kong Hok Palace; Heaven and Earth Society; Kian Tek Society Immortality, peach of, 87, roo, 102, 250n11 Immortals (xian), 91, 133, 208, 211, 262n9 Imperial metaphor, 133, 145, 152 Impurity (lasam), 90,160,163, 193ff, 202-3,205, 214 Incense, 30, 70, 99-102, 145, 160, 162, 168, 195, 198,200 Incense urn, see Urn Inconstant Uncle (Wucharzgbo), 164-65, 259n10, nu India, 17, 24, 26om8; and government of Penang, 19, 23, 41f, 48ff, 26om8; and Freemasonry, 58-61 Indian minority in Malaysia, 1, 17, 22, 43, So, ss-86, 112, 118, 123f, 171, 219, 26on2o, 268n8; and cultural blending, 113, 176. See also Hindi; Hinduism; Tamil minority Indigenous groups, non-Malay, 113, 223 Indo-Malays (jawipekan), 113 Indonesia, 58, 6of, 66, 121, 245n15, 2461123 Internal Security Act (!SA), 126 Invite the fire (qinghuo), 76f, 131,138,152-53, 25Sn6, 256n12 Iron balls, playing with, 182, 189, 200 Islam, 22, n1, 113-19 passim, 218, 224, 241m, 245m2, 254n5; as official religion, 1, n, 11416, 157, 223; fundamentalist, 117, 254n6f Jade Emperor (Yuhuang Dadi), 98,137,143, 145-46, 206, 212 Jade Emperor Prince (Yuhuang Taizi), 266n33

Japanese occupation, 21 Jelutong, 84, 198, 250n9 Jewel Island Spirit Cliff (Baoyu Xianyan), 149, 2581127 Jiande Tang, see Kian Tek Society Jigong (Vagabond Buddha), 10, 131,133, 141f, 2691112 ]oint Memorandum on National Culture, 127, 175f Jordan, David, 2691113 journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, 49, So, 242n4 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 64 journey to the North, 190, 192, 208-14, 268n48 journey to the West, 208, 238n6 Kandang, 192 Kang Youwei, 24f, 29 Kapitan Kling mosque, 43 Kapitan, 17, 25ff, 42, 239n17, 240n27, 259n4 Kaplan, Martha, 246n24 Karl, Protector of Chinese, 247n28 Katz, Paul, 203, 264n23, 265n26 Keeper of the incense urn (luzhu), 41, 161, 197f Kek Lok Si (Tile Si), 24, 32-35, 143, 188, 14mJo, 240l127f Kelantan, 254116 Kelly, john, 238n8 Khoo Boo Teik, 122, 254n11 Khoo Kiock, 47, so Khoo Kongsi, 223, 2391119 Khoo Su Nin (Salma Nasution), 224 Khor Gark Kim, 171, 173, 178-79 Kian Tek Society (Jiande Tang), 55, 75, 8o, 82Ss, 154, 250n9, 253n38; after suppression, 7577, 198, 220, 224, 2631113; and God of Prosperity, 150-54, 2581126. See also Precious Prosperity Society King of Hell and assistants, 159-64 passim King, Ambrose Y. C., 2571124 King's Boat (Wangchuan), 189, 263m6, 264n23, 265l125 Kite-flying, exorcistic, 187, 2641120 Knights Templar, 62 Koh Lay Huan, 17, 26, 42, 238n2, 239m2 Koh Leap- Teng, 2401123 Koh Pen Teng, 175 Koh Seang Tat, 42 Kong Hok Palace ( Guangfu Gong), 10, 27-28, 32-39 passim, 43-51 passim, 111, 154f, 180,

Index I 311 239m6, 239m8, 240n26, 241n30; festivals at, 21, 31ff, 40-41, 50-53, 139-42, 159, J78, 188, 198, 256m4, 258n27, 263m 1. See also Appendix, 229-36 Kongsi (gongsi), 41, 55, 64-66, 76, 83, 86, 223, 239n19, 244115. See also Five Hokkien KongSIS

