The Story of Han Xiangzi

Front matter

PHE STORY o reer

HAN XIANGZI osu

DAOIST

Contents

Preface & Acknowledgments xi

Translator’s Introduction xv

THE STORY OF HAN XIANGZI

Introduction

The present volume offers to the English-speaking world the first translation into any Western language of the early seventeenth-century Chinese novel Han Xiangzi quanzhuan (HRW 2, lit., “The complete story of Han Xiangzi”), by Yang

Erzeng ffi], a writer and publisher from the beautiful city of Hangzhou in southeastern China. Before reading of Han Xiangzi’s adventures, the reader will benefit from learning something of the story’s protagonist and of elements of Chinese popular and religious culture.

HAN XIANGZI

The hero of this story is the Daoist immortal Han Xiangzi #71. This figure is nowadays best known as one of the “Eight Immortals” (Baxian /\{Il|): Zhongli Quan s#BEHE, Lü Dongbin Si, Zhang Guolao i RZ, Li Tieguai FID, He Xiangu {"](ilik, Lan Caihe B40, Cao Guojiu $ E5, and Han Xiangzi. These immortals came together as a group by the late Song dynasty (12th-13th cent.), with only occasional variations in their composition.’

Probably the earliest appearance of an Eight Immortals group is in a wall painting of a Jin dynasty tomb (Taihe 281] period, 1201-09), reflecting a popularity that continued into the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), with the immortals as motifs on incense burners, clothing, and folk art. Dramatists of the Yuan period also picked up the Eight Immortals theme and produced the first literary codifications

XV of their lore. In Yuan drama, the Eight Immortals appear in “deliverance plays”

(dutuoju FE ri E#)), which usually focus on only a few members of the group, most prominently Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin.} By the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the Eight Immortals had come to occupy a firm place in the dramatic repertoire.

They appeared both in full-length plays* and in short skits performed on auspicious occasions such as birthdays (Baxian qingshou JIPE); works which, especially the latter, remain a fixture in local opera traditions across China. The Ming period also saw the first full narrative development of the Eight Immortals complex in the form of a novel, Journey to the East (Dongyou ji ##£acd) by Wu Yuantai 52.70-28.° Much of the later Eight Immortals lore is linked with this important text, including the famous story of their crossing of the ocean (Baxian guohai JIRE). This became a staple motif in folk art and can still be found today painted on Taiwanese temple walls and stitched on bright red cloths (baxiancai

JVIX) that are hung over entrances to bring blessings to buildings and their inhabitants.” Thus, since the Ming dynasty the Eight Immortals have found a firm place in Chinese popular culture, their stories transmitted through the theater, folk art, storytelling,’ novels,? and popular literature such as “precious volumes” (baojuan #£%&).°

Each of the Eight Immortals also is the center of an independent story cycle outside the Baxian collective, though the extent of these cycles differs greatly for individual immortals. The most developed lore attaches to the figure of Lii Dongbin, who has been the object of many plays, stories, ballads, novels, and even of religious veneration in important Daoist movements.” Han Xiangzi has not received as much attention as Lii Dongbin, but probably more than any of the other six immortals.”

Han Xiangzi® is said to be a nephew or grandnephew of the famous Tang dynasty Confucian scholar Han Yu ##8% (768-824). And indeed there are reliable indications that Han Yu did have a relative named Han Xiang, a son of Han Yu’s nephew Han Laocheng #272 BX. In 819, Han Xiang and his brother Han Pang #879 followed Han Yu into his exile to Chaozhou iN, where he had been banished for criticizing the emperor’s worship of a Buddha relic. In 820, the brothers followed their great-uncle to a new post in Yuanzhou #1, where Han Pang died at the age of nineteen.

According to the historical records, Han Xiang was born in 793 and passed the jinshi examination in 823. His style (a name taken upon reaching adulthood) was Beizhu Jk}# and his highest official appointment was assistant minister in the Court of Judicial Review. His death date is unclear. The Complete Poems of

XVI TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION the Tang Dynasty (Quan Tang shi 2 #) contains a handful of poems addressed to Han Xiang by various authors. The most famous of these is the one that is immediately connected with the appearance of the Han Xiangzi legend. Han Yu composed it in 819 at Blue Pass EJ on his way into exile in Chaozhou, Guangdong:

“Demoted I Arrive at Blue Pass and Show This Poem to My Brother’s Grandson Han Xiang”

A sealed epistle submitted at dawn to Ninefold Heaven— Exiled at dusk to Chaozhou, eight thousand leagues to travel.

