White Tiger (46 page)
Sheung Wan: The western end of the Hong Kong Island MTR line; most people get off the train before reaching this station.
Shoji (Japanese): Screen of paper stretched over a wooden frame.
Shui (Cantonese): ‘Water’.
Shui gow
:
Chinese dumplings made of pork and prawn meat inside a dough wrapping, boiled in soup stock.
Shroff Office: A counter in a car park where you pay the parking fee before returning to your car.
Sifu (Cantonese): Master.
Siu mai: Dim sum served at yum cha; a steamed dumpling with a skin of wheat flour containing prawn and pork.
Sow mei (Cantonese): A type of Chinese tea, with a greenish colour and a light, fragrant flavour.
Star Ferry: Small oval green and white ferries that run a cheap service between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.
Sticky rice: Dim sum served at yum cha; glutinous rice filled with savouries such as pork and thousand-year egg, wrapped in a green leaf and steamed.
Tae kwon do: Korean martial art.
Tai chi: A martial art that consists of a slow series of movements, used mainly as a form of exercise and chi manipulation to enhance health and extend life. Usable as a lethal martial art by advanced practitioners. There are several different styles of tai chi, including Chen, Yang and Wu, named after the people who invented them.
Tai chi chuan: Full correct name for tai chi.
Tai Koo Shing: large enclosed shopping mall on the north side of Hong Kong.
Tao Teh Ching
:
A collection of writings by Lao Tzu on the elemental nature of Taoist philosophy.
Tao, the: The ‘Way’. A perfect state of consciousness equivalent to Buddhist Nirvana, in which a person becomes completely attuned with the Universe and achieves Immortality. Also the shortened name of a
collection of writings (the
Tao Teh Ching
) on Taoist philosophy written by Lao Tzu.
Taoism: Similar to Buddhism, but the state of perfection can be reached by a number of different methods, including alchemy and internal energy manipulation as well as meditation and spirituality.
Tatami (Japanese): Rice-fibre matting.
Teppan (Japanese): Hotplate used for cooking food at teppanyaki.
Teppanyaki (Japanese): Meal where the food is cooked on the teppan in front of the diners and served when done.
Thousand-year egg: A duck egg that’s been preserved in a mixture of lime, ash, tea and salt for one hundred days, making the flesh of the egg black and strong in flavour.
Tikuanyin (Cantonese; or Tikuanyum): Iron Buddha Tea. A dark, strong and flavourful black Chinese tea. Named because, according to legend, the first tea bush of this type was found behind a roadside altar containing an iron statue of Kwan Yin.
Tin Hau (Cantonese): Taoist deity, worshipped by seafarers.
Triad
:
Hong Kong organised-crime syndicate. Members of the syndicates are also called triads.
Tsim Sha Tsui: Main tourist and entertainment district on Kowloon side, next to the Harbour.
Tsing Ma Bridge: Large suspension bridge connecting Kowloon with Lantau Island, used to connect to the Airport Expressway.
Typhoon: A hurricane that occurs in Asia. Equivalent to a hurricane in the US or a cyclone in Australia.
Wan Chai: Commercial district on Hong Kong Island, between the offices and designer stores of Central and the shopping area of Causeway Bay. Contains office buildings and restaurants, and is famous for its nightclubs and girlie bars.
Wan sui (Putonghua): ‘Ten thousand years’; traditional greeting for the Emperor, wishing him ten thousand times ten thousand years of life.
Wei? (Cantonese): ‘Hello?’ when answering the phone.
Wing chun: Southern style of Chinese kung fu. Made famous by Bruce Lee, this style is fast, close in (‘short’) and lethal. It’s also a ‘soft’ style where the defender uses the attacker’s weight and strength against him or her, rather than relying on brute force to hit hard.
Won ton (Cantonese): Chinese dumplings made mostly of pork with a dough wrapping and boiled in soup stock. Often called ‘short soup’ in the West.
Won ton mien (Cantonese): ‘won ton noodles’; won ton boiled in stock with noodles added to the soup.
Wu shu (Putonghua): A general term to mean all martial arts.