Koran, 84-S5 Kua Kia Soong, 117-18, 127, 255m3 Kuala Lumpur, 114, 259114, 26m2, 2631112 Kuala Terengganu, 254n6 Kuan Im Teng, see Goddess of Mercy Temple Kun (female principle), 101, 136, 196 Kusu Island, 258112S Kwangtung and Tengchew Association, 2S, 41 Lagerwey, John, 209 Lam Wah Hospital (Nanhua Pingmin Yiyuan), 30,168,172 Language, See National language; Regional languages; and individual languages by name Lantern Festival, 7, So, 103, 131, 134-35, 178, 212, 255n6, 256n7 Laozi, 9, 91, 147, 188 Lasam, see Impurity Latsch, Marie-Louis, 255m Lee, Raymond, and Susan Ackerman, 219, 268n2 Legendary history, 26, 56, 67, 81, 93-97 passim, 131, 146, 148, 154, 245n8, 249n6, 25In20, 25In22, 252n23, 252n26 Levenson, joseph, 217 Lewis, William Thomas, 46f Li Kup, 27 Li Nazha, see Nazha; Second Prince; Third Prince Li Tieguai, 141 Life-Protecting God (Baosheng Shangdi), 76, 131, 268nS, 240n25 Light, Captain Francis, 17, 25, 39, 54, 238117 Lim Boon Keng, 29-30, 37, 2401121f, 2411137 Lim Chong Eu, 156, 171, 175f, 258111 Lin Shuangwen uprising, 27, 239m2, 244n7, 250n9 Lion dance, 127, 171, 197f, 255l114 Literacy, 23f, 101, 124, 224, 23Sns, 252n32 Literature, vernacular, 9-10, 93, 140, 190, 20S10, 23Sn6, 251111S Liu Bowen, 134 Lodge Neptune, 58-59, 2451112 Lodge Zetland in the East, 2461121

Logan, Abraham, 49 Logan, james Richardson, 3S, 44, 48-53, 1SS, 239n19,243n24,243n26,249n1,263n11 Logan's Journal, 49, So, 242n4 Lohans, 33, 103, 133, 147 Longevity (shou), 100, 189t~ 200, 207 Longevity pass (shou guan), 200 Lord of the Earth (Diguan), S7, 137, 15S, 160 Lord of the Earth ( Tudi Gong), So, 149-52 passim, 164, 192, 253n34, 2561110, 2581125. See also God of the Earth Lord of Heaven (Tiangong), 6o, 12S, 131,136, 138f, 143-48 passim, 160, 192, 195, 206-7, 2561110, 2571120 Lord of Heaven (Tianguan), 136f, 256n9, 25Sn30 Lord of Heaven Altar/Temple (Tiangong Tan), 143 Lord of Water (Shuiguan), 137 Lord's Boat, 264n23 Lotus Flower Temple (Lianhua An), 165-66 Low, Lt. Colonel James, 39f, 47, 68f, 70, 139, 159. 1S7, 242114, 25Sn2s, 263lll0 Lower Primordial Festival (Xiayuan fie), 137 Luck, 31, 142, 149, 163f, 166, 179, 191f; rituals to improve, 90, 192, 200, 205, 21S, 2561116 Magical, power (li) or efficacy (ling), 4, 9f, 154, 1S6, 189, 195, 203, 214, 25Sn31; remedies, 90, 134, 190, 195. See also Charms; Ritual Mahathir bin Mohammed, 121-24 Maitreya Buddha, 188, 210, 2501113 Malacca, 19, 22, 27, 63f, 88, 93,148, 152, 191f, 2391117, 265ll25, 267n42 Malay community, 113-16 passim, 123, 254n2, 259n2; special privileges of, 113, 116, 119-23. See also Bumiputera Malay Dilemma, 121-24 Malayan Civil Service, 35 Malaysia, ethnic composition, 112, 122ff. See also Citizenship; Chinese minority in Malaysia; Constitution; Economic policy; Education; Indian minority in Malaysia; National identity; National language; Nationalism; Malay community; Rukunegara Malaysian [Malayan) Indian Congress (MIC), I, 113, 258111 Malaysian Buddhist Association, 2691111 Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), 113, 120, 258111

312

I Index

Malaysian Daoist Religious Culture Research Center, 224, 270n14 Malaysian race (ban gsa Malaysia), 124, 223 Mandala, 88-89, 136, 206. See also Five-fold symbolism; Nine-fold symbolism Mandarin, 24, 125ff, 157, 172-73, 223. See also Chinese education Mandate of Heaven, 135, 209f

Manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits Settlements, 65 Maori, 242m2 Marketplace of Universal Peace (Taiping Xu), 87, 100, I02f, 106 Marshal Wen, 192f, 265n26f Martial arts/artists, 7, 90, 93, 99, 178, 183, 195f, 251m5, 252023, 264n17. See also Military gods Masons, see Freemasonry Maspero, Henri, 255n4, 256n11 Master (xiansheng), 85-91 passim, 97-106 passim, 248n52, 25omo, 252n32. See also Chen ]in nan Master Lim (Lim Peng Eok), 140, 185, 208, 210, 212

