The Eight Immortals (I)

A legend says that eight Immortals live in the heavens.

The first is Dschung Li Kuan, who lived in the time of the Han dynasty. The legend credits him with an alchemical power to change quicksilver and lead into gold and silver. These are imagined transformations, not instructions for working with those hazardous substances. He could also fly through the air in his human body. He is the leader of the Eight Immortals.

The second is Dschang Go, who gained secret knowledge in the earliest ages. Some say he was really a white bat that became a man. In the first years of the Tang dynasty, people in the town of Tschang An saw an old man with a white beard and a bamboo drum on his back, riding backward on a black donkey, beating his drum and singing; he called himself old Dschang Go. Another story says he kept a white mule that could travel a thousand miles in a day. When he arrived where he was going, he would fold the animal up and put it in his trunk, and when he needed it again he would spray it with water from his mouth, and it would take its proper shape.

The third is Lu Yuan, also called Lu Dung Bin, the Mountain Guest. In this version his earlier family name was Li, and he belonged to the ruling Tang house. But when Empress Wu seized the throne and wiped out nearly every member of the Li family, he fled with his wife deep into the mountains. They took the name Lu, and because they hid in caves among the rocks, he called himself the Mountain Guest, or the Guest of the Rocks. He lived on air and ate no bread, but he loved flowers, and in time he gained the hidden wisdom.

In the capital, Lo Yang, the peonies bloomed especially richly, and a flower fairy lived there who took the form of a lovely girl. Whenever the Guest of the Rocks came to Lo Yang, he would talk with her. Then the Yellow Dragon arrived disguised as a handsome young man and made fun of the flower fairy. The Guest of the Rocks flew into a rage, hurled his flying sword at him, and cut off his head. Because of that deed he fell back into the world of earthly pleasure and death; he sank into the dust of everyday life and could no longer soar to the heights. Later he met Dschung Li Kuan, who rescued him, and then he was received among the Immortals.

His disciple was Willowelf, an old willow tree that had soaked up the finest powers of sunlight and moonlight until it could take on human shape. Willowelf has a blue face and red hair. Later emperors and kings honored the Guest of the Rocks as the ancestor and master of the pure sun, and ordinary people call him Grandfather Lu. Because he is so wise and powerful, the collection describes crowds flocking to Grandfather Lu’s temples to ask for oracles and pray for luck. If you want to know whether a plan will succeed, you go to the temple, burn incense, and bow your head to the ground. On the altar stands a bamboo cup holding dozens of small lottery sticks. Kneeling, you shake it until one stick jumps out. The number written on it is looked up in the Book of Oracles, where a four-line verse goes with it. The narrator reports believers’ confidence in the oracle; the story does not establish that it predicts events.

The fourth Immortal is Tsau Guo Gui, Tsau the Uncle of the State. He was the younger brother of Empress Tsau, who ruled the land for a time, which is why he earned that title. From boyhood he loved the hidden wisdom and cared no more for wealth and honors than for dust. Dschung Li Kuan helped him become immortal.

The fifth is Lan Tsai Ho. No one knows his real name, his era, or his family. He was often seen in the marketplace in a ragged blue robe and only one shoe, tapping a block of wood and singing about the emptiness of life.

The sixth Immortal is Li Tia Guai, Li of the Iron Crutch. Orphaned young, he grew up in his older brother’s home, where his sister-in-law treated him harshly and never gave him enough to eat. So he ran away into the hills and learned the hidden wisdom there.

Once he came home to see his brother and asked his sister-in-law for food. “There’s no firewood,” she said. “Just get the rice ready,” he replied. “I can use my leg for kindling. Only you must not say the fire might hurt me. If you keep quiet, no harm will come.” Curious to see his magic, she put the rice in the pot. Li stretched one leg under it and set it alight, and the flames leaped up while the leg glowed like coal. When the rice was almost cooked, she asked, “Won’t your leg be hurt?”

“Didn’t I warn you to say nothing?” Li answered angrily. “Then nothing would have happened. Now one of my legs is lame.” He took an iron poker and shaped it into a crutch, hung a bottle-gourd on his back, and went into the hills to gather healing herbs. That is how he got the name Li of the Iron Crutch.

Another story says that he often rose to heaven in spirit to visit his master Laotsze. Before leaving, he would tell a disciple to guard his body, so that his soul would not slip away from it, and if seven days passed without his spirit coming back, the disciple could let the soul leave the empty body. Unfortunately, after six days the disciple was called to his dying mother’s bedside, and when the master’s spirit returned on the evening of the seventh day, the body was lifeless. With no home in his own body, in despair he took the first body he could find whose life force had not yet scattered. It belonged to a lame neighbor who had just died, and from then on the master went about in that shape.