Wudang (Putonghua): A rough translation could be ‘true martial arts’. The name of the mountain in Hubei Province; also the name of the martial arts academy and the style of martial arts taught there. Xuan Wu was a Celestial ‘sponsor’ of the Ming Dynasty and the entire mountain complex of temples and monasteries was built by the government of the time in his honour.
Wudangshan (Putonghua): ‘Shan’ means ‘mountain’; Wudang Mountain.
Xie xie (Putonghua): ‘Thank you.’
Xuan Wu (Putonghua), pronounced [roughly] ‘Shwan Wu’: Means ‘Dark Martial Arts’; the Black Turtle of the North, Mr Chen.
Yang: One of the two prime forces of the Universe in Taoist philosophy. Yang is the Light: masculine, bright, hot and hard.
Yang and yin: The two prime forces of the universe, when joined together form the One, the essence of everything. The symbol of yang and yin shows each essence containing a small part of the other.
Yellow Emperor: An ancient mythological figure, the Yellow Emperor is credited with founding civilisation and inventing clothing and agriculture.
Yin: One of the two prime forces of the Universe in Taoist philosophy. Yin is Darkness: feminine, dark, cold and soft.
Yuexia Loaren (Putonghua): ‘Old Man Under the Moon’; a Taoist deity responsible for matchmaking.
Yum cha (Cantonese): Literally ‘drink tea’. Most restaurants hold
yum cha
between breakfast and midafternoon. Tea is served, and waitresses wheel around trolleys containing varieties of dim sum.
Yuzhengong (Putonghua): ‘Find the True Spirit’; the name of the palace complex on Wudang Mountain.
Zhu Que (Putonghua), pronounced [roughly] Joo Chway: The Red Phoenix of the South.
In undertaking to write this story I had to do a tremendous amount of research on the nature of Taoism and the deities that appear in the book. I’m by no means an expert, but I thought the reader would like a small amount of further information on how Chinese beliefs fit together.
Chinese folk beliefs are a mixture of animism, Buddhism and Taoism, which all seem to fit seamlessly together with a liberal dose of Confucian philosophy. Buddhism and Taoism both teach that a person who transcends the barriers inherent in our physical world will attain Immortality. Therefore, many famous historical figures are considered to be still around today and can be called upon to intervene when times are tough.
Chinese believe that the spirits of their ancestors continue to guide and protect them, and therefore must be cared for and regularly visited. There are two festivals a year when families visit the graves of dead relatives to clean the graves and provide food and offerings of paper money and consumer goods. The paper offerings are burned and help the dead relatives live a life of ease in the Afterlife.
Buddhism, with its philosophy of reincarnation, is also prevalent, with the belief that a person who casts off worldly needs can attain a perfect state of alignment with the Universe, or Nirvana. People who have attained this state are called Buddhas (there is more than one) and may return to Earth in human or animal form to help those in need. Kwan Yin is one of the most famous of these Bodhisattvas and the image of a Buddha on a car dashboard or in a roadside altar is often that of Kwan Yin.
Taoism is a complex and fascinating spiritual philosophy. Through internal and external energy manipulation, alchemy and spiritual enlightenment, a person may achieve perfect alignment with the basic nature of the universe, the Tao. To talk about the Tao is to escape its meaning because it is wordless. The essence of the Universe is formless, without structure or striving, and nameless; therefore, to achieve the Tao many practitioners cast off all physical pursuits and pursue a simple ascetic life of solitude and meditation. Once having reached the divine state of Taoist Immortality, these Immortals ascend to Heaven to join the Heavenly Bureaucracy, with the Jade Emperor presiding over a vast court of fascinating mythological personalities.
Both Taoist and Buddhist deities exist side by side in Chinese mythology; in the legend of the Monkey King (
Journey to the West
), the Monkey creates havoc in Heaven and the Celestial Taoist Bureaucracy is unable to stop him. The Buddha himself intervenes and subdues the Monkey, giving him the task of travelling to India to collect Buddhist scriptures to return to the people of China.
All of the spirits of those who are Immortal—be they Buddhist icons who have achieved enlightenment, spirits who represent forces of nature, or historical figures who are regarded as having attained Immortality—are
collectively called Shen. All Shen are believed to exist on a higher plane, but are able to come to Earth either through incarnation as an ordinary person or by taking the form of an ordinary person. The world is therefore believed by many to be full of Shen who live among us as humans.