May Thirteenth Crisis, 114, 119, 122, u6f, 155f Mazu, see Queen of Heaven Means, Gordon, 113 Meditation, 32, 147, 185, 188, 190, 208, 211, 213f Memorandum on National Culture, 127, 175f Merdeka University, 126 Miaolian (Beow- Lean), 32f Miaoshan, 140, 2561116, 266n34 Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, 8o, 94, 103, 13335, 177 Middlebrook, S. M., 148, 191, 192, 267n42 Military gods, 10, 90, 97, 99, 162, 183f, 198, 205, 213f, 251m5; in Heaven and Earth Society, 88, 91-103 passim. See also individual deities

by name Military lodges (Masonic), 61 Milne, William C., 63ff, 69, 71, 246m8, 246023 Ming Dynasty, 5, 94, 133f, 145-48, 188-89, 209, 266n39; ritual chronotopes of, 6, 92, 96 Ministry of Time, 204 Modernity, Jll, 129, 180, 217-25 passim, 268n2, 268n6, 269m1 Monkey God, see Great Saint Monopolies, colonial, 2of, 69-70, 78, 2461125 Monotheism, 39f, 58, 6o, 62, 67, 115-19 passim, 245013 Moon cakes, 133ff

Moon Festival, see Mid-Autumn Moon Festival Moral merit, 169, 171, 178 Moral uplifting associations (Dejiao Hui), 157, 224, 262n5, 2691112 Mosques, 43, 111, 132, 143, 157, 222 Mount Meru, 103, 206. See also World axis Mount Song tall lamp (Gaodeng Song), 195ff, 265n31 Mountains, sacred, 135f, 149-50, 190f, 195-96, 204-12 passim, 262n9, 263m5, 264018. See also Mount Meru; World axis Mulian, 158, 165, 2591112, 266n34 Multiculturalism, 2f, 7, 127, 171, 176ff, 223 Multisurname brotherhoods, 56 Murray, Dian, and Qin Baoqi, 56, 81, 186, 249n6, n7 Muskets, theft of, 46ff, 53, 74, 243019 Myriad Cloud Dragon (Wan Ywzlong), 94ff, 98, lOlf, 251022, 252n26, 253n34 Nagata, Judith, 268112 Nanyang University, 126 National Economic Consultative Council (NECC), 121 National identity, 1f, 123-27 passim, 156, 179, 221, 223. See also Citizenship; Constitution; Education; Islam; National language; Rukunegara National Ideology, see Rukunegara National language, 113, 123-26 passim, 157, 172, 260n20 Nationalism: Chinese, 2f, 24, 29f, 36, 241I136; Malay, 114-16, 121-27 passim, 254n2 Nazha, 82, 100, 183, 195f, 201, 238n6, 264019, 266n33f See also Second Prince; Third Prince Needham, Joseph, 136, 256n8 New Development Policy (NDP), 121 New Economic Policy (NEP), 119-21, 124, 127, J56f, 175, 181, 223, 254011 New Year Festival, 93, 131, 134, 137-55 passim, 223, 255n14, 256m2, 256m4 Newbold, Lieutenant T. J., and Major General F. W. \Vilson, 20, 64, 71, 87-88 Nine Divine Kings (Jiu Wangye), see Nine Emperor Gods Nine Emperor Gods (Jiuhuang Dadi), 128, 18393 passim, 203, 207f, 253n36, 263m3, 263m5, 264ll!8, 267n45 Nine Emperor Gods Festival, 81-82, 128, 138,

Index I 313 182-202 passim, 26m2, 263m2, 265n28, 266n35; organization of, 182, 261m, 26m2; history, 187-88, 191f, 262n8 Nine-fold symbolism, 28, 72, 89,103, 266n36, 2671143 Nine Story Pagoda, 94, 98f Ninth day of the ninth lunar month, see Double-yang festival Ninth Emperor God (Jiu Wangye), 188, 207 Nonini, Donald, 3, 254mo Nonya-Baba culture, 22, 37, 238n6. See also Straits Chinese North, symbolism of, 94ff, 102, 135f, 144, 147, 209 Northern Bushel (Beidou), 99,104,188, 190f, 200,204,207,263nl6 Northern (Pole) Star, 89, 203-4, 2o6f, 253n36 Numbers, symbolism of, see Dualistic symbolism; Three-fold symbolism; Five-fold symbolism; Nine-fold symbolism Oaths, 6, 39-40, 42, 84-85, 24m2, 242n3; of Heaven and Earth Society, 54, 62, 64, 72, 8487 passim, 99, 101, 104f, 107-8, 248n;o, 25on10, 253n33; Masonic, 58, 6o, 64f, 85; and legendary history, 94f, 144, 148 Offerings, food, 99, 133f, 145f, 152, 159-66 passim, 197, 2oo, 25onn, 252n29, 257n2o Oil, ritual use of, 91, 189, 198f Ong, Aihwa, 3, 254mo Ong Acheun, 47, 50 Ong Seng Huat, 193ff, 257m7, 263m6, 265n31, 270m4 Opera, Chinese, 39f, 45, 47, 93, 97, 139, 149, 158f, 164, 187f, 198, 223, 263m1 Operation Lallang, 126 Opium, 17, 20-21, 30, 69t~ 77t~ 83, 164 Overmyer, Daniel, 61 Ownby, David, 81, 249n5 Pagoda ofTen Thousand Buddhas, 33, m Pan, Lynn, 237m Pan-Malaysian conference of Chinese Guilds and Associations, 126f, 175 Pan tang, 191. See also Taboos Parsis, 59f, 245m2, 245m4 Partai Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), 117, 254n6 Parties, political, see Political parties and indi-