Wishing to save His Sagacious Brilliance from treacherous evils,

Could I have cared for the years that remain in my withered limbs?

Clouds straddle the mountains of Qin—where is my home?

Snows crowd the pass at Blue Pass—my horse will not move.

I know what the reason must be that makes you come so far—

The better to gather my bones from shores of miasmic water."

The poem expresses Han Yu’s relief on seeing his nephew arrive amidst the heavy snow at the Blue Pass in the Qin mountain range south of Chang’an. Nothing in the sparse existing biographical data on Han Xiang indicates any deeper meaning, yet this poem was to become central in the evolving Han Xiangzi lore. It was taken to refer to Han Xiangzi’s arrival at Han Yu’s side to rescue him by means of his supernatural powers, and to deliver him from his worldly delusions and allow him to become an immortal.

In terms of historical sources there is of course a serious problem. The historical Han Xiang seems to have led a fairly conventional life, enjoyed a moderately successful official career, and apparently had no particular Daoist leanings. So what does he have to do with the Daoist immortal who delivers Han Yu at Blue Pass? Well, possibly he was conflated with another relative of Han Yu’s who indeed is said to have possessed magical abilities. Among Han Yu’s writings we find a poem (dating to the year 799) in which he records the visit of a distant relative who claimed to possess extraordinary skills. The relevant passages are found in verses 15 through 22:

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION XVII

Kos.

Who is that knocking on the door?

To my inquiry he replies that he is of my clan.

He claims to possess magical powers,

That he has investigated the marvels of the cosmos and understands the workings of Heaven.

It is of no use to regret the past,

But I shall be glad to have success in the future.

If indeed yours are not just artful words,

I should become a man who is useful to his times.”

Han Yu thus receives a visitor who claims to be of his lineage, obviously of a lower generation than Han Yu, as the latter addresses him in the poem’s title as a “distant nephew” (zuzhi }&{%, a nephew in the generalized sense of a distant relative of a younger generation). The visitor claims to have magical skills and to be able to predict the future. Han Yu himself was thirty-two at the time of this event. These two poems, one mentioning the visit of a supernaturally gifted “distant nephew” in 799, the other about Han Yu’s encounter with his grandnephew Han Xiang at Blue Pass twenty years later, together are the starting point for the Han Xiangzi legend. Its core features are Han Xiangzi’s prediction of Han Yu’s predicament at Blue Pass, from which he then comes to rescue him. Chronologically it is impossible for Han Xiang to be the “distant nephew” mentioned in the 799 poem (he would have been about six years of age at the time), but attention to detail is not a great concern of myth-makers. And so, very early on we find tales about an unusually gifted relative of Han Yu. The first instance occurs in a text composed by a near-contemporary of Han Yu and Han Xiang, Duan Chengshi’s Be Ast (803-63) Miscellaneous Morsels from the South Slope of You Mountain (Youyang zazu E he #EAA).° Duan records that a distant nephew of Han Yu has been taken into his household to be educated. The nephew, however, turns out to be unruly and unwilling to study. When Han Yu confronts him, the nephew claims to have another skill, namely that of growing multicolored peonies. He prepares such a plant for Han Yu, and when after several weeks it blossoms, on its petals are inscribed the fifth and sixth verses of Han Yu’s poem of 819. The nephew then declares his unwillingness to enter officialdom, and leaves. The nephew is not named, but the verses appearing on the flower petals become a part of later Han Xiangzi lore. Through the Five Dynasties and early Song period we find more stories (in the anecdotal literature and also in Daoist hagiography) about the mysterious rel-

XVIII TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ative of Han Yu, whose magical powers grow over time. The earliest explicit linking of the themes in the two poems appears in the famous Daoist Du Guangting’s ELSE KE (850-933) Supplemental Collection of Immortals’ Biographies (Xianzhuan shiyi 11184), where the nephew prepares the peonies and departs. Han Yu is banished and encounters the same nephew at Blue Pass. The next spring the peonies open and are found to be inscribed with the two verses. Here, for the first time, it is also claimed that the nephew later transmitted the Dao to Han Yu. This version contains an implicit identification of the nephew with Han Xiang.

