Rigel Kent

Because of Ong's academic training, I am very curious about his amazing career transformation from a plant culture specialist to a self-proclaimed chinese culture specialist. To understand this conversion, it is maybe useful to briefly look at Ong's publication. Phase I: Ong's Scientific Publications (1972 -- 1990) Ong Hean Tatt (1972) Physiology of the responses of plant tissues to changes in water economy, PhD thesis, University of Malaya. Ong Hean Tatt (1976) Studies into tissue culture of oil palm. Proc. Malaysian International Agricultural Oil Palm Conference, Kuala Lumpur (14-17 June 1976) Ong Hean Tatt (1976) Development of in vitro culture techniques in MARDI as tools for plant propagation, Proc. National Plant Propagation Symposium, Kuala Lumpur (19-21 July, 1976) Ong Hean Tatt (1977) Water stress action on the isoenzymes patterns of proteins and peroxidases of excised tomato cotyledons, Proc. 4th Malaysian Biochemical Society Conference, Kuala Lumpur Ong Hean Tatt...

Dr. Ong Heat Tatt is a botanist specializes in plant physiology. He was trained at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Malaya in the late sixties. In 1972, Ong completed his research on the physiology of the responses of plant tissues to changes in water economy and was awarded a PhD degree. However, the way I got to know Ong is via a book on Chinese culture written by him. The title of the book is The Chinese Pakua: An Expose . I was deeply disturbed by some of the arguments expounded in the book, in which Ong, based on a book by Kang and Nelson , errorneously associate the origin of some of the Chinese characters with the Biblical stories. Following Kang and Nelson, Ong sectionalized the Chinese character "禁" (meaning forbidden) to the following components: "木" (tree) + "木" (tree) + "示" (God/divinity) and proceed to explain the character as follows: God created two trees in the Garden, and He forbade Adam and Eve to eat the fru...

It is well known that the traditional religion of the Chinese is polytheistic. And two of our most popular deities are Guan Yu (关羽) and Avalokitesvara (阿婆卢吉低舍婆罗). According to Chen Shou (陈寿), Guan was born in between 147 to 167 AD in Shanxi (山西). Near the end of Eastern Han Dynasty (东汉, 200 – 220 AD), he was recruited by the warlord Liu Bei (刘备) at Hebei (河北) and became his bodyguard. When Liu was defeated by Cao Cao (曹操), Guan was captured and given a post in Cao’s administration. However, because of his loyalty to Liu, he did not stay long with Cao and later returned to Liu. He was subsequently killed and decapitated in Hubei (湖北). Guan's death is intricately related to Zhuge Liang's (诸葛亮) decision for not dispatching military forces to assist Guan when he was surrounded by Sun Quan's (孙权) men. Deitification of Guan and mass constructions of temple worshiping Guan actually started about 900 years ago. During this period, Guan was given many honorific titles by many impe...