vidual parties by name Paya T erubong Hill, 187f, 191 Peace gate (pingan guan), 200

Peach (tao), 87,100,102, 211, 250m1 Peach Greatness of Virtue (Tao Deda), 103 Penang Chinese Town Hall (Binzhou Huaren Dahuitang), 24f, 28-35 passim, 111, 2401120, 2401123f, 26onzof, 261n24; rebuilding of, 168-80 passim, 220 Penang Festival (Pesta Pulau Pinang), 178 Penang Free School, 22-23 Penang Heritage Trust, 269n9 Penang Hill, 19, 139, 143, 149 Penang riots: of 1857, 43-52, 25on8; of 1867, 8285 Penang unity movement, 128, 156-58, 166-81 passim, 258m People's Progressive Party, 258m Perfected Warrior (Zhenwu), 268n47. See also Emperor of the Dark Heavens Pesta Pulau Pinang, 178 Petitions to government from Chinese, 42, 48, 74-75, 127, 175f, 243m9f, 248n43 Philanthropy, 35, 51, 145, 167f, 178f, 2401124; and Chinese education, 4, 157, 168, 172f, 176, 180, 2601115, 260n19; and Penang Ghee Hin, 35, 63, 65, 75, 169. See also Hungry Ghosts Festival; Moral merit; Social honor Phor Tor (Pudu), see Buddhist salvation rituals Phor Tor (Teong Guan) Committee, see Universal Ferry (Central Primordial) Committee Phuket, 187, 262n8 Pickering, William, 42, 71-74, So, 89-102 passim, 246n25-n34 passim, 2511119, 2511122, 253n33 Pilgrimage, 139, 143, 187, 190, 210, 256m4 Pinang Gazette, 49 Pingzhang Mansion/Guildhall (Pingzhang Gorzgguan!Huiguan), 28,175,2611121. See also Penang Chinese Town Hall Plague Gods (Wangye), 191-93, 2641124, 265n26. See also Divine Kings; Nine Emperor Gods Poh Hock Sia (Baofu She), see Precious Prosperity Society Poh Teh Teik, 219 Polaris/Pole star, 89, 203-4, 2o6f, 253n36 Pole, bamboo, 103, 195ff, 265n31, 266n32. See also Mount Meru; World axis Police Act (1856), 44, 48 Police corruption, 69f, 73 Political parties, 1, 7, 24, 55, 113f, 117, 156, 175, 258111. See also individual parties by name Potalaka, 33, 2401128

314

I Index

Precious Prosperity Society (Baofu She), 77, 152, 198, 224, 258n29 Prince Hall Lodge, 63 Prince of Wales Island, 20. See also British, governance ofPenang Processions, 6, 33, 38f, 41!; 52, 152-53, 169, 242n8, 261n3, 263mo; chingay, 31-32, 77, 177f, 224, 2581129, 268n8; regulation of, 44f, 48, 50-52, 268n8; Nine Emperor Gods, 182f, 191, 196ff, 200-202, 268n8 Prosperity (fu), prayers for, 87, 100, 149, 166, 190 Prosperity Palace (Fuxing Gong), 198, 256m2 Protectorate, Chinese, 28, 71, 77, 247028, 247030,247n}8,248046 Protectors of Chinese, 20, 36, 42, 71-77, So, go, 131, 2471128, 247n3o. See also individual

names Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 186 Pudu (Universal Ferry), 158f, 165f, 259119. See also Hungry Ghosts Festival Purcell, Victor, 77, 13of, 139, 149, 159, 217, 239n8 Pure Dragon Palace (Qinglong Gong), 76,198 Pure Land Buddhism, 32f, 79, 102, 240n29, 252n24 Pure United Society ( Qinghe She), 76, 256m2 Pure Water Patriarch ( Qingshui Zushi Gong), 76 Purification, rituals of, 87, 90, 98f, 102, 183, 185, 193-95, 200, 202f Purity, 67, 140f, 189, 209, 213, 215, 2651128 Purple Empyrean Palace, 190, 204