(Problematically, the nephew here is called a waisheng 9}, i.e., a nephew through a female member of Han Yu’s lineage, which does not fit Han Xiang’s profile. But again, historical exactitude is not the first concern here.) The first time this identification is made explicit is in Liu Fu’s #|F (ca. 1040—later than 1113) collection of anecdotes, Remarkable Opinions under the Green-Latticed Window

TU

(Qingsuo gaoyi #3 3H m i). From here on the core of Han Xiangzi lore is established: Han Xiangzi as an unconventional and Daoist-leaning nephew who by means of a magical flower trick predicts Han Yu’s banishment, saves him in his predicament at Blue Pass, and later transmits the Dao to him. Later sources elaborate on this core and add elements such as Han Xiangzi’s earlier existence as a numinous white crane, his apprenticeship with Zhongli Quan and Lii Dongbin, his unconsummated marriage, and his later deliverance of his wife and his aunt.

Most of these themes probably came together for the first time in the popular performance genre of the “Daoist songs” (daoging #418), which emerged during the Song period. Thematically, these songs either express Daoist sentiments and ideas concerning self and society, or narrate the lives and deeds of Daoist immortals. Daoging are sung by one or more performers, accompanied by two instruments: the fisher drum (yugu 5%) and the clappers (jianban fiA). The frontispiece of this book shows Han Xiangzi holding these two instruments. A typical fisher drum is cylindrical and is made of bamboo or wood with a leather membrane covering one end. It is usually at least one meter in length and thirteen to fourteen centimeters in diameter. The clappers are two slats of bamboo or wood, sixty to seventy centimeters long and about four centimeters wide. While the right hand strikes the drum, the left hand shakes the elastic clappers so that they strike against each other, providing rhythm and emphasis to the song.

For their tunes, early daoging mostly drew on the popular songs that also influenced the ci #4], poetry of the literary circles of the Song and the operatic arias

(qupai Hh?) of the Yuan. In fact, some of these tunes may have started out as daoging (e.g., the “Shuahai’er” ZF% 5, and the “Zaoluopao” 2 2#%@] tunes). The songs were often performed publicly by itinerant Daoists as a way of spreading

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION XIX their religion and collecting alms. Some of the early patriarchs of the new Complete Perfection (Quanzhen 42) School of Daoism composed daogqing that are still preserved in their collected writings. There also existed local groups of Daoist laypeople who performed daoging at temple festivals for the creation of merit and the entertainment of the gods. Over time, professional performers adopted the genre and developed its thematic range beyond its Daoist focus, including less obviously religious story lines. However, even to this day, Daoist themes still figure prominently in all regional daoging traditions, and stories about the exploits of Han Xiangzi are among the most widespread. In fact, it has been suggested that the Han Xiangzi stories were one of the earliest thematic complexes of daoging. If, as Wu Yimin hypothesizes, the regional origin of the genre as a whole truly is in the Zhongnan Mountains south of Xi’an, Shaanxi, a focus on Han Xiangzi would make a lot of sense, since much of his story takes place in this area.

The daogqing genre, especially in its narrative variety, influenced the development of Chinese theater. As already mentioned, some operatic tunes may have been adopted from daogqing, while daoging over time gradually adopted more theatrical features. Around the middle of the Qing period (18th cent.), we witness the emergence of local opera traditions that are closely based on daoqing tunes and conventions (“daoging drama,” daogingxi #4\8

Ë). Here daoging music and song are combined with an acting out of the narrated story. The Han Xiangzi motif figures prominently in the earliest such plays. While this development for the most part occurs fairly late in Chinese history, there survives one local tradition of daoqing drama that may arguably go back as early as the thirteenth century: the “Blue Pass drama” (Languanxi ES PAJER) of Ye County #%44, Shandong, an area with strong historical links to Complete Perfection Daoism. The Han Xiangzi story cycle is a centerpiece of the repertoire in this local tradition.”°

Daoging remained a popular genre throughout the Late Imperial period. For the Ming period we have at least two interesting pieces of evidence for daoging performances of Han Xiangzi stories. The literatus Li Xu 4 #2] (1505-93) mentions that Daoist priests sing daoqing such as “The Blue Pass” (Languan ji E Pdaic)

and “The Journey to the West” (Xiyou ji Paw #c).7 The other source is a scene in the novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jinpingmei LFH) where young actors perform a daoging called “Lord Han is Blocked by Snow at Blue Pass” (Han Zi gong xueyong Languan i F A SPEE id). As The Plum in the Golden Vase was completed around the turn of the seventeenth century, this demonstrates that daoqing on Han Xiangzi’s exploits were popular in the lifetime of Yang Erzeng, the author of The Story of Han Xiangzi. In fact, the preface to The Story of Han Xiangzi explicitly mentions that Han Xiangzi’s

XX TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION story is only transmitted by the blind storytellers, who either sing in a loud voice while holding documents like officials, or recite ballads in a wild manner dressed up as Daoist priests, sighing three times for every line they chant. These stories everywhere delight the hearts of ignorant people and village matrons, and are listened to by school teachers and their pupils.

