Who Is Tua Pek Kong? the Cult of Grand Uncle in Malaysia and Singapore Jack Meng-Tat Chia

ARCHIV ORIENTÁLNÍ 85, 2017 • 439 Who is Tua Pek Kong? The Cult of Grand Uncle in Malaysia and Singapore Jack Meng-Tat Chia INTRODUCTION A few years ago, I published an article on the Tua Pek Kong (Dabogong ) temple on Pulau Kusu, a small pilgrimage island in the south of Singapore. During the annual pilgrimage season in the ninth lunar month, as many as 200,000 pilgrims island to make offerings and give thanks to Tua Pek Kong, a popular deity, whose name literally means “Grand Uncle.” In that paper, I argued that the Singapore government’s interest in harnessing the economic potential of the Tua Pek Kong temple since the 1980s had led to the commercialization and touristization of Pulau Kusu.1 My colleagues were amazed by the active and dominating role of the Singapore government in managing society and developing the economy, such that even a small 8.5-hectare island was barely able to escape the attention of the state. Therefore, on a Sunday morning, I took them to the island to have a look at how the larger forces of social change and state management had impacted on Pulau Kusu in general and the Tua Pek Kong temple in particular. However, during our trip, what struck me the most was a simple question from a colleague from Mainland China: “Who is Tua Pek Kong?” To my surprise, my Chinese friend had neither heard of Tua Pek Kong in China nor was he aware of the god’s popularity among the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. His question inspired me to write this article. Who is Tua Pek Kong? Apparently, there is no agreement among scholars on the origins and identities of the deity. As early as the 1940s and 1950s, scholars Nanyang xuebao (Journal of South Seas Society), an academic journal founded by the Overseas Chinese community in Singapore. In a 1940 article, Han Huaizhun suggests that Tua Pek Kong was a deity unique to Southeast An earlier version of this article was presented at the New York Conference on Asian Studies in September 2012. I would like to thank Barbara and Leonard Andaya, Koh Keng We, Lee Ming-yen, Steven Sangren, Eric Tagliacozzo, Tan Ai Boay, Tan Chee Seng, Steven Patten, and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments. This work was supported by the Milton L. Barnett Scholarship from the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. 1 Jack Meng-Tat Chia, “Managing the Tortoise Island,” 72–95. ArOr – Issue 85.3 ISSN 0044-8699 © 2017 Oriental Institute (CAS), Prague Chia.indd 439 18.12.2017 9:43:32 440 • JACK MENG-TAT CHIA Asia. He surveys the diverse sources of Tua Pek Kong’s cult, and concludes that dynasty, he was a Sino-Malay deity whose name came from the Malay word “Tokong,” meaning temple.2 research efforts. A decade later, in his study on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 3 Around the same time, Han Huaizhun’s article sparked off a series of discussions on the origins of Tua Pek Kong in the Journal of South Seas Society. Xu Yunqiao contends that Tua Pek Kong was a spirit of the early Chinese pioneers and highlights the fact that the Overseas Chinese worshipped him as a Sinicized tutelary deity (Tudigong , meaning “Earth God”).4 Rao Zongyi considers Tua Pek Kong to be a tutelary deity that was popular among the Hakka (Kejia ) and the Teochew (Chaozhou ) community in Southeast Asia.5 In sum, early scholarship concluded that Tua Pek Kong was either a localized Sino-Malay deity unique to Overseas Chinese or a Sinicized tutelary deity akin to the Chinese Earth God. cult. Li Tianxi suggests that Tua Pek Kong was a tutelary Sino-Malay god invented by the Overseas Chinese in either Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand. He refutes the claim that Tua Pek Kong was a Chinese Earth God.6 Jean DeBernardi, however, argues that Tua Pek Kong was a symbolic creation that fused elements of Malay animistic worship with Chinese religious practices. She points out that the Malaysian Chinese worship of Tua Pek Kong resembles the Malay animistic worship of Datuk Keramat.7 Zheng Zhiming’s article marks a departure from previous studies. Instead of asking an either/or question concerning the origins of the deity, Zheng contends that the cult of Tua Pek Kong among the Overseas Chinese in general, and among the Hakka community in particular, should be understood in a broader traditional belief system of “heavenly god, earthly god, and ghost.”8 Therefore, Tua Pek Kong should not be viewed as a monolithic standardized belief system. Instead, the cult might be seen as a multifaceted religious belief combining diverse elements of Chinese 2 Han Huaizhun, “Dabogong Kao,” 18–26. 3 Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 39. 4 Xu Yunqiao, “Dabogong erbogong yu bentougong,” 7–8; idem, “Zaitan dabogong yanjiu,” 19–20. 5 Rao Zongyi, “Tan Dabogong,” 27. 