Fei Kun Balu – Zhang Chuntao From The Zhang Family

The southernmost Fei Kun Balu temple⁽¹⁾ in China is located in Hainan Province.

In fact, I could easily determine what era the Fei Kun Balu temples were from by looking at the characteristics of the Fei Kun Balu statues.

If it was a temple that was relocated by ethnic minorities, then the statue would be close to the image of a Taoist god. If the statue was built following Poker-face’s activities, it would have his obvious features and expression. Based on this, I could confirm whether Poker-face had actually been to that place or not.

There was also a pattern where if Poker-Face had been to the Fei Kun Balu temples or done any activities around the temples, then there would be inscriptions in the temples recording the stories about Fei Kun Balu’s manifestation.

Many details would be included in these stories, so if you were familiar with Poker-face, you could tell right away that those stories might have truly happened. This was a powerful clue that let me know he had been there.

Poker-face must have been to the Fei Kun Balu temple in Hainan. It was still a very special period in time when he went there. The fishermen⁽²⁾ who lived around that area would dive into the water and hunt for pearls with their bare hands. The water was so cold during winter that they would vomit blood after they came ashore. That was when they had low quality local wine to help them recover.

Although this kind of local wine was of low quality, it was indeed a miraculous medicine that helped relieve hypoxia. It appeared that Poker-face needed to go diving somewhere, so he ordered a lot of this local wine. The amount of alcohol he asked for was staggering; it seemed that he planned to go diving for at least a few months straight.

Since all of the local wine was sold, the fishermen stopped hunting for pearls that year. This resulted in a sharp decline in the production of pearls that year, which made their price become exorbitantly high. The price went so high that the fishermen were able to live a good life for almost ten years, so they built a Fei Kun Balu temple.

This was probably the only time that Poker-face was honored for his contribution to the economy.

No one knows where Poker-face went diving in Hainan, nor do they know what he was looking for.

Nowadays, the Fei Kun Balu temple in Hainan is still a popular place for worship. Moreover, two percent of the incense money is transferred to an old bank account which has existed since the end of the Qing Dynasty. Its latest activity occurred when someone made a new passbook in the 1970s.

No one knows who is running this account, but after doing some rough calculations, the amount of money in it should be astronomical. The account holder’s name is Zhang Chuntao. Although the account has existed for a long time, no one has ever used the money in it.

Many Fei Kun Balu temples have illustrations of Zhang Chuntao. He is portrayed as a little immortal on the side, a tiny fat man who is holding an abacus and a watermelon.

Poker-face has no memory of this person so his existence is a mystery to me.

This is all of the information I have about him.

I would like to record these things down, and I have always wanted to meet him.

<The Yueshang Thirteen><Table of Contents><Zhang Yueshan>

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TN Notes:

(1) The information about Fei Kun Balu Temples can be found in Daomu Biji Extra 7.14 (Little Brother Zhang and Zhang Haiqi infiltrate a wedding procession at Potluck Capital).

(2) The Chinese text wrote “Xu people (胥民)”, but “Xu people” was just a name for fishermen who lived in Hainan at that time. Most of them lived on boats.

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Translated by: Tiffany X
Edited by: merebear226