47
3. Han Xiangzi in Modern Taiwan
While the Baxian are still very much part of people’s consciousness in Taiwan and China, Han Xiangzi as an individual is a little known figure nowadays. The Han Xiangzi quanzhuan is still being reprinted in several editions in China and apparently has a readership.48 No mass Han Xiangzi quanzhuan edition is currently in print in Taiwan, though two were published from the 1970s to the early 1990s.49 In my search for the
46 Wang Hanmin, op.cit., p.109. See also Wu Yimin 武藝民, Zhongguo daoqing yishu gailun 中 國道情藝術概論 (Taiyuan: Shanxi guji chubanshe, 1997), 135 et passim.
47 For a more detailed description of the literary tradition of the Han Xiangzi story, see the
“Introduction” to my translation of the late Ming dynasty novel Han Xiangzi quan zhuan.
Another member of the Baxian with a separate narrative tradition is He Xiangu, who has a number of baojuan to her name and appears occasionally as an independent deity in Taiwanese popular religion. In fact, from my experience among Taiwanese spirit-writing cults, she is perhaps a better-known figure nowadays than Han Xiangzi, even though her role in Late Imperial literature is less significant than that of Han Xiangzi. She is the heroine of a recent martial arts novel by Xiao Yuhan 蕭玉寒, titled He Xiangu chuanqi 何仙姑傳奇 (Hong Kong: Xinghui tushu, 1994).
48 Modern PRC trade editions include: (1) Shenyang : Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 1987; (2) Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1989; (3) Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990;
(4) Beijing: Baowen Tang shudian, 1990; (5) Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1999; (6) Beijing:
Zhongguo zhigong chubanshe, 2001.
49 (1) Taipei: Fenghuang chubanshe, 1974; (2) Taipei: Wenhua tushu, 1983, 1992. An expensive, traditionally bound edition was produced by Tianyi chubanshe (Taipei) in 1985. An interesting
modern significance of Han Xiangzi, I kept asking people about him (friends, taxi drivers etc.), but knowledge was very limited. I visited three temples in southern Taiwan where Han Xiangzi is worshipped as a secondary deity:
- the Changli ci 昌黎祠 in Neipu 內埔 (Pingdong County 屏東縣), - the Sanshan Guowang Miao 三山國王廟 in Tainan City 台南巿, - the Guangning Gong 廣寧宮 in Chiayi City 嘉義巿.50
All three of these temples are derived from immigrant communities from Chaozhou in Guangdong province. In none of the temples was I able to collect detailed knowledge of Han Xiangzi and his relationship with Han Yu. A management committee member of the Tainan temple just knew that Xiangzi was Han Yu’s nephew. Several committee members in Neipu told me that he was Han Yu’s grandnephew and that he rescued Han Yu at the Blue Pass. Han Yu’s 819 poem is inscribed on a wooden board and hung on the wall of the Neipu temple. The chairwoman of the Guangning Gong in Chiayi thought that Han Xiangzi and Han Yu had no relationship with each other and were not even of the same dynasty. The committee member in Tainan knew that the two attendants of Han Yu are called Zhang Qian 張千 and Li Wan 李萬 (two servant figures from the Han Xiangzi quanzhuan), a fact not known to the committee members in Neipu.
development is the appearance of a simplified retelling of the novel in modern Chinese: See Zhiheng Shanren 制衡山人, Shuang-Han wuyu 雙韓物語 (Taipei: Miaolun chubanshe, 1994). Another modern paraphrase is Zhuo Zhuojie’s 周濯街 Han Xiangzi 韓湘子 (Taipei:
Guojia chubanshe, 2007).
50 Descriptions of these temples may be found in Zhang Zhizhong 張志忠 & Zheng Shuwen 鄭 淑文, “Taiwan diqu Han Wengong xinyang chukao 台灣地區韓文公信仰初考,” in: Wenhua Taiwan 文化臺灣, ed. by Zheng Zhiming 鄭志明, vol.1 (Zhonghe: Dadao wenhua bianji zhongxin, 1996), 245-272.
All in all, knowledge of Han Xiangzi’s background was rather slim. I surmise that this knowledge may have been greater in the past, otherwise Han Xiangzi would never have been installed in these temples and there would not be obvious links to the Han Xiangzi myth such as the Zhang Qian und Li Wan figures, and (in Neipu) the Han Yu poem, the clearly Daoist appearance of the Han Xiangzi figure, and a mural depicting a white crane behind the Han Xiangzi figure (in the Tainan temple). However, this knowledge apparently was lost at some time, and Han Xiangzi worship continues more or less by force of tradition only. In two of the three temples Han Xiangzi is an appendage to Han Yu--a situation derived apparently from the Chaozhou background.51 In the Guangning Gong in Chiayi the situation may have been similar until even that link was forgotten.
Knowledge of Han Xiangzi was somewhat better in a Taichung 台中
spirit-writing cult (“phoenix hall”, luantang 鸞堂) called Wumiao Mingzheng Tang 武 廟明正堂.52 Han Xiangzi is the hall’s main medium’s “immortal teacher” (xianshi 仙 師) and an interview with that medium (Mingbi 明筆) revealed that he knew the basic features of the Han Xiangzi story. Mingbi gave me copy of a Han Xiangzi baojuan, the
51 During the Qing dynasty, the major shrine devoted to Han Yu in Chaozhou (the Han Wengong Ci 韓文公祠) had a statue of Han Yu, flanked by Zhang Qian and Li Wan. On his left was a secondary altar devoted to Han Xiangzi. All of these figures were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. When the shrine was restored in 1984, apparently only a new Han Yu figure was installed. According to Qing eyewitness accounts, Han Xiangzi was portrayed as smiling and standing on clouds. His altar was framed by a couplet drawn from a poem ascribed to Han Xiangzi, in which he speaks of his magical powers to produce instant wine and flowers. See Zeng Chu’nan 曾楚楠, Han Yu zai Chaozhou 韓愈在潮州 (Shantou: Wenwu chubanshe, 1993), 68, 74-75.
52 This cult group was the object of my dissertation research. See Philip Clart, “The Ritual Context of Morality Books: A Case-Study of a Taiwanese Spirit-writing Cult” (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1997).
Han xian baozhuan 韓仙寶傳, telling me that the whole story was in there.53 He did not know the Han Xiangzi quanzhuan. Mingbi recently channelled a new scripture devoted to the Baxian, which may lead to a new focus for a phoenix hall he has recently founded, but that remains to be seen.54
The reprint of the Han xian baozhuan was done at the behest of a man called Kang Tianxin 康天心 by the Shengxian Zazhishe 聖賢雜誌社, a publishing house linked with another Taichung spirit-writing cult, the Shengxian Tang 聖賢堂 (“Hall of Sages and Worthies”). In an interview with Kang (who must be in his eighties), I learned that he hailed from Changting 長汀 City in Fujian, right on the border with Guangdong. His uncle ran a planchette cult there and one night Han Xiangzi descended into the planchette and asked Kang and several others to become his disciples. Since then Mr. Kang has had a special relationship with the immortal, which however apparently did not lead him to do deep research into the background of Han Xiangzi.
His knowledge too is mainly derived from the Han xian baozhuan, a copy of which he picked up in Taiwan and later had reprinted by the Shengxian Zazhishe. Generally speaking, I found a much higher level of knowledge about Han Xiangzi among phoenix disciples than among the temples that actually worship him as a deity--a sign of the greater theological interest of sectarians.