The seventh Immortal is Hang Siang Dsi, nephew of the famous Confucian scholar Han Yu of the Tang dynasty. From childhood he practiced the arts of the deathless gods; he left home and became a Taoist, and Grandfather Lu awakened him and raised him to the heavenly world. Once he saved his uncle’s life. Han Yu had been banished from court for objecting when the emperor sent for a bone of the Buddha with great ceremony. As he fled, he reached the Blue Pass, where deep snow had blocked the road. His horse floundered in a drift, and he himself was nearly frozen. Suddenly Hang Siang Dsi appeared, pulled man and horse out of the snow, and led them safely to the nearest inn on the pass. There Han Yu sang a verse that included these lines:

Tsin Ling Hill ’mid clouds doth lie,
And home is far, beyond my sight!
Round the Blue Pass snow towers high,
And who will lead the horse aright?

Then he realized that years earlier, when Hang Siang Dsi had come to wish him a happy birthday, the young man had written those very words on a slip of paper before leaving. Han Yu had read them without understanding, and now he had sung them without knowing it. He sighed and said to his nephew, “You must be one of the Immortals, to have foretold the future like that!”

Three times Hang Siang Dsi tried to free his wife from the ties of earth. After he left home to seek the hidden wisdom, she sat all day longing for him. He wanted to lift her into immortality but feared she was not ready, so he came to her in different disguises to test her—once as a beggar, once as a wandering monk—but she did not recognize her chance. At last he came as a lame Taoist, sitting on a mat in front of the house, tapping a wooden block and reciting sutras.

“My husband is not home,” she said. “I have nothing to give you.”

“I don’t want your gold or silver,” said the Taoist. “I want you. Sit beside me on this mat, and we will fly up into the air, and you will find your husband.” At that she grew angry and struck at him with a club. Hang Siang Dsi took his true form, stepped onto a shining cloud, and rose into the sky. His wife gazed after him, sobbing, but he was gone and did not appear to her again.

The eighth Immortal is a girl, Ho Sian Gu. She was a farmer’s daughter whose stepmother treated her cruelly, yet she stayed respectful and hardworking. She loved giving to the poor, though her stepmother tried to stop her, and she never grew angry, even when beaten. She had vowed never to marry, and in the end her stepmother did not know what to do with her. One day, while she was cooking rice, an immortal called Grandfather Du in this edition came and set her free. She rose into the air still holding the rice spoon in her hand, and in heaven she was given the task of sweeping up the fallen flowers at the Southern Gate of Heaven.

About this telling

These short portraits form chapter thirty of The Chinese Fairy Book, edited by Richard Wilhelm, in Frederick H. Martens’s English translation (Frederick A. Stokes, New York, 1921). They are followed in the book by a second chapter about the Eight Immortals.

The edition’s notes need to be read critically. Its claim that the group dates no earlier than the Manchu or Qing dynasty is contradicted by earlier objects: the Asian Art Museum catalogs a Yuan-dynasty vase depicting the Eight Immortals. Emblems also vary between tellings and artworks. For example, the Metropolitan Museum’s cup identifies Lan Caihe with a basket and Han Xiangzi with a flute, unlike the assignments in Wilhelm’s note. These portraits are selected legends, not verified biographies or a single definitive account of Daoist belief.

Read the original: Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, Martens translation, at Project Gutenberg

Best for ages 9–12 with adult discussion, reading a few portraits at a time. Includes killing, bodily injury, death, neglect and unfair tests of women. The powers and alchemy are legendary; accepting abuse or attempting dangerous feats is not a route to wisdom.

Reading the story closely

The chapter offers alternatives rather than one seamless history: two origins explain Li’s crutch, and Dschang Go’s mount can be a black donkey or a folding white mule. Keep those versions beside each other instead of forcing them into a single sequence. A crutch does not diminish Li’s authority; he remains a powerful teacher and healer in the portraits.

Choose two tests: the disciple leaving for his dying mother and the wife refusing an unknown man who asks her to leave with him. Write what each person knows at the time, before the reader learns the supernatural explanation. The story’s disappointment in them is not the only possible judgment. Finally choose an emblem on a linked museum object and trace how it connects—or fails to connect—to a specific episode here.

Talk about it

• Which of the Eight Immortals has the strangest power, and why do you think so?
• What went wrong when Li Tia Guai’s sister-in-law spoke up, and again when his disciple left his body?
• Why do you think Hang Siang Dsi tested his wife in disguise instead of simply telling her who he was?

Related stories

• The Eight Immortals (II) — a poor man begs Li of the Iron Crutch to take him along
• Laotsze — the master whom Li of the Iron Crutch visits in heaven
• Old Dschang — another Wilhelm tale of a humble-looking immortal