Free Tales of the Taoist Immortals by Eva Wong

sick and driving out evil spirits. He dispensed medicine from his gourd, exorcised ghosts, and helped towns and villages ward off floods and droughts.
    He arrived in one village at midnight. Unable to find lodgings at the inn, he walked to the mansion of a well-to-do family and knocked on the door. A man with a kindly face opened the gate and said, “No one should be out at this time. Are you lost? Do you need a place to stay?”
    “The inns are full,” explained Chang-fang. “Will you let me stay at your house for the night? I’ll gladly pay the expenses.”
    The owner of the mansion, whose name was Huan Ching, happened to be interested in the Taoist arts. Seeing that Fei Chang-fang was dressed in the robes of a wandering Taoist healer, he said, “You need not pay me anything. I will be honored to have you in my house.”
    The next morning, Huan Ching introduced Fei Chang-fang to his family and served up a sumptuous meal for his guest. While the two men discussed the Taoist arts over food and wine, Chang-fang noticed a dark vapor moving menacingly toward the Huan mansion.
    Quickly, he said to his host, “There is a vapor of death coming toward your home. You must take your family and servants and go up to the mountains tomorrow before sunrise. Don’t return home until sunset, or you will all die.”
    Huan Ching was puzzled. He said, “All my life I have tried to follow the Tao and help others. Have I done something wrong for such a disaster to come to my family?”
    Fei Chang-fang replied, “It is because I know that you are a kind and virtuous man that I’ve given you the warning. There are some things that even the lords of heaven cannot control.”
    Huan Ching asked no more. He called his wife, children, and servants together, and said, “Pack some clothes and food. We need to leave for the mountains immediately.”
    When the household passed through the town on their way to the mountains, the neighbors laughed and said, “There goes a fool who listens to cheap advice from Taoist magicians.” Huan Ching and his family ignored the jeers and left the village.
    The next day after sunset, they returned to find a largecrowd standing outside their house. People were pointing to the stables behind the mansion and whispering to each other, “Did you hear that all the horses and oxen died yesterday? Even the sheep and the chickens in the barns are dead.”
    It was only then that Huan Ching realized that he and his family had escaped a major catastrophe. He thanked the lords of heaven and pledged to take offerings to the mountain shrines every year on the ninth day of the ninth month, for that was the day that his household had been spared from death. As the years went by, all the villages and towns in the area made it a custom to visit the mountain shrines on the ninth day of the ninth month.
    Although Fei Chang-fang never entered the immortal realm, he lived a long life and never tired of healing and helping those in need. Following his example, many wandering healers began to carry their herbs and medicines in a gourd. And so it was that the gourd became the symbol of those who practiced the healing arts.

     
    F EI C HANG-FANG lived during the latter part of the Han dynasty (206 BCE –219 CE ) and is regarded as the patron of healers and herbalists. Huan Ching’s visit to the shrines has become a cultural tradition of China. Today, it is still customary for many Chinese to spend a day in the mountains on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month.

20
    The Sorcerer Strategist
    Kiang Tzu-ya
     

 
     
     
     

     

 
     
    Kiang Tzu-ya was born into a poor family. Abandoned and left to die, he was miraculously kept alive and cared for by dogs, cats, horses, and oxen. One day, a noblewoman, whose family name was Kiang, saw the infant being suckled by a cow and said, “This must be a special child.” She took the infant home, adopted him, and named him Tzu-ya.
    The boy grew up to be extraordinary. By the age of ten,