The preface’s author bemoans the vulgarity of these renditions, and praises the novel’s author for his more elegant treatment of the theme. It is implied that popular ballads such as daoging were one important source for the novel, and their influence is still clearly visible in the numerous daoging-style songs incorporated into the text.

However, daoging were not the only source Yang Erzeng could draw on. We have two surviving Han Xiangzi texts that antedate Yang’s novel. The first is a novella called The Immortal Han (Han xian zhuan ##(Il| (2), which may date from somewhere between the late Yuan and middle Ming periods.” The second is a southern-style drama from the Ming period, Ascension to Immortality: How Han Xiangzi Attempted Nine Times to Deliver Wengong (Han Xiangzi jiudu Wengong shengxian ji #2 VHF JLE XAH).

While the novella has a more generalized influence on the novel, there exist very concrete overlaps with the drama Ascension to Immortality. Dialogues in the novel occasionally resemble those in the drama, and at least three songs in the novel are identical with or (in one case) very close to arias in Ascension to Immortality.> The novel also incorporates structural features of the southern-style

(chuangi hay ) dramatic tradition, such as the typical reunion of all actors in the last scene/chapter. A study of the songs appearing in The Story of Han Xiangzi has led one scholar to surmise that the novel is based on one southern-style and three northern-style (zaju #£5)) dramas, a hypothesis that is further supported by the novel’s frequent use of theatrical idioms.”°

Drawing thus on both existing literary elaborations of the Han Xiangzi story and on popular traditions, The Story of Han Xiangzi weaves these strands together into the hitherto most complex and developed version of Han Xiangzi lore. Its earliest surviving edition dates to 1623.7 The storyline begins in the Han dynasty, where Han Xiangzi’s previous incarnation is a beautiful but haughty woman, who is consequently reborn as a white crane. The crane cultivates himself and meets Zhongli Quan and Lii Dongbin. They deliver him to be reborn as the son of Han Yu’s elder brother Han Hui ¥@ @. After Han Hui’s and his wife’s death, Han Xiangzi is raised in Han Yu’s household, where he is treated like a

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION XXI son (as he is the only male offspring of the Han family). Han Yu has great expectations of Han Xiangzi, but the latter follows his destiny and runs away from home to join his masters Zhongli Quan and Lii Dongbin in the Zhongnan Mountains. There he practices inner alchemy and becomes an immortal. The Jade Emperor sends him back to earth to deliver his uncle Han Yu, his aunt, and his wife, Lin Luying HEX. After many failed attempts to break down Han Yu’s Confucian obstinacy, he delivers him at Blue Pass, and later does the same for his aunt and wife.

The story has a strong anti-Confucian element, and was clearly written by an author knowledgeable in matters of inner alchemy. The prose narrative alternates with an unusually large number of poetic passages, many of which give rather profound summaries of alchemical wisdom. It is a didactic novel that teaches the superiority of Daoism over Confucianism and provides quite practical lessons in Daoist cultivation.

This novel is the great summa of Han Xiangzi lore, and as such had an enormous influence on the Han Xiangzi literature of the following Qing period (1644-1911). Here we find the Han Xiangzi theme being taken up in various forms of popular literature: precious scrolls (baojuan),” ballads (tanci, dagushu),”? local theater.°° The focus remains on the theme of deliverance, though in the popular texts attention often shifts from the deliverance of Han Yu to that of Xiangzi’s he is

& as she is usually called in the popular genres. Given wife Luying, or Lin Ying # the large female component in the audience for this literature, such a shift is understandable. There exists a significant enough number of such popular works to show that Han Xiangzi remained a well-known figure through the Qing period. Among the Eight Immortals, he is perhaps second only to Lü Dongbin in the number of surviving texts devoted to him as an individual.

