The History And Presence Of The Chinese Duo-Pek-Kong Temple In Penang Island, Malaysia

When reviewing the history of Malaysia,one will realize that Malaysia has been having a close relationship with China all these centuries.The historical record indicated that in the early century,it was in fact an unintentional move for Wang Mang to send his ambassador to Dungun in Peninsular of Malaysia accidentally,instead of the original destination of Kancipura in India.Starting from then,Malaysia and China has been maintaining their relationship for thousands of years.Initially,the Chinese visitors from China to Peninsular Malaysia were mainly ambassador, monk,businessman or adventurer.However,there was a major change of their identity later where they no longer landed Peninsular as a free-man, but most of them were sent there as a slave-worker.This happened due to various factors.As compared to those Chinese visitors visiting Peninsular as a free-man at the early stage,those labors who were later sent to Peninsular experienced a much more difficult life and lived without dignity and honor. When those Chinese labors first landed in Peninsular,they were aliens to the place and homeless.Hence,most of them had been arranged to stay with respective communities,labor unions or in the temples run by respective dialect-groups.Most importantly,such organizations and temples could provide them protection and convenience to their work. Temples,to those labors,not only providing them a shelter and protection, but also able to comfort them mentally and emotionally.In fact,mental and emotional fulfillment to those labors were far more important than providing them protections in terms of self-safety and monetary.That was why most of them had actually brought along some of the gods from their homeland to Peninsular Malaysia,and built the temples to worship the gods. Anyway,gods in Chinese temples in Malaysia are not all brought over from China,some were actually from the local community,for example the god worshiped in the Tanjung Tokong "Dua-Pek-Kong" temple in Penang Island is indeed a local god in Malaysia.The Tanjung Tokong Duo-Pek-Kong Temple in Penang Island not only attracted devotees to worship it,but at the same time,it has also raised the interest of many scholars of Malaysia,Taiwan,Hong Kong and other countries to study it.In 60' s,scholars had many rounds of disputes and arguments over the issues regarding the origination of Duo-Pek-Kong in South East Asia,the origination source between Duo-Pek-Kong and Land-Earth God.Unfortunately until today,there is no standardized and clear definition of the source of origin between the Duo-Pek-Kong and Land-Earth-God.Finally,some scholars suggested to do a field-study in the local community to gather more evidence,instead of searching through the historical record for comparison;hoping that this will gather more uncovered data and resources.