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A picture of Chang Kuo sitting on a donkey and offering a descendant
to the newly married couple is often found in the nuptial chamber. It
seems somewhat incongruous that an old ascetic should be associated
with matrimonial happiness and the granting of offspring, but the
explanation may possibly be connected with his performance of wonderful
feats of necromancy, though he is said not to have given encouragement
to others in these things during his lifetime.

Ho Hsien Ku

A maiden holding in her hand a magic lotus-blossom, the flower of
open-heartedness, or the peach of immortality given her by Lue Tung-pin
in the mountain-gorge as a symbol of identity, playing at times the
_sheng_ or reed-organ, or drinking wine--this is the picture the
Chinese paint of the Immortal Ho Hsien Ku.

She was the daughter of Ho T'ai, a native of Tseng-ch'eng Hsien in
Kuangtung. Others say her father was a shopkeeper at Ling-ling in
Hunan. She lived in the time of the usurping empress Wu (A.D. 684-705)
of the T'ang dynasty. At her birth six hairs were found growing on
the crown of her head, and the account says she never had any more,
though the pictures represent her with a full head of hair. She
elected to live on Yuen-mu Ling, twenty _li_ west of Tseng-ch'eng
Hsien. On that mountain was found a stone called _yuen-mu shih_,
'mother-of-pearl.' In a dream she saw a spirit who ordered her to
powder and eat one of these stones, by doing which she could acquire
both agility and immortality. She complied with this injunction, and
also vowed herself to a life of virginity. Her days were thenceforth
passed in floating from one peak to another, bringing home at night
to her mother the fruits she collected on the mountain. She gradually
found that she had no need to eat in order to live. Her fame having
reached the ears of the Empress, she was invited to Court, but while
journeying thither suddenly disappeared from mortal view and became
an Immortal. She is said to have been seen again in A.D. 750 floating
upon a cloud of many colours at the temple of Ma Ku, the famous female
Taoist magician, and again, some years later, in the city of Canton.

She is represented as an extremely beautiful maiden, and is remarkable
as occupying so prominent a position in a cult in which no system of
female asceticism is developed.

Lue Tung-pin

Lue Tung-pin's family name was Lue; his personal name Tung-pin; also Yen;
and his pseudonym Shun Yang Tzu