To the present day, the story of Han Yu and Han Xiangzi is well known in many areas of China, in particular in those regions that served as backdrops to events in the legend. French scholar Adeline Herrou encountered many of its plot elements in the local lore of southern Shaanxi province, an area close to the Zhongnan Mountains where Han Xiangzi and Han Yu pursued their spiritual journeys. At the center of her study is the Wengong Temple in the city of Hanzhong, whose principal deity is Han Yu. Local knowledge of Han Yu emphasizes his relationship with Han Xiangzi. Both laypeople and resident Quanzhen Daoist monks recount life stories of their deity that owe more to the Han Xiangzi story cycle than to official history.’ The nearby Zhongnan Mountains are dotted with temples, caves, and landmarks that are linked in some way or another with Han Xiangzi and his uncle. Another major center of worship for Han Yu, with a secondary cult

XXII TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION of Han Xiangzi, is to be found in Chaozhou, Han Yu’s place of banishment in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. Emigrants from Chaozhou have carried this cult to the island of Taiwan, where both figures are worshipped to the present day in a handful of temples in the south.”

The pivotal work in the whole Han Xiangzi tradition clearly is the Han Xiangzi quanzhuan. In addition to its importance in the development of Han Xiangzi’s lore, this novel deserves closer attention, first because it is a well-crafted and entertaining work of literature whose literary qualities have been considerably underrated so far, and second because it is a fascinating attempt to package Daoist inner alchemy in a belletristic format. Thus the present translation should be of interest to students of Chinese folklore, literature, and religion, as well as to those who simply seek a good read.

THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES

The earliest editions of The Story of Han Xiangzi are ascribed to a certain Man of Mt. Pheasant-Yoke (Zhiheng Shanren #£ #1] A), one of Yang Erzeng’s noms de plume. Yang’s biography is not recorded in the standard collections, and his life dates are unknown. However, pulling together bits and pieces of evidence, we can at least provide a sketch of our author and his social context.

Yang’s style was Shenglu 22; he lived in the city of Qiantang #844 (modernday Hangzhou yt!) around the turn of the seventeenth century. Yang was a scholar and printer who ran two publishing houses in Qiantang. One was called the Hall of Purity in Poverty (Yibai Tang ŽE), the other the Thatched Abode of Mysteries (Caoxuan Ju #2 J=). The former is the source of another sobriquet of his: Master of Purity in Poverty (Yibai Zhuren # A= A). He was an educated man who could write an elegant hand and counted well-known literati among his acquaintances. While he was modest about his erudition (“I have only very few classical works at home and my knowledge is very lowly”3>), the well-known historian Chen Bangzhan [RFE (d. 1623) praised him as a “learned and accomplished man of many parts, leisurely and reclusive in manner.”3° A certain Fang Menglai 77K concurs that his “friend Yang” was “learned and accomplished” and adds that he “took delight in seeking out unusual things.” While Fang may have spoken here with specific reference to Yang’s project of collecting maps and landscape prints from all over China, the diverse nature of Yang’s publications does show both catholicity of taste and a pronounced interest in the “unusual.”

The two characterizations of Yang just cited are found in prefaces to Yang’s

Extraordinary Sights in China (Hainei qiguan v/a} #4), a collection of pictorial

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION XXIII materials on famous Chinese mountains and temples, with accompanying texts. In effect, this is what we would today call an “armchair traveler’s book,” written explicitly for the person who wants to see the sights of China without having to leave the comforts of home. The Chinese term for “armchair travel” is woyou EA WE (traveling while reclining), and Yang’s love of this activity explains his sobriquet Daoist Who Travels while Reclining (Woyou Daoren EA #78 A). Extraordinary

Sights in China, in ten volumes ( juan) and with more than 130 illustrations, was printed in a lavishly appointed edition in Yang’s Hall of Purity in Poverty around 1610. It had been preceded in 1607 by another upscale “coffee-table book,” an anthology of reproduced paintings: Tuhui zongyi E43 7%, in eight juan, also printed at Yang’s shop. Thus, one strain of Yang’s interest in the unusual found expression in his fascination with pictorial art and its reproduction.

Two other strains are more immediately relevant for the background of The Story of Han Xiangzi: Yang’s Daoist leanings and his interest in vernacular novels. His Daoist interests are documented by his involvement as compiler or editor of at least two Daoist works. The first is titled Records of Immortal Beauties (Xianyuan jishi (t=); it is a collection of hagiographies of female immortals, with a postface by Yang dated to 1602.38 While Records of Immortal Beauties was compiled by Yang himself, he apparently merely edited and corrected Record of the Ancestral Teachings of the Perfected Lord Xu’s [Way of] Purity and Light (Xu Zhenjun jingming zongjiao lu 7#fF R AHRR), in fifteen juan. This is a collection of texts by and on the third century immortal Xu Xun #7#, published in 1604.3 Yang’s forays into the world of vernacular novels yielded two results: The Story of Han Xiangzi and Romance of the Eastern and Western Jin Dynasties (Dong-Xi liang Jin yanyi R H ha Yet Fe). Romance of the Eastern and Western Jin Dynasties is a fictionalized account of the battles and intrigues of the third and fourth centuries. Yang’s preface reveals that this was not an original work of his, but the result of the editorial efforts he expended on a manuscript offered him by a friend and colleague, the Master of Great Peace Hall (Taihe Zhuren 2 f= A).*°

