On a chill autumn day in 1948, a former officer in the British Indian Army walked down a London back street on his way to Chinese language classes. In a shop window, a small gnarled pottery figure caught his eye.
He had GBP5 (about HK$61) in his pocket, his entire weekly army allowance. He stopped, bought the image and continued on his way to class; only later would he think about what he would eat for the next seven days.
Keith Stevens laughs. That was his introduction to Chinese deities.
It took him 13 years to have the statue reliably identified as The Good Doctor, Lu Dongbin, one of the Eight Immortals. By that time, Mr Stevens was serving in the British Army in Singapore where he had happily made the acquaintance of scores of heavenly figures. But the genial doctor-god remains one of his favourites.
Few people are as familiar with the astonishing diversity of Chinese deities, demons and spirits as Mr Stevens. Nobody can know all of them. There are, he estimates, hundreds of thousands, some unknown outside their remote village where peasants venerate and ask help from a local deity who reigns over a nearby bamboo grove.
Then there are the mighty gods and goddesses who rule almost universally: the Northern Emperor, the Goddess of Mercy and other familiar figures seen grimacing or blandly smiling from incense-shrouded altars from Hainan to Heilongjiang.
