The Eight Immortals

Gallery Objects: The ivory chess set and the carved elephant tusks.

The eight immortals are legendary beings who lived at various times and attained immortality through their studies of nature’s secrets. They can be male or female, young or old, shown together or separately. Any man or woman appearing in a landscape with pine trees, cranes, deer and the fungus of immortality may be considered an immortal.

The most important, Zhongli Chuan is generally shown as a fat man with a bare belly, always holding a fan with which he is believed to revive the souls of the dead.

According to many stories, he married a young and beautiful wife and retired to his native place to life the life of a philosopher. One day he was walking in meditation and came upon a young woman in deep mourning, sitting near a fresh grave and fanning the upturned soil. When asked why she was fanning the ground, she said that her late husband had begged her not to remarry until the soil on his grave was dry. She had found someone she wanted to marry and wanted the grave to dry quickly.

Zhongli offered her his help. Taking her fan, he invoked spirits to his aid, struck the fan to the tomb and the soil instantly dried. The widow thanked him gaily, and walked away without her fan. When Zhongli’’s young wife saw the fan, she demanded to know all about it. When she heard the story she became very indignant, saying she would never behave like that.

Naturally Zhongli decided to test her feelings. With the aid of powerful spells, he pretended to be dead. At the same time he assumed the shape of a handsome young man, and made love to the supposed widow. In a few days she agreed to marry him. The young man told her he needed the brain of her late husband to make a powerful potion, and the widow opened the coffin to comply with her lover’s request. To her horror, her former husband suddenly came to life, while her new fiance disappeared into thin air.

Unable to survive her shame, she hung herself. Zhongli set their house on fire, taking only the fan and a sacred book. Zhang Guolao is usually depicted riding a white mule, often facing backwards on it. He carries what looks like a golf bag, but is really a kind of musical instrument in the shape of a bamboo tube, or a drum with two rods to beat it. When he didn’t need his mule it was folded and put away in his wallet. When he wanted it he squirted water on the wallet, and the mule would appear.

Lu Dongbin is one of the best known and most popular of the Immortals. He is usually shown dressed as a scholar with a sword slung across his back and holding a fly whisk or brush in his right. He fights evil with his weapon and is often portrayed carrying a male child in his arms. Ironically, couples venerate him in the hope that their boys would become successful government officials, which this Immortal did not by his own choice.

Lu lived in the Tang Dynasty, born of a family of distinguished government officials. He was expected for high rank himself when he met the Immortal Zhongli, who was disguised as a retired army officer. The two ended up drinking together, and Dongbin ultimately drifted off to sleep, and dreamed of his future. He saw himself rising from post to post until he achieved high office. He saw he was a wise and just administrator and was rewarded with high honors. After many years of service, he was looking forward to contentedly spending his retirement in peace when someone complained to the emperor about some minor thing he had done. He saw himself sent out to live his old age in exile and his entire family was killed. He woke to find his Immortal companion still heating their next drink of rice wine. This “rice wine” dream caused him to change the course of his life and follow Zhongli.

He was exposed to a ten temptations, and once he overcame them he was given a sword of supernatural power. He travels the earth ridding the world of various forms of evil. One story tells how he took toe form of a traveling salesman to find honest customers. Sadly, he found none. All were either greedy or stingy, until he met an old woman who was content with the amount he sold her and did not try to cheat him on the payment. To reward her, he threw a handful of rice into her well, and from that day on it ran with fine wine, making her wealthy. Cao Guojiu wears a court headdress and official robes. He holds a pair of castanets or flat clappers that are said to be derived from the court tablet that authorized his free access to the palace, to which he was entitled because he was a highborn noble.

As a young man he was thoughtless and easily led by others. He allowed himself to become involved in the evil deeds of his wicked younger brother, who ultimately implicated Cao in a murder case. Luckily escaping execution, he renounced his life as a spoiled aristocrat and devoted himself to meditation in the mountains, where he ultimately learned the secrets of immortality.

Li Tieguai (Iron Crutch) became so proficient in magic during his life on earth that he was frequently summoned to the celestial regions. He went there in spirit, leaving his apparently dead body in the care of his disciple. Once, when he was gone longer than usual, his disciple was called away because his mother was sick. Torn between conflicting duties, he finally decided that his master was really dead this time. He burned the body and went home to his mother. When Li Tieguai returned, he found that he no longer had a body for his spirit to enter. He frantically looked around for someone recently dead, but all he could find was the body of a lame beggar. He entered into it, and is always depicted as a beggar with an iron crutch and a pilgrim’s gourd from which a scroll or smoke is escaping to represent his power to set his spirit free.

Han Xiangzi was a famous scholar credited with the power of making flowers grow and blossom. He wanders the country, playing his flute, its sweet sounds attracting birds and animals, even beasts of prey. He did not know the value of money, and whenever he had any he would throw it about on the ground. He was the patron of musicians. Lan Caihe is of undetermined sex. In life she/he earned a living as a poor street musician, dressed in rags wearing only one shoe. Acting like a madman or a drunk who continually chanted poetry or sang songs denouncing this fleeting life and the vanity of its pleasures while beating time with a long wooden beater. When given money, he/she would often throw it away to others who were poorer still. He finally attained immortality when he passed out drunk in a tavern and was wafted away to the island of Immortals, leaving behind his possessions.

She/he is usually shown with one foot shod and the other bare and holding a wand/beater and/or a flower basket as he/she wanders begging through the street.

He Xiangzi is the only woman among the eight. When she was a girl a spirit in a dream told her to powder and eat some mother-or- pear. As she did so, she took a vow of chastity and gained the power to float in the sky at will, becoming a a fairy. She would wander alone in the hills, alone, picking herbs and berries that she took home to her mother. Once she got lost in the woods and was in great danger from a malignant demon, but Lu Dongbin appeared at the critical moment and saved her with his magic sword.