Keith Stevens, a retired official of the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office, lived in Mersham, near Ashford, Kent. He was recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities of the vast subject of Chinese deities, about which he had a unique knowledge and understanding. He died in July 2015
Mr Stevens, who was born in Heswall, Wirral, explained how his fascination with China began in an interview published by the South China Morning Post in 1991. As a boy, he said, he would sneak away from home, catch a bus and a ferry to Liverpool and walk around the city’s Chinatown, in those days bustling with seafaring men whose ships from the Pearl River and Ningbo were unloading their cargoes in the port.
The sights, sounds and smells, the people and the large Chinese words written on the walls of businesses enthralled him. “My parents didn’t like it, but I kept going there,” he recalled. His single-minded aim was to learn Chinese.
He was educated at Rock Ferry grammar school and left in the middle of the Second World War, subsequently enlisting, well under age, with the Royal Navy, who promised to teach him Chinese. Enrolled with the naval flying programme, he “was not a good pilot” and after a disastrously short career learning to fly in America, he was invalided out, having crashing his aircraft.
After a period filling in time on North Atlantic convoy duty, he was able to transfer to the Army and was seconded to the India Army who also promised to teach him Chinese. He served with the famous 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles one of the five in the Punjab Frontier Forces better known as the Piffers, close to the Khyber Pass, where he was able to grasp the basics of Gurkhali and Urdu, but not Chinese.
He remained with the Indian Army in the period before independence but after Partition and demobilisation, he returned to England to read Modern and Literary Chinese at the London University School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS). There he finally learned Chinese and also achieved a First in the Civil Service Interpreter Examinations. It was during his first week there that he purchased his first Chinese deity, a porcelain statue he found in an antique shop. It cost him £5. He told me much later in one of our meetings in his Kent Home that the money was for his board and lodging, and he walked to and away from that antique shop window three times before he finally decided he “just had to have it”.
After further study at Hong Kong University, Mr Stevens commenced a second career serving again with the British Army, first for a short time with the Cheshires before being transferred to the Intelligence Corps. He spent most of his service in the Far East, interspersed with two postings to Germany. The three stints in Malaya and Singapore were idyllic: the first posting to Ipoh in northern Malaya during the Emergency, followed by his marriage to Nora, who had caught his eye as they both boarded the troop ship to Singapore in 1952 and courted the whole of the journey from the first night aboard when he connived with the purser to be seated alongside the young Queen Alexandra nurse, Nora Mossop. The couple had three daughters.
Using his language skills, He finally transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a late entrant, enjoying a third career of 20 years with the Research Department, which included a posting of a further five years in Hong Kong before finally retiring to continue - now full time - his life-long study of the cults and iconography of Chinese folk religion.
At last he was free to travel throughout China, province by province. His family recount many tales of dad going off "godding" and exploring more than 3,500 temples in towns and often remote villages, as well as Taiwan, Macau and across South East Asia, documenting their layouts, altars, gods, legends and folklore. In the process he recorded more than 1,500 gods with meticulous notes on each temple he visited, further supported by more than 30,000 photographs, which comprises the Collection that his friend and mentee Ronni Pinsler acquired from the subsequent auction in 2016.
Mr Stevens was a member of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs from 1952; the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong from 1963 and a founder member of the Friends of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong branch in London, established in 1997, serving subsequently as a committee member.
He wrote 36 articles relating to Chinese religious iconography, which led to the publication of two books on the gods of China, notably his lifetime work: the definitive Chinese Gods, The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons, published by Collins & Brown in 1997. He also wrote nine articles on the subject for the specialist Hong Kong-based Arts of Asia magazine.
It was alway the wish of Keith Stevens to publish a complete version of his researches. His publisher discouraged the idea as being impractical. But that was before the age of digital publishing.
Included in the “bookofxiansheng” are various personal articles by Sifu Keith as we like to call him that exemplify his love of the Chinese Gods and the contagious humour expressed in revealing them to the rest of us.
This project is intended to be a fulfilment of his legacy.

Thanks to The Canterbury Auction Gallery for part of the above content and photo of Keith Stevens.

Tiedemann, R.G. “Keith Goodwin Stevens 1926-2015.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, vol. 56, 2016, pp. 247–251. JSTOR

Acknowledgement & Thanks to the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for the compilation of the following list of publications.