Qian, 101, 136, 196 Qiankun Quan (Heaven and Earth Circle), 101, 196 Qing Dynasty, sf, 24-27, 36, 61, 81, 88, 92-97, 129, 134, 144ff, 154, 239mo; ritual practice of, 144, 187, 207, 2431126. See also Confucian reform movement; Chinese revolution Qingguan Si (Temple of Clear View), 187f, 191 Qingming Festival, So, 131, 160, 249112f Quanzhen Daoism, 190 Queen of Heaven (Tianhou, Mazu), 33,103, 188-8g,20},206,264n19,266n32,266n39, 2671144. See also Bushel Mother Queen's Scholarship/scholars, 23, 29t; 239n9, 240112} Queue, 22, 25, 30, 98f, 148 Raffles, Thomas Stamford, 18 Rama VI, 21, 33

Ramsey, S. Robert, 130 Rappaport, Roy, 241112 Read, W. H., 21 Red Boy, 100, 102 Red Bushel basket (hongdou), see Bushel basket Red Flag Society, 82, 84-85 Red Flower Pavilion, 94, 98--101, 253n33 Red Furnace (Honglu), 100,102 Red Swastika Society, 269m2 Reform movement, see Confucian reform movement Regional languages, Chinese, 21-22, 157f, 172, 244n4, 2611122. See also individual language

names Regulation of religion: British colonial, 44-51 passim, 74, 254n5; Malaysian, 254n5, 268n8 Religion: and identity, 2, 11, 29f, 37, 113, 117-18, 219-20; and conflict, 37, 113, 116-19 passim, 2441129,268n8 Religious and Friendly Societies, 51f, 73- See also Appendix, 229--36 Religious tolerance, 39, 48-51 passim, 115-19 passim, 243n26, 262116 Rent control, 222 Revive Vast Brightness (Su Hongguang), 96-97 Ritual: to invite the ti.re, 76, 131, 138, 152, 255n6, 2561112; to improve luck, 90, 192, 200, 205, 218, 2561116; to greet and send off gods, 1034, 200, 202, 253n35; performative, 104-5, 108, 253n37; of thanksgiving, 127, 138, 143-48, 153, 164, 193, 200-201; of ascent, 135, 187, 191, 262n9. See also Altar; Ancestor worship; Daoist ritual; Galactic polity; Gate/pass; Offerings; Purity; Ritual of initiation; Ritualization; Self-mortification Ritual of initiation, 78-81 passim, 105, 248n;o, 2501110, 2511118; Ghee Hin, 72, 85-104 passim, 107, 2511119, 253n33. See also Altar; Heaven and Earth Society; Spirit mediums Ritualization: of unity, 35, 133, 154f, 157f, 166ff, 180, 183, 193, 214f; of authority, 37, 88-89, wof, 104-5, 238n7, 248n50 Robertson, Bruce, 45, 50 Romance of the Investiture of the Gods, 208, 238n6 Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 2511118, 25m21 Rukunegara, 114-19 passim, 176, 2611124 Sahlins, Marshall, 7, 36, 177, 268n5, 268n7 Sarz Taizi, sec Third Prince Sangren, P. Steven, 154, 237n5, 258n31, 266n34 Sanyuan/Sanyuan Dadi, see Three Primordials

Index I 315 Savior gods, 5, 37, 40, 81, yo, 103, 133, 140, 147, 193, 213. See also Emperor of the Dark Heavens; Goddess of Mercy; Great Saint; Lord of Heaven; Nazha Scapegoats, ritual, 203 Schipper, Kristopher, 267n40 Schlegel, Gustave, 55, 66-67, 71, So, 85, 98, 103, 246n23, 249n4 Scriptures, 33, 130, 187, 190 Sea Pearl Island Tua Pek Kong Temple (Haizhuyu Dabo Gong Miao), 83,150-54 passim, 198 Sea-grass (Jiang): Ally with Prosperity (jiexing), 101; Willow-green (Liuqing), 103 Seal, 76, 85, 94, 188, 195, 208 Seaman, Gary, 209, 268n47f Second Commander of the Eastern Quarter (Dongfang Eryuanshuai), 185 Second Prince (Er Taizi), 196, 198. See also Nazha Second Uncle (Erbo), 164. See also Inconstant Uncle Secrecy, 54-57 passim, 185, 189, 193, 246m8, 250n14. See also Signs of Recognition; Slang Secret societies, see Black societies; Sworn brotherhoods and individual groups by

name Sectarian movements, see Eight Trigrams Rebellion; Heaven and Earth Society; Great Way of Former Heaven; Social movements; White Lotus Society Secularism, 5, 157f, 218, 220, 223, 2691110 Sedan chair, ritual use of, 33, 149, q8, 182, 195f, 201, 26Jfl12

