Tam Kung

Tam Kung (Chinese: 譚公; literally: "Lord Tam") or Tam Tai Sin (譚大仙) is a sea deity worshiped in Hong Kong and Macau.

In Chinese folk legends, Tam Kung was one of gods who could forecast the weather. He was born in Huizhou Prefecture. It was said that he could cure patients in his childhood. Tam Kung became an immortal in heaven at the age of twenty in the Nine-dragon Mountain in Huizhou. He was officially deified during the Qing dynasty. People whose ancestral home are in Huizhou or Chaoshan of Guangdong province worship Tam Kung most sincerely.

Temples in Hong Kong

Shau Kei Wan

The Tam Kung Sin Shing Temple (譚公仙聖廟) is located along Tam Kung Temple Road, at the northern end of Shau Kei Wan Main Street East, in A Kung Ngam, Shau Kei Wan. It was originally a small shrine. Local people raised money to construct it in 1905 and reconstructed it many times afterwards.

The statue of Tam Kung, which was first worshipped among the other gods in the temple, was formerly positioned in the Tam Kung Temple in Tam Kung Road (譚公道) in Kowloon City. There is a big rock in front of the temple and is believed to be Tam Kung's magic stamp. Local residents and fishermen are the sincere worshippers. On the birthday of Tam Kung (8th day of the 4th month in Chinese calendar), they will have a celebration and play a so-called "kung fu" show which is a major part of the celebration. A parade and dragon dance are also held on this occasion.

Tan (surname)

Tan, the pinyin romanization of 譚, is the 67th most common surname in China. The surname Chen based on the various Min dialects also sometimes romanizes as "Tan".

Origin

Two origins have been suggested for the Tan surname:

A study by geneticist Yuan Yida has found that people with either of the two Tan surnames are especially concentrated in Hunan Province which would tend to support these accounts. This does not mean that they are the most common surnames in that province.

Ud (cuneiform)

The cuneiform ud sign, also ut, and with numerous other syllabic uses, as well as multiple sumerogramic uses is a common sign for the mid 14th-century BC Amarna letters and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The sign is constructed upon the single vertical stroke , with various positionings of two wedge-strokes at the left, sometimes approximately centered, or often inscribed upwards to the left, the second wedge-stroke (or 'angled line-stroke'), occasionally inscribed/ligatured upon the first. The wedge-strokes can have any size, are often smaller than the vertical, but as an example, Amarna letter EA 256, can be almost as large as the vertical.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, sign ud is listed as used for the following linguistic elements:

Sumerograms

The usage numbers for each linguistic element in the Epic of Gilgamesh are as follows:lah--(2), par--(5), pir--(4), tam--(32), tú--(46), ud--(30), ut--(95), uṭ-(7), BABBAR-(1), UD-(75), UTU-(58).

Picul

A picul /ˈpɪkəl/ or tam is a traditional Asian unit of weight, defined as "a shoulder-load, as much as a man can carry on a shoulder-pole".

History

The word pikul appeared as early as the mid 9th century in Javanese.

Following Spanish, Portuguese, British and most especially the Dutch colonial maritime trade, the term picul was both a convenient unit, and a lingua franca unit that was widely understood and employed by other Austronesians (in modern Malaysia and the Philippines) and their centuries-old trading relations with Indians, Chinese and Arabs. It remained a convenient reference unit for many commercial trade journals in the 19th century. One example is Hunts Merchant Magazine of 1859 giving detailed tables of expected prices of various commodities, such as coffee, e.g. one pikul of Javanese coffee could be expected to be bought from 8 to 8.50 Spanish dollars in Batavia and Singapore.

Definitions

As for any traditional measurement unit, the exact definition of the picul varied historically and regionally. In imperial China and later, the unit was used for a measure equivalent to 100 catties.

Kung

Kung may refer to:

ǃKung people

The ǃKung, also spelled ǃXun, are a San people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola. They speak the ǃKung language, noted for its extensive use of click consonants. The "!K" in the name "ǃKung" is a click that sounds something like a cork pulled from a bottle. However, the click is generally ignored in English, where the name is pronounced "Kung".

Historically, the ǃKung lived in semi-permanent camps of about 10–30 people usually located around a water body. Once the water and resources around the village were depleted, the band would relocate to a more resource-rich area. They lived a hunting and gathering lifestyle with the men responsible for providing meat, making tools, and maintaining a supply of poison-tipped arrows and spears. The women provided most of the food by spending between two and three days per week foraging for roots, nuts and berries in the Kalahari Desert. As a hunter-gatherer society, they were highly dependent on each other for survival. Hoarding and stinginess were frowned upon, and the ǃKung's emphasis was on collective wealth for the tribe, rather than on individual wealth.

Kung (comics)

Kung is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe. The character was an Earth-2 supervillain who fought the Wonder Woman and All-Star Squadron of that world in stories taking place before the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Fictional character biography

The early life of Thomas Morita was fraught with difficulty. His parents immigrated to the United States from Japan before the Great Depression. During the Depression, his father was unable to find work and eventually died. His mother died soon afterward, leaving only Thomas and his sister, Nancy. Morita traveled to his parents' homeland to train as a samurai and learning of the Japanese-American internment only further fueled his hatred of America. At some point during his training, he underwent some unexplained mystical process that imbued him with the power to transform into animals.

Kung undertook his first assignment on December 30, 1941, to kill Prime Minister Winston Churchill on his way to Washington, D.C. but is stopped by the hero Steel. (All-Star Squadron #8 [April 1982])