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A Celestial Life: Sipping Mountain Spring Water While Simmering a Lingzhi Soup

Release date:

2023-06-16

The immortals each lead their own lives, yet they all share one thing in common: they prefer to dwell in places blessed with beautiful mountains, clear waters, and fresh air. They “sip mountain spring water and simmer nourishing soup with lingzhi mushrooms”...
Among the Ten Isles, there dwell hundreds of thousands of immortals, who cultivate and tend fields of magical herbs, reckoning their acreage just as one would with rice.
Peng Zu:
Peng Zu, whose personal name was Qian and courtesy name was Keng, was the first eminent scholar of health preservation in Chinese history and a revered long-lived figure of the Chinese nation, said to have lived to the age of 800.
The reason Peng Zu enjoyed good health and a long life was that he regularly consumed cinnamon and ginseng and skillfully practiced qigong and guided exercises.
Peng Zu not only consumed lingzhi himself, but also instructed his sole female disciple, Cai Nu: “Immortals… may either roam the rivers and seas or soar among the famed mountains, may nourish themselves with primordial qi or feast upon the essence of mushrooms, may come and go among mortals or conceal themselves in the forests…”
Deer-skin gentleman
Lu Piguang was a native of Zichuan. In his youth, he served as a minor official in the prefectural government, working as a carpenter; with a mere wave of his hand, he could fashion all manner of tools and implements.
Eat the herb of Shizhi, drink the divine spring. And after seventy years, the Zishui River shall come.
The Two Daughters of Lady Jiang
The two daughters of the River Goddess—of what land they came, no one knows. While wandering by the banks of the Jiang and Han rivers, they encountered Zheng Jiaofu; he beheld them and was smitten with love, yet he did not know that they were divine beings.
The tangerine is but a pomelo; I place it in a bamboo basket and set it adrift upon the Han River, letting it float downstream. I follow its course, gathering the fragrant mushrooms that grow by its side and partaking of them.
Shen Taizhi
Shen Taizhi (687–762), courtesy name Guangxiang, styled himself the Hermit of White Cloud, was a native of Jiyang during the mid-Tang dynasty (now part of Henan Province).
Due to changes in the family, his parents moved from Luoyang to what is now Shaoyang City, then known as Baoqing. In the year 687 AD, two stars descended to earth: one was Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, and the other was Shen Taizhi. His mother, Lady Yang, dreamed of swallowing a piece of lingzhi mushroom and became pregnant as a result, hence the name; she shared the same birthday as Emperor Xuanzong.
Illustrative images: “Complete Biographies of Immortals with Elephants,” Volume One, featuring Peng Zu; “Yunji Qiqian,” depicting Lord Lüpi; the revised edition of “Ancient and Modern Miscellaneous Records of Immortals,” including the tale of the Two Jiang Consorts; “Yunji Qiqian,” Volume 113—Preface to the Continued Biographies of Immortals; and “Collection of Immortals of Yongcheng,” Volume Seven, entries on Cai Nü 1–2.
In fact, even the immortals are quite ordinary. On important occasions, the great deities still accept gifts from the lesser immortals.