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.  He was born in A.D. 798 at Yung-lo Hsien, in the prefecture of Ho-chung Fu in Shansi, a hundred and twenty li south-east of the present sub-prefecture of Yung-chi Hsien (P’u Chou).  He came of an official family, his grandfather having been President of the Ministry of Ceremonies, and his father Prefect of Hai Chou.  He was 5 feet 2 inches in height, and at twenty was still unmarried.  At this time he made a journey to Lu Shan in Kiangsi, where he met the Fire-dragon, who presented him with a magic sword, which enabled him at will to hide himself in the heavens.

During his visit to the capital, Ch’ang-an in Shensi, he met the Immortal Han Chung-li, who instructed him in the mysteries of alchemy and the elixir of life.  When he revealed himself as Yuen-fang Hsien-sheng, Lue Yen expressed an ardent desire to aid in converting mankind to the true doctrine, but was first exposed to a series of ten temptations.  These being successfully overcome, he was invested with supernatural power and magic weapons, with which he traversed the Empire, slaying dragons and ridding the earth of divers kinds of evils, during a period of upward of four hundred years.  Another version says that Han Chung-li was in an inn, heating a jug of rice-wine.  Here