China and the Chinese

by Herbert Allen Giles

A Chinese official with whom I became acquainted in the island of Formosa was outwardly a Confucianist, but inwardly a Taoist of the deepest dye. He used to practise the above exercises and deep breathing in his spare moments, and strongly urged me to try them. Apparently they were no safeguard against malarial fever, of which he died about a year or so afterward.

Associated closely with the elixir of immortality is the practice of alchemy, which beyond all doubt was an importation from Greece by way of Bactria.

We read in the Historical Record, under date 133 B.C., of a man who appeared at court and persuaded the Emperor that gold could be made out of cinnabar or red sulphide of mercury; and that if dishes made of the gold thus produced were used for food, the result would be prolongation of life, even to immortality. He pretended to be immortal himself; and when he died, as he did within the year, the infatuated Emperor believed, in the words of the historian, "that he was only transfigured and not really dead," and accordingly gave orders to continue the experiments.

For many centuries the attempt to turn base metal into gold occupied a leading place in the researches of Chinese philosophers. Volumes have been written on the subject, and are still studied by a few.

The best-known of these has been attributed to a Taoist hermit who flourished in the second century A.D., and was summoned to court, but refused the invitation, being, as he described himself, a lowly man, living simply, and with no love for power and glory. The work in question was actually mistaken for a commentary on the Book of Changes, mentioned in a former lecture, though it is in reality a treatise upon alchemy, and also upon the concoction of pills of immortality. It was forwarded to me some years ago by a gentleman in America, with a request that I would translate it as a labour of love; but I was obliged to decline what seemed to me a useless task, especially as the book was really written by another man, of the same name as the hermit, who lived more than twelve hundred years later.

The author is said to have ultimately succeeded in compounding these pills of immortality, and to have administered one by way of experiment to a dog, which at once fell down dead. He then swallowed one himself, with the same result; whereupon his elder brother, with firm faith, and undismayed by what he saw before him, swallowed a third pill. The same fate overtook him, and this shook the confidence of a remaining younger brother, who went off to make arrangements for burying the bodies. But by the time he had returned the trio had recovered, and were straightway enrolled among the ranks of the immortals.

As another instance of the rubbish in which the modern Taoist delights to believe, I may quote the story of the Prince of Huai-nan, second century B.C., who is said, after years of patient experiment, to have finally discovered the elixir of life. Immediately on tasting the drug, his body became imponderable, and he began to rise heavenward. Startled probably by this new sensation, he dropped the cup out of which he had been drinking, into the courtyard; whereupon his dogs and poultry finished up the dregs, and were soon sailing up to heaven after him.

It was an easy transition from alchemy and the elixir of life to magic and the black art in general. Those Taoists who, by their manner of life, or their reputed successes in the above two fields of research, attracted public attention, came to be regarded as magicians or wizards, in communication with, and in control of, the unseen powers of darkness. The accounts of their combats with evil spirits, to be found in many of the lower-class novels, are eagerly devoured by the Chinese, who even now frequently call in Taoist priests to exorcise some demon which is supposed to be exerting an evil influence on the family.

As a specimen, there is a story of a young man who had fallen under the influence of a beautiful young girl, when he met a Taoist priest in the street, who started on seeing him, and said that his face showed signs that he had been bewitched. Hurrying home, the young man found his door locked; and on creeping softly up to the window and looking in, he saw a hideous devil, with a green face and jagged teeth like a saw, spreading a human skin on the bed, and painting it with a paint-brush. The devil then threw aside the brush, and giving the skin a shake-out, just as you would a coat, cast it over its shoulders, when lo! there stood the girl.

The story goes on to say that the devil-girl killed the young man, ripping him open and tearing out his heart; after which the priest engaged in terrible conflict with her. Finally—and here we seem to be suddenly transported to the story of the fisherman in the Arabian Nights—she became a dense column of smoke curling up from the ground, and then the priest took from his vest an uncorked gourd, and threw it right into the midst of the smoke. A sucking noise was heard, and the whole column was drawn into the gourd; after which the priest corked it up closely, and carried it away with him.