Yang’s final trace in the literary world of the late Ming period is, to my knowledge, his function as copy editor of an anthology of Chan poetry by the Song poet Su Shi fe #0 (1036—1101). This nicely rounds off our picture of a scholar-publisher of the early seventeenth century who thrived on the vibrant cultural scene of Qiantang. In the open-minded atmosphere of a major cultural center away from the capital, Yang was part of a world of literati who pursued highly eclectic interests untrammeled by overly strong concerns for orthodoxy. As copy editor of Buddhist poetry, compiler and editor of Daoist hagiographical collections, publisher of expensive art albums, and—last but not least—writer and editor of vernacular novels,

XXIV TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

Yang Erzeng likely moved easily among the literati of Qiantang and beyond. Notable scholars of the time contributed prefaces to Yang’s works, and these men seemed to share Yang’s wide-ranging and rather unorthodox interests. For example,

Feng Mengzhen i548 (1546-1605), who wrote a preface to Yang’s Records of Immortal Beauties, composed commentaries on the Daoist classics Laozi and Zhuangzi, compiled a collection of miscellaneous notes on supernatural phenomena, and was a disciple of the famous female Daoist “saint” Tanyangzi =b +.”

Ge Yinliang 5 N ( jinshi1601) was the author of a preface to Yang’s Extraordinary Sights in China and of commentaries to Confucian classics, and also compiled an important gazetteer of Buddhist monasteries in Jinling K (now Nanjing F 5).®

Yang Erzeng thus moved in exactly the kind of social circles that Andrew Plaks regards as the cradle of the literati novel, and his Han Xiangzi explicitly emulates the paradigmatic works of this new genre: Record of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, The Journey to the West, and The Plum in the Golden Vase. Yang’s intellectual and social background provided ample opportunity for the pursuit and discussion of very diverse and less than orthodox interests, and he took full advantage of these circumstances to delve into the history, lore, and practice of Daoism. His two hagiographical collections are evidence of these pursuits, but they really come to fruition in The Story of Han Xiangzi, a novel written with a clear didactic purpose: to extol the wonders of the inner alchemy tradition of Daoist cultivation over any transient glories that the world might offer.

DAOISM AND THE STORY OF HAN XIANGZI

As mentioned above, prior to writing Han Xiangzi, Yang Erzeng had been involved in the publication of two Daoist collections: one hagiographical (Records of Immortal Beauties), the other combining hagiographical and systematic-doctrinal elements (Record of the Ancestral Teachings of the Perfected Lord Xu’s [Way of] Purity and Light). The Story of Han Xiangzi combines both Daoist styles: it narrates the exploits of a Daoist immortal and instructs in a key method of Daoist cultivation—inner alchemy (neidan NF4).® To elucidate Han Xiangzi’s double function as hagiography and introduction to inner alchemy, we need to take a brief look at these elements of the Daoist tradition.

But first: what is Daoism? Though used in the singular, Daoism is not a single thing. It is a general term for a uniquely Chinese religious tradition that has produced over the centuries a large variety of movements, practices, and ideas, and has had a profound influence on Chinese culture as a whole. Daoism comes in many shapes and sizes, and its representatives include philosophers, alchemists,

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION XXV diviners, poets, priests, magicians, monks, and nuns. The unifying element for all of these diverse expressions is the idea of the Dao, the Way, the conviction that the multiplicity of phenomena in the visible world is rooted in a unitary ultimate reality. Although the Daodejing claims in its very first chapter that “the Dao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Dao,” the following definition by Livia Kohn may still give us an idea of the concept’s scope of meaning:

The [D]ao, if we then try to grasp it, can be described as the organic order underlying and structuring and pervading all existence. It is organic in that it is not willful, but it is also order because it changes in predictable rhythms and orderly patterns. If one is to approach it, reason and intellect have to be left behind. One can only intuit it when one has become as nameless and as free of conscious choices and evaluations as the [D]ao itself.4°