ABSTRACT
Some years ago when a Chinese colleague was retiring from her long-term service at our university in Hongkong and planning to move overseas, we became the recipients of her family's generosity. Certainly it was unusual for Protestant Chinese persons to have an image of a traditional Chinese ghost in their home. Indeed, many less educated Chinese persons may have been instructed to destroy any similar statues or images when they became Christians, precisely because they had performed acts of worship before them in their homes. On the basis of these explanations, while adding some further reflections about some of the more unusual elements, we can reconstruct the situation around the appearance of Zhong Kui in the dream of the Tang dynasty emperor. From the angle of a fulfillment of Chinese hopes, Hong himself became the new Chinese Messiah in the likeness of a ghost-fighting Zhong Kui.