Self-cultivation (xiuxing), 128, 133, 182, 185ff, 190, 208-14 passim Self-mortification, 90-91, 193, 196, 203, 262n8, 263m2, 266n38; using hot oil, 91, 189, 19899; using ball of spikes, 182, 188f, 200, 203, 266n36; using iron balls, 182, 189, 2oo; piercing with spears, 183f, 201, 262n8; sword throne, 184, 189, 201 Seven stars (Northern Bushel), 99, 104, 190, 204, 207, 212f Shahar, Meir, 93, 133 Shamanism, see Spirit mediums Shamoo (Ghee Hin initiate), 85-87 Shamsul, A. B., uof Shangyuan Jie, 137, 258n3o. See also Invite the Fire; Lord of Heaven Shaolin temple (Shaolin Si), 87, 96,148, 195; martial arts, 93, 98, 2511115, 252n23

Shaw, William, 266n36 Shemiao (Snake Temple), 76, Ill, 198 Shennong Shengdi, see God of Agriculture Shuiguan, see Lord ofWater Signs of recognition, 61-64, 105 Simmel, Georg, 220-21 Singapore, 18-22, 49, 76, 93, 126, 172; and popular religion, 35, 4off, 45, 74, 89, 190, 203, 2691110; Freemasons in, 57f, 65, 246n21; sworn brotherhoods in, 67, 71, 73f, 76, 8o, 90, 92f, 98; Ghee Hin Society in, 72f, 89-102, 2511119, 247n34 Singer, Milton, 130 Sino-Malay culture, 22, 37· See also Straits Chinese Slang: Heaven and Earth Society, 95, 105, 2471131, 249n4; Hokkien, 262n6 Smith, Anthony D., 8, nsf, 221 Smith, Cecil Clementi, 70, 74 Snake spirit/god, 76, 131, 152, 213f, 2561112 Snake Temple, 76, 111, 198, 256mo Snodgrass, Jeffrey, 26om8 Social honor, 35f, 4off, 53, 58, n1, 127f, 169, 220, 2411132 Social memory, 7-8, 12, 26, 128, 131, 133, 142, 146, 148, 154, 222 Social movements, 4-7, 88-89, 250n14, 2551115 Societies Ordinance (1890), 11, 27, 70,74-78, 248n43 South, symbolism of, 100, 102f, 135, 100, 144, 149> 188, 200, 204, 207, 213 Southern Bushel (Nandou), 100,188,200,204 Southern Min, 21-22, 37, 55, 125, 172, 244n4, 247n31; literary/deep (shen), 92, 105 Space: symbolism of horizontal, 6, 88[, 135ff, 206; symbolism of vertical, 6, 86-87, 106, 135ff, 187, 256mo, 264m8; restrictions on use of public, 42, 44f, 52f, 74, 242n7, 242n9; sacred, 47, 52t; 101, 131-32, 142f, 149-50. See also Altar; Center; East; Geomancy; Heaven and Earth Circle; Mountains; North; South; West; World Axis Speak Mandarin campaign, 172-73 Spears, piercing with, 184, 201, 262n8 Spirit armies, 81f, 88f, 104, 183, 186, 205f, 215, 252n29, 266n35 Spirit mediums (jitong), 90-91, 163f, 2o8f, 218£, 225, 238n6, 251n15, 259n5, 26m2, 262n6, 2651125, 265n3o, 269mo, 269m2; and Heaven and Earth Society, 89-92, 96-97, 100-101, 107; as poets and storytellers, 91, 140-42,

316 I Index 147-48, 165, 257n17; at Nine Emperor Gods Festival, 184-88 passim, 192-203, 214, 262n8. See also Exorcism; Self-mortification; Spiritual collisions; Weapons Spiritual collisions (chongde), 90, 163, 181, 191 Saint George's Anglican Church, 43ff, 59, 244n29 Saint Johns' Days, 58-59 Stanton, William, 87, 91, 92, 252.1126, 253n34 Stein, Rolf, 256m5, 267n44 Stellar clock, 204, 267n46 Stereotypes, ethnic, 2of, 35, 68-69, 262n6 Stirling, William G., 84-85, 98, 249n4; and John Sebastian Ward, So, 91, 96,102, 249n4, 251ll16, 252n29 Stone Lions, Story of, 141-42, 146, 154, 2571117 Straits Chinese Magazine, 23, 29 Straits Chinese, 7, 22ff, 29, 33, 36f, 42, 149, 171, 238n6 Straits produce, 17, 19, 21 Straits Settlements, establishment of, 19-27; currency, 75, 248n46 Sugarcane, ritual use of, 145-48, 152, 154 Sullivan, Paul, 268m Sun Yatsen, 24-25, 27

