White Tiger

The rest of the offerings were ready for the funeral in the main hall of the tablet rooms. A house stood in the middle of the hall, about two metres high, made of flimsy bamboo bracing and covered with paper. It had three storeys, with tiny air conditioners in the windows and a mah jong table in one room. A male and a female servant and a guard dog stood in the front garden. Next to the house was a Mercedes, with a driver made of paper, and stacked next to the car was a variety of day-to-day necessities, all made out of paper: a portable stereo, a mobile phone, clothes, a television, a tea set with a vacuum flask for the hot water, and more servants. The whole lot was waiting for the main funeral ceremony, when it would be thrown into the furnace in the garden next to the tablet rooms and burned. The essence would travel to heaven for the use of the dead relative.

April moved to the next room. The walls were lined with glass-fronted cabinets, with rows upon rows of ancestral tablets inside, rising all the way to the ceiling. There must have been a thousand of them. One wall had larger tablets for the more wealthy, but April’s ancestors inhabited one side cabinet and were smaller. The tablets were each about ten centimetres high and five wide, made of red plastic. The name of the ancestor was in raised lettering picked out in gold.

A large laminated dining table sat in front of the tablets, with an incense burner holding a stick of incense and a red plastic plate of oranges on it. The room smelled strongly of incense, and the ceiling was black with smoke.

While April fiddled around placing plates of oranges, apples and roast pork and chicken on the table, I wandered around the temple, carefully avoiding the grieving family and their paper-folding.

Another table with a cabinet above it stood next to one of the temple’s peeling mouldy walls, under a heavily barred window. The table and cabinet were packed full of statues of gods, many of them an identical statue of a woman in flowing robes carrying an urn.

A small elderly man, one of the temple attendants, approached me, grinning broadly. They obviously didn’t get many Westerners in this temple, it wasn’t on the main tourist route.

‘Who is this?’ I said, pointing at the goddess statue.

He shook his head, still grinning. No English. I asked in Cantonese, ‘Nidi hai binguo?’ and he nodded. ‘Kwan Yin.’

‘Ah, m’goi,’ I thanked him. Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, a Bodhisattva of the Buddhist faith who had attained Nirvana and then returned to Earth to help others achieve the same goal. The book in my room was good: its picture of Kwan Yin was almost identical to the statue.

The attendant pointed to a fierce-looking, red-faced god holding a halberd, a broadsword blade on the end of a pole. ‘Gwun Gong.’

I nodded, recognising the statue. The God of Justice was worshipped throughout Hong Kong, with altars in shops and restaurants as a protector against demons and bad luck.

Then I saw a statue in the corner whose image resonated with me, making me shiver. It was a small statue of a middle-aged man with long wild hair and black robes. He held a sword in his hand, ready for battle, and his bare feet rested on a snake and a turtle. ‘Nidi binguo?’

The attendant nodded wisely. ‘Pak Tai.’

‘On Cheung Chau?’ I asked, naming the outlying island that had a temple devoted to Pak Tai and was a popular tourist destination.

He nodded, grinning widely.

‘M’goi sai.’

‘M’hai,’ he said, and wandered off.

I studied the statue for a while, wondering why it made me feel a prickle at the back of my neck. It was simply decorated in black, unlike many of the Kwan Yin statues which were awkwardly splashed with a variety of garish colours and picked out in gold. I shrugged. I’d look him up in the book later.

When I returned to April she had finished kneeling on the cushion provided and bowing to her ancestors with the incense in her hands, and was putting the food back into her bag.

‘Do you know anything about Pak Tai?’ I said.

‘He has a temple on Cheung Chau,’ she said.

‘What else?’

She shrugged. ‘I think he has something to do with water, or rain, or something. Not sure. Let’s go to Central for afternoon tea.’

‘Sure.’

As we walked back through the temple’s courtyard I noticed a small concave mirror above the main entrance, with the eight Pa Kua symbols around it in a red octagonal frame. Demons couldn’t stand to see their own reflection, so the mirror was a barrier to them approaching the temple. The large screen just inside the door of the temple was another demon barrier: demons were well known to be unable to turn corners and could only move in straight lines.

‘Kwan Yin is a Buddhist icon. Why’s she in a Taoist temple?’ I asked April as we waited at the taxi rank for a passing cab.

‘She looks after people. If you buy a statue of her and donate it to the temple, you get good luck,’ April said.

‘Old people’s superstition?’ I said playfully, teasing.

She shrugged again. ‘Can’t hurt to get a little extra good luck.’

After dinner, back in my room I checked the Chinese gods compendium for Pak Tai and was referred to H’suantian Shangdi. Pak Tai was his name in Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Hong Kong and Southern China. In Northern China and in the standard Mainland dialect of Putonghua, he was called Xuan Tian Shang Di, the Supreme Emperor of the Dark Northern Heavens. There were a variety of legends about him, many of them conflicting, but he was credited with controlling weather and destroying demons, and he was also the Supreme Warrior and God of Martial Arts.

A fascinating deity. The book described his exploits at length; apparently one of the Chinese classics of literature was his story, how he had lived through more than a hundred incarnations before achieving Nirvana and being promoted to Heavenly Emperor.

I could see why he resonated with me now. The similarities between him and Mr Chen were obvious. Both in black, both with long hair, both involved with martial arts. Mr Chen probably took Xuan Tian as a role model to the point of making his appearance similar. I wondered if I should be concerned about this obvious piece of eccentricity, but Mr Chen was too delightful a person to let it worry me too much. He was as generous and caring as his daughter, and both of them were great fun to be with.

Simone squealed and water splashed in her bathroom next to my room. I closed the book. I hadn’t even heard them come back. I wanted to go in and see them, maybe help with Simone’s bath and putting her to bed. They were in there together, father and daughter, both of them adorable.

Then I shook my head. Keep it professional, Emma, and besides, it’s Sunday, the only day they can have some private time together without the rest of us hanging around.

I opened the book again to find out more about Xuan Tian Shang Di. Maybe there was information about him on the net as well.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ud15e178b-55da-58d7-83d3-070620fa7604)

Simone was still sleeping when I headed to the kitchen for breakfast on Monday morning. Monica was busily frying eggs for Leo as he sat at the small kitchen table nursing his coffee. He didn’t look up from his coffee as I walked in, but the expression on his face was priceless.

I found a mug in the cupboard and poured myself a cup of tea from the urn on the kitchen bench. ‘Can I make you anything, Miss Donahoe?’ Monica said. ‘Just Emma, Monica, and I can make my own toast, thanks. Does Mr Chen have peanut butter?’

‘Yeah, in the pantry,’ Leo mumbled into his coffee. ‘But no bread, nobody eats bread here. Monica will have to buy it for you.’

‘I’ll buy you bread, Emma,’ Monica said. ‘Milk bread?’

‘No, wholemeal if you can get it, please.’

Monica nodded. ‘I’ll see if I can find it in the Western supermarket when I buy food for Leo.’

‘Yeah, Leo has exotic tastes,’ I said, then sat at the table next to him and grinned. He looked as if he’d like to climb into his coffee cup. ‘Does Mr Chen know about your nocturnal activities?’ I asked.

He studied his coffee carefully. ‘He’s caught me too.’

‘And he’s okay with it?’ Sometimes Chinese tradition wasn’t very accepting.

‘Yeah, he’s okay.’ He smiled up at me. ‘Actually, he’s great.’

‘Does Rob have a brother?’

Leo shoved me playfully. Then he became more serious. ‘He’s okay with you bringing people home, but you have to check with me first. Call me on my cell phone and I’ll clear them before they come in.’

I stared at him.

‘I have to, you know?’