道法自然
八仙
Companions of Every Walk of Life
Festival · Honored at every longevity celebration
Companions of Every Walk of Life
Eight historical figures — rich and poor, noble and humble, old and young — who each attained immortality in their own way. Their emblems, the 'Eight Treasures', are everywhere in Chinese art as charms of fortune and longevity.
Festival · Honored at every longevity celebration
History · 史记
The Eight Immortals are Taoism's most beloved saints — not because of their rank, but because between them they cover all of society: old Zhang Guolao and young Lan Caihe, five men and one woman, the noble Cao Guojiu and the crippled beggar Tieguai Li. Their membership grew gradually: Zhang Guolao appears in the Tang official history; Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin in Song records; the present eight were fixed by Yuan zaju plays and the Ming novel Dongyou Ji.
Their popularity lies in their humanity: drunk, quarrelsome, witty, kind — transcendence without leaving the human world behind.
Denied passage across the eastern sea, each immortal threw his own instrument into the waves — flute, lotus, gourd, sword, fish-drum — and crossed upon it alone. Each shows his own divine power: the proverb comes from this.
Lü Dongbin, cooking a pot of millet in a tavern, slept and dreamed of a lifetime — marriage, office, disgrace, exile, death. When he woke, the millet was not yet cooked. That was Zhongli Quan's lesson: all glory, one pot of millet.
Zhang Guolao rode a paper donkey that could travel ten thousand li a day; at the inn he folded it flat into his sleeve, and a sip of water revived it for the road.
舊唐書·方技傳
The Tang official history's biography of Zhang Guolao — the earliest official record of any of the eight.
東遊記
The Ming novel that fixed the group and told the crossing of the sea.
元雜劇
Yuan-dynasty stage plays that first gathered the immortals together as a cast.