154, 204, 209, 255n4, 258U31, 26lll}, 262n5, 264n23, 266n38f, 268n47, 269m3. See also Lin Shuangwen Uprising Talmon, Jacob Lieb, 237n4 Tambiah, Stanley J., 88, 105, 237n5, 253n37 Tamil minority, 2, 17, 42, 45, 125, 242n8 Tan Sooi Beng, 26om3 Tanjung Tokong, 150, 152-53, 198 Tee OngYah (Divine King Chi), 192, 265n25 Temple committee, 28, 41, 149, 153f, 193-202 passim, 215 Temple of Clear View (Qingguan Si), 187f, 191 Temple of Paradise (file Si), 24,32-33, 35, 143, 188, 14lll30, 240n27f Temple of the God of Prosperity, Virtue, and Morality (Fude Zhengshcn Miao ), 76, 224 Temple of the Numinous King (Lingwang Miao), 96 ter Haar, Barend, 61, 81, 87f, 97, 185f, 251m8, 2)1ll20, 2521127 Thailand, 24, 26, 55, 187, 189f, 203 Thaipusam, 189 Thanksgiving, rituals of, 127, 138, 143-48, 153, 164, 19}, 200-201 Theater-state, 11, 88, 243n26

11, 27, 70, 74-78, 248n43 Surname groups, 28, 5off, 243n27 Sword: ritual use of, 61-64, 86, 91, 101, 182, 184, 189, 201-6; magical, 93-94, 212f; god's weapon, 94, 99, 101, 188, 209, 212f

Third Prince (San Taizi), 10, 90, 131, 192, 195f, 201, 215. See also Nazha Thompson, Stuart, 267n41 Three Agents/Lords/Emperor Lords (Sanguan, Sanguan Dadi), 137, 160, 256n11 Three Primordials (Sanyuan), 137, 256n11 Three Religions Bushel Lamp (Sanjiao Doudeng), 204-5. See also Bushel basket Three sacrificial meats (sansheng), 99, 145, 160

Sword throne, 184, 189, 201

Three-fold symbolism, 6o, 137, 143, 150, 154,

Sworn brotherhoods, 21, 26f, 39, 54-55, 74-77,

253n33> 257Ill8 Thugs, 42, 242n5 Tian Youhong, see Vanguard Tiangong Tan (Lord of Heaven Altar/Temple),

Sun, cosmology of, 59, 96, 103f, 135f, 149, 188, 255n6. See also Qian; Invite the fire Superstition (mixin), 7, 9f, 30, 39, 70, 128!; 158, 179ff, 217-19, 237n5, 247n35, 268n3 Suppression of Dangerous Societies Act ( 1890 ),

81-85 passim, 94, 150-51, 191, 239m4, 244n5, 258n26; suppression of, 11, 27, 70, 74-78; British perspectives on, 48, 56, 57, 60-74

passim, 78, 82f, 246m9; historiography of, 55-56, 81, 146, 244n6; and Freemasonry, 6s68, 249n7. See also individual names of

