The God of Riches is universally worshipped in China; images and portraits of him are to be seen everywhere.  Talismans, trees of which the branches are strings of cash, and the fruits ingots of gold, to be obtained merely by shaking them down, a magic inexhaustible casket full of gold and silver—­these and other spiritual sources of wealth are associated with this much-adored deity.  He himself is represented in the guise of a visitor accompanied by a crowd of attendants laden with all the treasures that the hearts of men, women, and children could desire.

The God of Longevity

The God of Longevity, Shou Hsing, was first a stellar deity, later on represented in human form.  It was a constellation formed of the two star-groups Chio and K’ang, the first two on the list of twenty-eight constellations.  Hence, say the Chinese writers, because of this precedence, it was called the Star of Longevity.  When it appears the nation enjoys peace, when it disappears there will be war.  Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, the First Emperor, was the first to offer sacrifices to this star, the Old Man of the South Pole, at She Po, in 246 B.C.  Since then the worship has been continued pretty regularly until modern times.

But desire for something more concrete, or at least more personal, than a star led to the god’s being represented as an old man.  Connected with this is a long legend which turns on the point that after the father of Chao Yen had been told by the celebrated physiognomist Kuan Lo that his son would not live beyond the age of nineteen, the transposition from shih-chiu, nineteen, to chiu-shih, ninety, was made by one of two gamblers, who turned out to be the Spirit of the North Pole, who fixes the time of decease, as the Spirit of the South Pole does that of birth.

The deity is a domestic god, of happy mien, with a very high forehead, usually spoken of as Shou Hsing Lao T’ou Tzu, ’Longevity Star Old-pate,’ and is represented as riding a stag, with a flying bat above his head.  He holds in his hand a large peach, and attached to his long staff are a gourd and a scroll.  The stag and the bat both indicate fu, happiness.  The peach, gourd, and scroll are symbols of longevity.

The Door-gods

An old legend relates that in the earliest times there grew on Mount Tu Shuo, in the Eastern Sea, a peach-tree of fabulous size whose branches covered an area of several thousand square li.  The lowest branches, which inclined toward the north-east, formed the Door of the Devils (kuei), through which millions of them passed in and out.  Two spirits, named Shen Shu (or Shu Yue) and Yue Lue, had been instructed to guard this passage.  Those who had done wrong to mankind were immediately bound by them and given over to be devoured by tigers.  When Huang Ti heard of this he had the portraits of the two spirits painted on peach-wood tablets and hung above the doors to keep off evil spirits.  This led to the suspension of the small figures or plaques on the doors of the people generally.  Gradually they were supplanted by paintings on paper pasted on the doors, showing the two spirits armed with bows, arrows, spears, etc., Shen Shu on the left, Yue Lue on the right.