by Livia Kohn
The same relationship between a pharmacy and Lü Dongbin is also found in the foundation legend of the pharmacy Li Zhongsheng Tang, which was famous for the Pill of Protecting and Curing ( baoji wan).
According to the Foshan yaoye zhi (Record of Foshan Pharmacies; dated 1992), its founder, Li Zhaoji, came from Xinhui County in Guangdong Prefecture and in the early years of Guangxu moved to Foshan to do business. He believed in Daoism so deeply that he practiced cultivation of mind and worshiped Lü Dongbin every day. According to the legend, one day Li dreamed that he was given one copy of a prescription by Lü Dongbin and told to make drugs to cure people. When he awoke, he still remembered the prescription and made the drugs accordingly ( Foshan yaoye zhi, 332).
The connection with Lü Dongbin is not limited to these two pharmacies, and drug merchants may have played an important role in promoting the daotan movement. This is suggested by the fact that more than a few founders and members of daotan had experience dealing in herbal medicines both as drug merchants and doctors, or were born in a family of drug merchants. For example, the founder of Puji tan, the predecessor of Wong Tai Sin, was born into a drug-trading family located in a village at the foot of Mount Xiqiu in Nanhai (see Lang
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and Ragvald 1993). Similarly, daotan members often had highly developed medical knowledge and the technical expertise to make medicines. They often made up their own prescriptions, and many morality books they published contain “prescriptions of immortals” gained through spirit-writing. Then again, several charitable associations, including spirit-writing cults that provided free prescriptions, established relationships with drug merchants in order to buy medicines at dis-count rates. Sometimes drug merchants provided the capital to run charitable associations, often because the latter received special tax benefits (Li 1982, 202–210). Some spirit-writing cults, like Shenggong caotang, also ran pharmacies.
As well, drug merchants often donated money for publishing morality books. It was not unusual to find the names of drug shops in a book’s list of sponsors, and sometimes books also printed ads for drugs. Zhao Fenliang, one of the patrons of a Lüzu cult called Baodao tang, is a good example. A pharmacist with a large business in Guangdong and Hong Kong, he placed ads for his medicines in the morality book Fuyou dijun jueshi jing (Scripture on Enlightening the World by the Imperial Lord Fuyou; 1922), which was published through his donation. For pharmacies, publishing morality books thus was also one method of advertising their products. All this suggests that the drug merchants’ capital, technical expertise, and networks may have been among the driving forces that promoted the daotan movement. Another major group involved with Lü Dongbin worship was children. In pre-modern Guangdong, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, many places had a folk custom in which groups of boys and girls would play shamanistic games by moonlight. Some girls’ games were variants of the cult of Zigu, widespread in southern China since about the fifth century and an antecedent of spirit-writing.
One game is particularly related to Lü Dongbin and spirit-writing: the “Descent of the Eight Immortals” ( jiang baxian) or the “Invitation of the Master” ( qing shifu). First, one boy lies on the ground under the moon, while others hold incense and walk around him, chanting an incantation. The prostrate boy then enters a trance and the others ask him: “Master, are you a literary immortal or a military immortal?” If he answers “literary,” that is, Lü Dongbin, he will stand up and write with a spirit-writing pen ( jibi) in a tray of sand. Getting tired, he is asked whether he wants a disciple. If so, a boy of twelve or thirteen takes on this role. Eventually, the medium is awakened by having water sprinkled on his face; he does not usually remember anything of the sequence (Chao 1944, 634–637; Liu 1993, 634–637).
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While this is only a game, some daotan started just like this, the Xinshan tang, for example.4 Established in 1935 in Fang Village, a northeastern suburb of Guangzhou, it goes back to two young men working in a lumber shop, one aged thirty, the other sixteen or seventeen. Both were from the country around Nanhai and had no formal education. In the fall of 1935 they and their friends often played mah-jongg together in the lumber shop. One day, because they got tired of mah-jongg, they tried to play spirit-writing. They referred to a book called Wanfa guizong (Manual of Ten Thousand Methods), full of incantations and talismans with which to invite the deities to descend. They took a willow twig to use as a spirit-writing pen and covered the square mah-jongg table with incense ashes to use as a spirit-writing board. The youngest shop boy became the medium. The events are recounted in detail in the Weishan zuile (Doing Good Is Utmost Happiness), a compilation of spirit-written oracles from 1934 to 1939.