groups

143 Tianguan (Lord of Heaven), 136f, 256n9, 258n30 Tiger Generals, 94, 248n52 Tiger God/spirit (Hu Ye), 149f, 152, 213,

Taboos, ritual (pantang), 51, 191, 193f, 203, 215, 262n4, 264n22

258n27 Time: divisions of, 136f, 191, 203-4, 207; astral

Taiji (Great Ultimate), 89,203-4 Taishang Laojun, 9, 91, 147-48, 188

clock, 204, 207, 267n46 Tokong (temple or sacred image), 2571124

Taisheng Ye, see Great Saint Taiwan, 8, 126, 146, 268n7; popular religion in,

Tapley, Marjorie, 89 Tourism, 15, 178, 254n6, 262n8

Index I 317 Tree, sacred, So, 152, 210-11, 219. See also \'\'odd

axis Triad, 21, 26, 55, 77-78, 239m3, 244n2, 248nso. See also H eavcn and Earth Society Triadic symbolism, see Three-fold symbolism Trocki, Carl, 20, 248n41 Tua Pek Kong Society, see Kian Tek Society Tua Pek Kong, see God of Prosperity Tun Abdul Razak, 119 Tun Sardon Foundation, 171 Turtle/tortoise (gui), 145, 213f, 25om1 Ullambana, 158, 165. See also Hungry Ghosts Festival Umbrella, imperial, 98, 206 Unborn Old Mother (Wusheng Laomu), 210 UNESCO, 224, 269n9 United Celebratory Society ( Tongqing She), 76 United General Assembly of Malaysian Daoist Organizations, 224 United Malay National Organization (UMNO), 258m Unity movement, Penang, 128, 156-58, 166-81 passim, 258m Universal Ferry (Central Primordial) Committee (Pudu [Zhongyuan] Weiyuanhui), 16668, 172, 178-81, 259n6, 26om3; street committees, 156, 158, 161-62, 166-70, 259n6ff; philanthropy, 167-72, 178-79, 2601114-m7 Universal Ferry (Pudu ), 158-59, 165-66, 259n9. See also Hungry Ghosts Festival Upper Primordial Festival (Shangyuan ]ie), 137, 258n3o. See also Invite the Fire; Lord of Heaven Urn (lu): ofHeaven and Earth Society, 87, 94, 99, 100, 102; used to invite the fire, 152-55; at Hungry Ghosts Festival, 161, 168, 18o; at Nine Emperor Gods Festival, 188ff, 195--98 passim, 201,2631113 Urn, keeper of (luzhu), 41, 161, 197f Vagabond Buddha (]igong), 10, 131, 133, 141f, 269m2 Vaisravana, 210, 267n44 van der Veur, Paul, 245n11 Vanguard (Xianfmg), 85, 91, 95ff, 100,102,97, 147> 252n26 Vasil, R. K., 114 Vast Favor Venerable King (Guangze Zunwang), 183, 198, 2561116

Vast Gate (Hangmen), 99,101, 253n38 Vaughan, Jonas Daniel, 45, 2461121; on popular religion, 2, 41, 142, 159f, 251m5; on Heaven and Earth Society, 64-66, 71, So, 169, 244n3, 246n22, 249n2, 257n2} Vegetarianism, 166, 185, 189-94 passim, 198, 2561116,265n28 Vernacular fiction, 10, 93, 140, 190, 192, 208-14, 238n6, 2511118, 268n48 Vertical integration, 57, 169, 2601116 Wallace, Anthony, 2551115 Wan Yunlong, see Myriad Cloud Dragon Wangye, see Divine Kings Ward, John Sebastian Marlo, and William G. Stirling, So, 91, 96, 102, 249n4, 2511116, 252n29 Water Margin, 251m8 Water: and Daoist cosmology, 40, 89, 101, 135ff, 149-50, 160, 204, 213f; ritual passage across, 87, 102, 107; ritual drinking of, 87, 101, 140, 195, 253n33; and north, 95, 102, 135, 190, 204 Wealth God (Caishen), 259mo. See also God of Prosperity Weapons, magical, 93-94, 101, 182, 189, 196, 200-203,206,212,252n30,266n36 Weber, Max, 68, 186f, 241n31 \Veld, Governor Frederick, 28, 68 Weller, Robert, 237n5, 265n29 \Vest, symbolism of, 32, 101f, 135, 204, 206 Western Paradise, 32, 102, 206, 240n29, 252n24 Whip, 201, 252n3o White Flag Society, 82, 84 White Lotus Society, 89 William Stirling Collection, 98, 249n4 \'\'illiams, Loretta, 2451111 Winter Solstice, 59, 131, 144 Wong, C. S., 146, 255111, 2631113, 267n45 World axis (Axis mundi), 103, 135, 195-96, 206, 210-11, 266n32 World Heritage List, UNESCO, 224, 269n9 World Wars I & II, 32, 78 Wu Lien-Teh, 30, 139, 180, 188, 238n6, 2401123, 2411137 Wudang Mountain, 190, 204, 209-10, 212 Wusheng Laomu (Unborn Old Mother), 210 Wynne, M. L., 77 Xiayuan Jie (Lower Primordial Festival), 137. See also Nine Emperor Gods Festival

318

I Index

Yang, 96, 100, 103, 135, 137f, 143, 189f, 205, 212, 264n17, 267n40. See also Double-yang Festival; Dualistic symbolism Yang, C. K., 218, 238n7, 264n17, 267n40 Yap Ah Loy, 259n4 Yeap Chor Ee, 141 Yen Ching-hwang, 240n22 Yeoh Seng Guan, 268n2 Yeoh,Brenda,242117 Yijing (Book of Changes), 9, 89, 91,101, 135ff, 185 Yin, 103, 135, 137, 2581127. See also Dualistic symbolism Yixing, sec Ghee Hin

Yii Chun-fang, 240n28 Yuan Dynasty, 133 Yulanpen, 158, 165 Yunglo Emperor, 209 Zhejiang, 203, 264n21 Zheng Chenggong, 146 Zhenwu (Perfected Warrior), 268n47. See also Emperor of the Dark Heavens Zhongyuan Jie, see Central Primordial Festival Zhuang Jifa, 56 Zoroastrianism, 2451114