6 Li Tianxi, Huaqiao huaren minjian xinyang yanjiu, 219–22. 7 Jean DeBernardi, Penang: Rites of Belonging in a Malaysian Chinese Community, 152. 8 Zheng Zhiming, “Kejia shehui dabogong xinyang zai dongnanya de fazhan,” 64–74. Chia.indd 440 18.12.2017 9:43:32 Who is Tua Pek Kong? The Cult of Grand Uncle in Malaysia and Singapore • 441 religious culture and local practices. Building on Zheng Zhiming’s argument, this study seeks to reconsider the various beliefs and representations of Tua Pek Kong’s cult in Malaysia and Singapore. In earlier studies of Chinese religion, scholars had raised questions over the mode of religious authority in Chinese society. Some early anthropologists suggested that the Chinese project their religious beliefs in the context of the relationships and roles within their own society. Thus, they present their gods earlier article whose argument he has since moved away from, argues that “gods are a metaphor for the system of authority, the state.”9 Arthur Wolf, on the other hand, places the gods in a three-tier relationship – emperor and empire, family and lineage, and stranger and outsider – which mirrors the Chinese social hierarchy.10 misunderstood his presentation of the “imperial metaphor.” He argues that the metaphor was not rigid and static, but had the ability to “change with changes in the structure of government.”11 Subsequently, Robert Hymes’s ground-breaking book offers a fresh interpretation of the Chinese model of divinity. He contends that the Chinese model of divinity can be understood as a “bureaucratic model” on the one hand, and a “personal model” of divinity and of divine-human relations on the other. In contrast to the hierarchical “bureaucratic model,” Hymes stresses that the “personal model” represents the following: (1) gods as extraordinary persons – a deliberately vague formulation, though the on earth, of the term i-jen, literally, “different person” or “extraordinary person,” persuades me it is apt; (2) hierarchy between gods and humans or between gods themselves as usually dyadic (one-to-one) instead of multileveled, and as based in a variety of connecting principles, including descent, teacher-student or master- disciple ties, or in such media of chosen connection as exchange or promise; (3) gods’ authority or special power as inherent in the person of the god, rather than delegated – this is an aspect of the god’s character as “extraordinary person”; (4) human interactions with divine authority as unmediated, direct (or at least relatively so); (5) gods’ relations to places and their inhabitants as either inherent or founded in the god’s own choice, and as permanent.12 9 10 Arthur P. Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” in Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, 175. 11 Popular Religion in China: The Imperial Metaphor, vi. 12 Robert Hymes, Way and Byway, 4–5. Emphasis in the original. Chia.indd 441 18.12.2017 9:43:32 442 • JACK MENG-TAT CHIA Robert Hymes’s “personal model” offers a useful framework to reconsider Chinese religious practices in the Chinese diaspora. Therefore, this article builds on Hymes’s concept of “personal model of divinity” to examine the multifaceted nature of the Tua Pek Kong cult in Malaysia and Singapore. It argues that in the absence of an imperial bureaucracy in Southeast Asia, the personal model aptly explains the proliferation of Tua Pek Kong’s cult among the Overseas Chinese communities. Tua Pek Kong was far from being a standardized god in a bureaucratic pantheon of Chinese deities; the deity was considered to be a “personal being” offering protection to those who relied on him. This study presents the multifaceted cult of Tua Pek Kong in three forms: a symbol of sworn brotherhood, a syncretic Sino-Malay deity, and a Sinicized god. This article draws on a variety of sources: Chinese epigraphic materials, colonial records, annals of Overseas Chinese, as well as several years of begin with a brief historical overview of Chinese migration and the spread of Chinese religion to Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century. Then, I will discuss the multifaceted cult of Tua Pek Kong in three ways, namely, as a brotherhood concluding remarks on how the study of Tua Pek Kong’s cult can contribute to the debates surrounding models of Chinese divinity and add a new dimension to our understanding of the Chinese in Southeast Asia. MIGRATION AND RELIGION IN MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE Historically, Southeast Asia has been an important meeting ground for commerce, cultures, and religions. International commerce was one of the Sino-Southeast Asian trade.13 As Anthony Reid points out, this transregional trade illustrates a “natural complementarity” between a densely populated and technically advanced China and the sparsely settled tropical kingdoms in the South.

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