would bear him across safely. Again the watchman refused,
whereupon T'ieh-kuai, remarking that the cares of this world were
evidently too weighty for him to be able to ascend to immortality,
stepped on to the leaf himself and vanished.

Chung-li Ch'uean

Regarding the origin and life of this Immortal several different
accounts are given. One states that his family name was Chung-li,
and that he lived in the Han dynasty, being therefore called Han
Chung-li. His cognomen was Ch'uean, his literary appellation Chi Tao,
and his pseudonyms Ho-ho Tzu and Wang-yang Tzu; his style Yuen-fang.

He was born in the district of Hsien-yang Hsien (a sub-prefecture of
the ancient capital Hsi-an Fu) in Shensi. He became Marshal of the
Empire in the cyclic year 2496. In his old age he became a hermit
on Yang-chio Shan, thirty _li_ north-east of I-ch'eng Hsien in the
prefecture of P'ing-yang Fu in Shansi. He is referred to by the title
of King-emperor of the True Active Principle.

Another account describes Chung-li Ch'uean as merely a vice-marshal
in the service of Duke Chou Hsiao. He was defeated in battle, and
escaped to Chung-nan Shan, where he met the Five Heroes, the Flowers
of the East, who instructed him in the doctrine of immortality. At
the end of the T'ang dynasty Han Chung-li taught this same science of
immortality to Lue Tung-pin (see p. 297), and took the pompous title
of the Only Independent One Under Heaven.

Other versions state that Han Chung-li is not the name of a person,
but of a country; that he was a Taoist priest Chung Li-tzu; and that
he was a beggar, Chung-li by name, who gave to one Lao Chih a pill of
immortality. No sooner had the latter swallowed it than he went mad,
left his wife, and ascended to Heaven.

During a great famine he transmuted copper and pewter into silver
by amalgamating them with some mysterious drug. This treasure he
distributed among the poor, and thousands of lives were thus saved.

One day, while he was meditating, the stone wall of his dwelling in the
mountains was rent asunder, and a jade casket exposed to view. This was
found to contain secret information as to how to become an Immortal.

When he had followed these instructions for some time, his room was
filled with many-coloured clouds, music was heard, and a celestial
stork came and bore him away on its back to the regions of immortality.

He is sometimes represented holding his feather-fan, Yue-mao Shan;
at other times t