The ideas of life after death and reincarnation are seamlessly joined together into the concept of Hell. After someone dies, their soul is judged and if it is found to be Worthy, it is escorted directly to the lowest level of Hell and released to Heaven to join the ranks of the Immortals. Those who are not Worthy are judged by the ten ranks of Courts in Hell. If found guilty, they are punished by demons for each set of crimes they have committed during their lifetime. When they have completed their punishment they are given a Soup of Forgetfulness and released back into the world to be reincarnated. Thus existence is an endless series of births, deaths and punishments, which continues until one is judged Worthy of Immortality.
The Four Winds (the White Tiger, Black Turtle, Red Phoenix and Blue Dragon) are slightly different from the Raised Immortals. They are more like signs of the zodiac than actual gods. They represent the four points of the compass and four of the five elements or essences of the universe: the Tiger is Metal; the Phoenix is Fire; the Dragon is Wood; and the Turtle is Water. The fifth essence of Stone or Earth is the Centre and represented by the Jade Emperor himself. The five essences are used throughout the practice of
fung shui
to provide symbolic references to both the compass points and the relevant essences; for example, turtle figurines will be placed on the northern side of a house to increase its water influence.
Xuan Wu himself is a fascinating and paradoxical god. He developed from the Black Turtle of the North, which sometime in its history was combined with a snake to become a combined serpent/turtle icon. The ancient Chinese believed that male turtles had no sex organs and
that female turtles mated with snakes to produce eggs. Xuan Wu symbolises this union. Calling a man a ‘turtle’ also refers to this legend; it’s calling him a cuckold whose wife is finding her satisfaction elsewhere. Chinese place a great deal of importance on family history and ancestry, so the idea that a female turtle mates with multiple males to produce clutches of eggs with mixed parentage is abhorrent. To call someone a ‘turtle egg’ is to call their parentage into question and is a very powerful insult.
Xuan Wu has changed over the centuries to become a human deity as well as the symbolic representation of the North; he has become the Dark Emperor Zhen Wu, the symbol of ultimate martial arts, the quintessential warrior. He was taken by the Ming Dynasty emperors as a patron and the Wudangshan Mountain complex was built in his honour. He is worshipped for his connection with water (thus the temple on Cheung Chau Island for Pak Tai) as well as his connection with martial arts.
One of the Chinese classics,
Journey to the North,
is the story of Xuan Wu and how he overcame two demons, a snake and a turtle, and through many incarnations in pursuit of the Tao attained Immortality. In another classic, the
Creation of the Gods,
he is incarnated as a great human general, and at the end of the battle is rewarded for his valour by being granted Immortality and the title of Celestial General.
The Chinese gods are more than static deities with fixed features. They are constantly evolving as stories are woven about them; they are considered to be alive and present in everyday affairs, involved in the running of the Universe and intervening whenever necessary. I hope that my novels will remain true to the storytelling tradition of this mythology, because I have nothing but the greatest respect for this wealth of wonderful beliefs, myths and legends.
Kylie Chan, Brisbane, 2006
Before I list some of the many sources that I waded through trying to find further information about the gods I used in my story, I should acknowledge one particularly useful resource that provided a great deal of my inspiration. It is a book called
Chinese Gods, the Unseen World of Spirits and Demons
by Keith Stevens. This huge glossy coffee-table type book is a meticulous cataloguing of the many gods the author encountered during his explorations through the temples of China and South East Asia. Although
Chinese Gods
is no longer in print, a more compact version called
Chinese Mythological Gods
by the same author is currently available from Oxford University Press and is listed in the suggested readings below.
Another source that merits particular mention is the Washington State University website on Chinese History and Philosophy:
www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CHPHIL/CHPHIL.HTM
These brilliant, tautly written and deeply researched pages are a treasure-trove for those interested in either the history of China or the different religions practised in this part of Asia.
Following is a (not exhaustive) list of some of the resources I referred to when creating this story.
A Chinese-English Dictionary,
Beijing Foreign Language Institute, Beijing 1986.
The Art of War, A New Translation,
Sun Tzu, (translated by the Denma Translation Group), 5th ed, Shambhala Publications Inc, Boston 2001.
