Keuh Agong

Wat Ngong (1785–1867), also known by various other names, was a Chinese Protestant convert, evangelist, and writer from Guangzhou during the Qing dynasty. He was an early lithographer in Malacca, Macao, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, possibly the first Chinese to master the craft.

Name Wat's name was , which is now romanized as in pinyin. "Wat Ngong" or , or ; as and as or .

Life Wat was born in 1785. after Morrison's death in 1834.

In the early 1830s, Morrison's son John trained Wat to use the mission's recently imported Albion press and in the art of lithography, although his work is often overlooked by Chinese scholars. He busied himself with printing at Macao, distributing his works among his family and acquaintances and explaining their content. While in Malacca, Liang and Wat caused a "spike" in conversions, netting more than thirty converts in a span of months. When many of these new converts later abandoned the faith, it prompted disputes within the LMS about the meaning and requirements for baptism.

When James Legge moved from Malacca to Hong Kong in 1843 (Wylie gives the mistaken date 1844.) or Tsun-Sheen Wat worked with Legge at the Medical Missionary Hospital on Morrison Hill. Liang Fa also joined them.

In 1853, during the early stages of the Taipings' victories in central China, Legge sent Wat and Wu Wenxiu to Shanghai to negotiate with them for the entrance of Protestant missionaries to occupied Nanjing. After six months in the city, the two men considered the embassy a failure and returned to Hong Kong.

Wat died in 1867.

Works

In addition to the works by Morrison, Milne, Liang, and others that Wat assisted with editing and printing, he was directly responsible for various Chinese-language tracts.

His 1833 Picture Tracts were a series of single-page tracts with scriptural passages in Chinese on one side and illustrations on the reverse. They included: . . .