Cantonese Heritage

達摩禪師與西來初地

Buddhism as a foreign religion which has flourished in China for centuries, was at first introduced from India by navigating monks who landed in Southern China, particularly, the postal city Canton.

The long-standing relationship between Canton and Buddhism started as early as the year 147 A.C., when a Buddhism translator from Persia arrived at the city for the first time by sea. But the most important monk who arrived at Canton and brought important reforms upon the Chinese sect of Buddhism was Bodhidharma, an Indian prince who arrived at Canton after three years’ navigation in 527 A.C..

He settled at the bank of the Pearl River near the city, and built up his own temple. At that time, Canton was one of the rare places where local Chinese would find different exotic religions competing each other in their own temples or mosques on the streets. Muslims had been seen in Canton for centuries as well as Buddhism. Therefore, together with other foreigners with different purposes, Bodhidharma spent several years in Canton as an expatriate before he moved on to the North. The place where he stayed was later called “Sai Loy Tso Dei”, which means “First arrived from the West”. One apparent reason for Bodhidharma to leave Canton and sailed to the North was that Canton was too noisy for him as a commercial spot and he needed more time for meditations. It was said that he later settled in the Shaolin Temple, where he developed the famous Shaolin Kongfu. Legend has it that he spent nine years in front of the stonewall for meditations, without realising birds were making nest on his shoulder.

The old temple set up by Bodhidharma; it is said that inside the pagoda there stored the cremations of the Buddha.

The temple which he set up still stands there today, but the Pearl River has become much narrower, and therefore, the temple has gradually receded into the depth of the land and becomes part of the city centre. Life went on as Bodhidharma left his first Chinese settlement in Canton, and business activities continued as usual in the neighbourhood of his temple. Businessmen saw the temple as a commercial opportunity and chose the streets nearby the temple for selling jades, because Buddhists often used jades as their ornaments. Perhaps it is a fact that Canton as a very early cosmopolitan city its people only regarded Bodhidharma and his doctrines as one choice amongst so many from the other countries.

Inside the temple

一個十九世紀外國商人眼中的廣州點滴

This is a piece of chronicle from a European businessman about some of his memories about Canton in the 1830s. This entry is a translation from Chinese into English, but the original text is not in Chinese at all.

In the year 1833, there had been eight successive months of draughts in Canton and neighbouring regions around the town. Stock of rice and other foods witnessed freefall and the weather was very hot. The governor and other officials in Canton visited temples each day, praying for rains in front of the sculptures of the dragon kings, who were regarded by the Chinese culture as the gods in charge of rains or other water falls. According to the Chinese legends, when the dragon kings sneezed in the sky, their drops of snivels would become raindrops to the earth.

The sculptures of the dragon kings were finally taken out from the temple and the government organised huge scale of parade as part of the pray for rains. Local Cantonese people put massive amounts of incense in front of the sculptures, obviously an attempt to irritate the noses of those dragons with the smoke of the incense. But the sculptures remained still and the sky was as hot as before.

Some old local people said dragon kings would be entertained by music and dances, and if the dragon kings were happy, they would render some rain as reward. Therefore the government organised numerous instrumentalists to play music in front of the sculptures. It was more boisterous than any festivals in the town, and the ceremony lasted for hours before everyone got tired. To show more faith, Taoists monks were told to read sacred scripts in front of the dragon sculptures. It lasted until the mid-night and people put the sculptures back to the temple with the most polite servitude, wishing they would not irritate the dragon kings for too long.

But there was still no rain. The government became desperate, and the local Cantonese people lost patience. They concluded that the dragon kings were selfish, wayward, and indifferent to the difficulties of the people. Suddenly, the sculptures were dragged out from the altar by the people, who started to shout and yell at the sculptures with the most venomous insults. The words were very nasty and even personal, some of them even whipped the backs of the sculptures in order to vent their anger. Still, there was no rain.

Canton Visited by Swedish Ship Götheborg Three Times

瑞典訪粵古船“歌德堡號”

In 1984, just nine hundred metres away from the harbour of the Swedish city Goetheborg, people discovered a shipwreck, heavily loaded with Chinese porcelains and some huge boxes, inside which, archaeologists found packages of tea leaves. The patterns on the porcelain containers were obviously Chinese-styled after the mud on them was removed.

The shipwreck later was identified as the “Götheborg”, the ship which sailed to Canton, a coastal city in southern China for three times in the late 18^th century. Its first voyage from Sweden to the Far East city started in January 1739 and finished in June 1740; its second voyage from February 1741 to July 1742, and its last one from March 1743 to September 1745.

