星洲道院 • 世界紅卍字會新嘉坡總主會
The Origins and Founding of the Singapore Dao Yuan
and The World Red Swastika Society (Singapore Administration Centre)
Part Four: The Founding of the Singapore Dao Yuan - 1936
Reorganisation - From Tian Qing Cao Tang to Xingzhou Dao Yuan
Returning to Singapore, Yu Zizhong convened a meeting of the community. The proposal was to reorganise the Tian Qing Cao Tang as the XingZhou Dao Yuan (星洲道院) – while Guangzhou and Hong Kong retained their original Cao Tang names, as the majority there had not consented to the change. The Singapore community unanimously agreed. The reorganisation strategy was legally astute: since the Tian Qing Cao Tang already existed as a functioning community, reorganisation was an internal matter requiring no new regulatory approval – allowing the Dao Yuan to establish its institutional foothold before registering the more publicly visible The World Red Swastika Society.
Buddha Ji transmitted approval, commending the community for finding the expanded premises at 214 Orchard Road (烏節律二百十四號) – a larger location that could provide a proper base for the growing community. The premises search had already been underway.
The Search for Premises - The Compass, the Haunted House, and the Exorcism
A divine instruction specified that the new premises must face south (坐北朝南 – sitting north, facing south) in accordance with cosmological orientation. Four founding members – including Chen Zhimian – set out daily after meals carrying compasses, walking the streets of Singapore checking the orientation of every empty building. For more than ten days, every candidate was rejected by the planchette. A spirit guardian then directed the search eastward.
They found a qualifying building – sitting north, facing south – immediately identified by local children as a haunted house where residents died. The planchette approved it. Lo Chengde negotiated the lease with the landlord, Zhuang Qingli’s Cold Storage (庄慶利喊冷館), who warned of fierce ghosts. Lo Chengde replied: “We are renting it to be a Dao Yuan. We are not afraid of ghosts.” The lease was agreed. The building was swept, washed, and repainted. A rites-of-liberation ceremony was performed over eighteen days to exorcise four resident spirits – one man, one woman, and two children. On the 19th day of the 9th lunar month, 1936, the community took possession.
On that same date – the 19th day of the 9th lunar month, 1936 – the XingZhou Dao Yuan was officially established at 57 Kampong Bahru Road, before relocating to the 214 Orchard Road registered address.
The Huang Er Gu Story - Healing, Faith, and the Seed Donation
The acquisition of the permanent premises is inseparable from the story of Huang Er Gu (黃二姑, daughter of Huang Fubo 黃福伯). Her husband Zhang Boyuan came to the Dao Yuan in distress: Huang Er Gu was gravely ill; Chinese and Western medicine had failed. A fortune diviner had said to find a doctor whose name contained a Chinese character with three-dots-water radical (三點水). Zhu Zhiduan pointed out at once that the character 濟 in 濟佛 (Buddha Ji) contains that radical. A planchette prescription was requested.
When the prescription arrived home, the family debated whether to use it. Huang Er Gu overheard everything and said:
From this moment, Yu Zizhong became Zhisheng – and the stranger became known as his Shandong Shifu (山東師父, Shandong Master), while the Wuying Mountain Master behind him was referred to as the Ancestral Master (祖師).
She took the prescription and fully recovered. She became a daily presence at the Dao Yuan from that time. When a divine instruction came that a permanent building must be purchased – to anchor the Dao Yuan and stabilise its transforming work against approaching calamities – Huang Er Gu immediately donated ten thousand Straits dollars as seed money. With this anchor donation, negotiations began for what became the community’s permanent home.
When the original price was agreed and then raised by the landlord after learning of divine approval, the community consulted the planchette. The divine response was clear:
Formal Registration - 1936
Dr. Lo Chengde (羅承德, 1883–1949, Dao name Zhiyuan 智元) – physician, former President of the Singapore GuangZhou Association (岡州會館), and one of the four founding members – applied to the British Straits Settlements Registrar of Societies for registration of the XingZhou Dao Yuan. The application was granted with exemption from registration: the government deemed the community’s purpose genuinely pure, requiring no periodic inspection.
On the 2nd of November 1936, the grand opening ceremony was held at 214 Orchard Road. The Jinan Mother Dao Yuan sent a delegation led by Li Zhenjun (李智真), accompanied by Xu Nanzhou (許南洲) and planchette assistants from both the Mother Dao Yuan and the Hong Kong Dao Yuan. The opening was a landmark occasion – the Singapore Dao Yuan was formally part of the worldwide Dao Ci network.
The Four-Character Dao Name Plaque - Singapore's Cosmic Mission
歐亞咸孚 Ōu Yà Xián Fú
Every Dao Yuan received a four-character Dao name plaque (道名匾額) from the Jinan Mother Dao Yuan encoding its specific spiritual mission. Singapore’s plaque – 歐亞咸孚 – declares: Europe and Asia (欧亚, the two great hemispheres of the world) shall all carry conviction (咸孚, all inspired to trust and commit to the practice). Singapore was commissioned not as a local charitable organisation but as a cosmic relay point: the pivot from which the Dao would be transmitted from East to West, from Asia outward to the two hemispheres of the world.
The plan was graduated: Singapore and Malaysia first, then Southeast Asia, then the Western hemisphere – accumulating experience, developing literature, building the human capacity to one day establish the Dao on Western soil. As subsequent planchette transmissions would confirm, the calamities of the coming era were expected to strike Asia first – making the deepening of roots in Southeast Asia both urgent and cosmologically necessary.