Eight Immortals
Eight immortals of Daoist legend, each known by what they carry: a fan, a sword, a gourd, castanets, a flower basket, a bamboo drum, a flute and a lotus. They are among the most popular subjects in Chinese art, and their emblems alone can stand for the group.
Meaning
The Eight Immortals (Ba Xian; E. T. C. Werner writes Pa Hsien) are figures of Daoist legend. Werner, in Myths and Legends of China (1922), counted them among the most popular subjects of representation in China, their portraits to be seen everywhere, on porcelain vases, teapots, fans, scrolls and embroidery. Each is known by an emblem. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s set of nineteenth-century embroidered roundels shows Zhongli Quan with a banana-leaf fan, Lü Dongbin with a sword, Li Tieguai with an iron crutch and a gourd of elixir, Cao Guojiu with castanets, Lan Caihe with a basket of flowers, Zhang Guolao with a bamboo tube drum, Han Xiangzi with a flute and He Xiangu with a lotus. Werner adds that between them they stand for all kinds of people: “old, young, male, female, civil, military, rich, poor”. Daoist immortals in general, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on religious Daoism describes them, are historical, half-historical or wholly legendary people who have gone beyond the limits of ordinary life, “usually by means of their practices”, and they are not gods.
Origin and history
When the group took shape is not settled. Werner thought the legend “certainly not older” than the Song dynasty and probably of the Yuan (1280–1368), though some of the eight had been celebrated as immortals in Daoist legend before that. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s essay on Daoist art says the group first became popular in the twelfth century, and the V&A says the eight began to appear on all types of objects in the fourteenth. Werner counted three of them as historical people, Zhongli Quan, Zhang Guo and Lü Yan (Lü Dongbin); the others, he wrote, are known only from fables and romances.
Two of the eight gave their names to a teaching line. In Fabrizio Pregadio’s account, the earliest clearly identifiable lineage of Neidan, or internal alchemy, is the Zhong-Lü, named after Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin, which seems to have begun in the second half of the Tang. The Met adds that Lü is said to have received sacred knowledge from Zhongli Quan.
Which immortal carries which emblem
The emblems are not fixed. Werner gives Han Xiangzi “a bouquet of flowers or a basket of peaches of immortality” where the V&A gives him a flute, and his Lan Caihe “usually … plays a flute or a pair of cymbals” and, leaving the world, throws down shoe, robe, belt and castanets; the V&A’s Lan Caihe carries the flower basket. Werner shows Cao Guojiu with “the tablet of admission to Court”, and the V&A says Cao is shown with castanets and sometimes with a tablet. Werner’s Zhongli Quan holds a feather fan, or the peach of immortality. Even Lan Caihe’s sex varies: Werner writes that Lan is “variously stated to have been a woman and an hermaphrodite”, and the V&A calls Lan Caihe “he”.
The emblems without the immortals
On porcelain, cloisonné and robes the emblems often appear on their own, standing in for the figures. The V&A has an early eighteenth-century cloisonné vase covered with “bats, cloud-forms and the emblems of the Eight Immortals”, and a seventeenth-century soapstone screen whose back shows the eight, with their emblems, among waves.
Crossing the sea
The waves are a story. In the version Werner retells, the eight were on their way to the birthday of the god of longevity when they came to the sea. They walked over the waves, and Cao Guojiu made a raft of cypress plank for the servant carrying their presents, but a typhoon upset it and servant and presents sank. Li Tieguai pointed his gourd at the sea floor and lit up the palace of the Dragon King. The king’s son came out to abuse them, and Han Xiangzi turned his flute into a fishing line and hooked him. Battle followed, until the Dragon King, warned that the Supreme Ruler would hear of it, gave back the servant and the presents and apologised to the Eight Immortals.
Eight as a lucky number
Werner noted that “Eight Immortals” was used as a figure of speech for happiness, and that the number eight had become lucky through the story, so that things eight in number shared in it.
Read next
- Next in Taoist symbolsFu talisman (符)A Daoist talisman: a strip of paper written in a script meant for the gods to read, not people. Daoists use fu (符) to summon deities, command demons and protect a place, and wear them, post them or burn them.
- The same shape in Zodiac signsPisces symbol (♓)♓ is the glyph of Pisces, the Fishes, the twelfth and last sign of the Western zodiac. Astrologers give its dates as 19 February to 20 March, and in their tradition it is a water sign ruled by Jupiter.
See also
Peach of immortality, Yin yang (taijitu), Bagua (the eight trigrams), Crane, Laozi riding an ox.
Sources
- Myths and Legends of China, E. T. C. Werner (London: George G. Harrap, 1922), Project Gutenberg, ch. XI, The Eight Immortals; ch. VI, The Shipwrecked Servant
- Roundel with Zhong Liquan, one of the Eight Immortals (FE.123–1983), Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O1135806, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Roundel with Zhang Guolao, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O486484, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Roundel with Cao Guojiu, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O1135824, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Roundel with Han Xiangzi, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O1135813, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Roundel with Li Tieguai, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O1135819, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Roundel with Lu Dongbin, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O1135822, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Roundel with Lan Caihe, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O1135815, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Roundel with He Xiangu, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O72992, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary
- Vase, cloisonné enamel on copper, early 18th century, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O497920, Victoria and Albert Museum, Physical description
- Soapstone table-screen plaque, 1650–1700, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O116720, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary; Physical description
- Daoism and Daoist Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (December 2011), The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Religious Daoism, Fabrizio Pregadio, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3. Main Schools and Lineages; 6.1 The Immortals
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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