he peach of immortality. Since his admission to
the ranks of the gods, he has appeared on earth at various times as
the messenger of Heaven. On one of these occasions he met Lue Yen,
as narrated on p. 297.

Lan Ts'ai-ho

Lan Ts'ai-ho is variously stated to have been a woman and an
hermaphrodite. She is the strolling singer or mountebank of the
Immortals. Usually she plays a flute or a pair of cymbals. Her origin
is unknown, but her personal name is said to have been Yang Su,
and her career is assigned to the period of the T'ang dynasty. She
wandered abroad clad in a tattered blue gown held by a black wooden
belt three inches wide, with one foot shoeless and the other shod,
wearing in summer an undergarment of wadded material, and in winter
sleeping on the snow, her breath rising in a brilliant cloud like
the steam from a boiling cauldron. In this guise she earned her
livelihood by singing in the streets, keeping time with a wand three
feet long. Though taken for a lunatic, the doggerel verse she sang
disproved the popular slanders. It denounced this fleeting life and
its delusive pleasures. When given money, she either strung it on
a cord and waved it to the time of her song or scattered it on the
ground for the poor to pick up.

One day she was found to have become intoxicated in an inn at Feng-yang
Fu in Anhui, and while in that state disappeared on a cloud, having
thrown down to earth her shoe, robe, belt, and castanets.

According to popular belief, however, only one of the Eight Immortals,
namely, Ho Hsien-ku, was a woman, Lan Ts'ai-ho being represented as a
young person of about sixteen, bearing a basket of fruit. According
to the _Hsiu hsiang Pa Hsien tung yu chi_, he was 'the Red-footed
Great Genius,' Ch'ih-chiao Ta-hsien incarnate. Though he was a man,
adds the writer, he could not understand how to be a man (which is
perhaps the reason why he has been supposed to be a woman).

Chang Kuo

The period assigned to Chang Kuo is the middle or close of the seventh
to the middle of the eighth century A.D. He lived as a hermit on
Chung-t'iao Shan, in the prefecture of P'ing-yang Fu in Shansi. The
Emperors T'ai Tsung and Kao Tsung of the T'ang dynasty frequently
invited him to Court, but he persistently refused to go. At last,
pressed once more by the Empress Wu (A.D. 684-705), he consented
to leave his retreat, but was struck down by death at the gate of
the Temple of the Jealous Woman. His body began t