The ship was commissioned by the Swedish East Indian Company to purchase tea leaves, porcelains, rattans, silks and other luxurious items from China, particularly, its only harbour city then, Canton.

Ever since the year 1661, the Chinese Imperial government of the Qing Dynasty in Peking decreed that all the Chinese coastal towns and residences should shut off their harbours, because the Imperial court feared that relics of former Dynasty, the Ming, would organise assaults from their power-base, Taiwan. Many coastal cities in the North had to let their residents migrate miles away from the sea-shore, and all the decks, harbours, and facilities like those were mandated to be destroyed. Smugglings organised by Cantonese local officials, however, were thriving for decades. Many official families had their own voyage crews, and they aggregated huge amount of wealth with this business without having to pay taxes.

When the relics of Ming in Taiwan were finally tamed by the Qing forces, the Imperial Court started to consider opening up the coastal line again. But the Court was divided by those who were by officials controlled by interest groups from Canton and Fujian, who had made huge profits from hegemonic business. After several rounds of giving-and-takings, the Court decided to open up the harbours in Cantonese region, Fujian region, Zhejiang region, and Jiangsu region. Under the administration of Cantonese custom house, harbours in Canton and Macao became the biggest ones in Southern China. Cantonese harbour had a lot of advantages compared with those in the North because the distance from Canton to Europe was the shortest and therefore Canton rapidly ascended to a thriving trading centre.

The Swedish ship "Goetheborg" revisited Canton in 2003.

European powers were jealous of each other when they attempted to establish trading relations with China in Canton. The rivalries between Portuguese colonisers in Macao and British businessmen were particularly fierce. Compared with the Netherlands, Britain and Portugal, Sweden entered the competitions comparatively later. The “Götheborg”, however, was not the first Swedish ship to Canton. After the Swedish East India Company was founded in 1731, the ship “King Frederic” started its voyage from the city Götheborg to Canton from March 7^th, 1732. A Scottish businessman, Colin Campbell, who had been to Canton for several times, was assigned as the prime negotiator for Sweden Kingdom in the Chinese Empire. Compared with the other European powers, Sweden’s demands for luxurious items in Asia were smaller. Most of the time, Swedish ships took wood products for sell in Cadiz of Spain; after they took the cash, they would set for China and bought necessary items from China with the cash. What they bought from China included porcelains, tea leaves, textiles, pearls, table-clothes, buttons and rattans. Though Campbell established good relationships with local Cantonese officials, he and many other European representatives had never managed to obtain diplomatic relationships with China and were treated restrictively by the Imperial Court, which was always regarded as arrogant and chilly. The ship “King Frederic” set sail back to Sweden on January 16^th and returned to Götheborg on September 7th.

On September 12th, 1745, it was the third time for the ship “Götheborg” to sail back to its hometown from Canton. Just nine hundred metres away from its harbour, the ship capsized, with its two thirds of loads sunk into the bottom of the sea, though no one was killed. The rest of the goods it brought back, were enough to pay back the whole voyage’s expenditure.

In 1993, the New West India Company decided to build a new “Götheborg” according to the original style, and prepared for a voyage to Canton in 2003. Of course this time, the Cantonese government was very hospitable. The jubilant firework and the festive reception of the Swedish King in 2003 would have been totally impossible back to the 18^th century.

This time the Swedish were received so much more warmly than the last time in the 18th century.

The Light House as Muslim Mosque in Canton built in 627 A.D.

(Photo taken by Rob)

光塔清真寺

When Canton was the major destiny of the Over-sea Silk Way, there was an Islamic missionary who arrived in Canton and built a mosque in the year 627 A.D., with financial supports of the them Arabian immigrants in the city. In the mosque, there was a tower which also functioned as a light-house for the sailing shops coming into the Pearl River. Nowadays, people can only see that the tower is quite far away from the river, but that is the result of centuries of landscape transformations. Back to the Tang Dynasty, the Pearl River was so much wider.

The Light-house mosque is one of the earliest mosques in China, and now it is still a sacred place for Muslims. The tower was ruined by fire in 1343 once, and was restored seven years later. The outer wall of the tower was painted with powder of oyster shells, in order to make it brighter. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter, but it is said that inside the tower, there is no floors but just a spiral ladder to the top. Before Ming Dynasty, there was a golden current-indicator in the shape of hen at the roof of the tower, but it was once ruined by typhoon later. After 1949, people made the roof into the shape of a dome in order to restore Islamic fragrance to the architecture.