It says:
Since the fall of 1934, we had talked about spirit-writing, but we had no information about talismans [to call deities to descend]. After a while we got a book called Wanfa guizhong. We read it enthusiastically and tried to have a séance in several ways as prescribed in it. One day it happened, and the great immortal Lüzu was manifested himself. At that time what had been drawn on a table was a picture of a sword. We were filled with rapture and cried, “the immortal has come!” ( Weishan zuile, 1)
They believed that the picture of the sword represented Lüzu, because he was usually portrayed wearing a sword. After that, whenever they played spirit-writing, Lüzu descended. In the beginning, they sometimes could not understand what the writing meant; some messages were drawn in pictures like the sword, other messages were written in characters. When they could not understand them, they asked Lüzu to provide a redrawing. One day someone brought a book called Lüzu zhenjing (Perfect Scripture of Patriarch Lü). After referring to it, the writing gradually became clearer. In the twelfth moon, they asked Lüzu to take them as his disciples and establish a spirit-writing cult. Lüzu agreed, and they set up the Xinshan tang on the second floor of the lumber shop.
The Xinshan tang thus originated with a spirit-writing experiment by two young men who were neither literati nor professional Daoists and who engaged in spirit-writing as a casual amusement—reminiscent of the shamanistic game of the Mid-Autumn Festival. What began as
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a playful entertainment soon became a serious cult, and the barely literate men turned into students of Lü’s sacred writings. The cult is thus also an example of how the written tradition and preliterate shamanism were integrated in to the daotan movement.
The Early Stages of the Daotan Movement
The earliest detectable daotan cult was founded in 1848 at a scenic place on Mount Xiqiao, Nanhai, known as the Baiyun dong (White Cloud Cavern). Mount Xiqiao had been an academic center from Ming times onward, the site of many Confucian academies, called “study halls” ( shuyuan) or “houses of refinement” ( jingshe), established by literati fond of scenic beauty (Luo 1994, 81–88).
During the Qing dynasty, new Confucian academies and poetry societies ( shishe) were established here, and the popularity of the place continued until the end of the eighteenth century, when it fell into decline. As the introduction to the Xiqiao Baiyundong zhi (Gazetteer of the White Cloud Cave in Xiqiao, dated 1838) explains, “Nowadays most buildings and gardens have fallen into ruin and are covered with growing thickets. It is quite a regrettable situation” (3). It proposes to reconstruct some temples and have them maintained by a resident Daoist priest. Following this proposition, on the site of the former Gongyu Academy, a new temple dedicated to Lüzu was constructed in 1840 and named Canhua gong. This was a precursor of the Yunquan xianguan (Guan 1985, 6).
Mount Xiqiao was not only a center of Confucian academies but also a sacred mountain that attracted Daoists interested in alchemy and drawn to the mountain’s abundant springs and herbal medicines.
Lü Dongbin appeared among them and came to occupy an important place in the local cult of immortals even before the establishment of the Yunquan xianguan, leaving a footprint on
a rock in the Baiyun dong and becoming venerated in a statue owned by He Baiyun ( Baiyundong zhi 1.13, 2.13). Later, the first abbot of the Yunquan xianguan, Li Zongjian, was a famous calligrapher. He passed the lower examination but did not hold a government appointment, coming rather to live in the Yunquan xianguan as a Daoist ( Nanhai xianzhi
[1872], 20). His attitude and background matched those of the Daoist literati on Mount Luofu, and he too was focused on physical and spiritual cultivation in a place of scenic beauty.
As regards the organization of the Yunquan xianguan on Mount Xiqiao, the Xiqiao yunquan xianguan shiji (Historical Record of the
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Cloud Spring Hermitage in Xiqiao), a short memoir written by early members, is one of the few available sources of information. According to this, the Yunquan xianguan was a hermitage that housed a voluntary association for the practice of goodness, merit-making, and self-cultivation. To obtain membership, one had only to pay a membership fee of twenty (later sixty) taels and bring the recommendation of two members. This effectively limited membership to the affluent classes and to acquaintances of previous members. Once a person was admitted, he or she was given a Daoist name decided through spirit-writing. There was no monastic system; the members did not wear their hair in Daoist fashion or dress in Daoist robes, nor did they observe a vegetarian diet, chant scriptures, or meditate. Three years after becoming members, they could stay for their entire lives. The Yunquan xianguan, therefore, was a kind of retreat for the wealthy.
Members held three large-scale celebrations every year: the birthday of Lüzu on the fourteenth day of the fourth moon; the Hungry Ghost Festival on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon; and the birthday of the Jade Emperor on the sixth day of the twelfth moon. During the Hungry Ghost Festival, merit services were held for deceased members, dead relatives, and friends of members; at that time a variety of Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist scriptures were chanted for seven days and nights. The cantors were sometimes members, but mostly professional priests hired from outside.
Spirit-writing séances and public lecturing sessions were also important activities. The morality book Shanyu rentong lu (Record of Being Good to the Human Community) was a collection of spirit-written oracles received from 1879 to 1890. In addition, the Yunquan xianguan was famous for its efficacious Lüzu yaoqian (Medical Fortune Slips Prescribed by Lüzu), which gave prescriptions for men, women, and children ( Nanhai xianzhi [1910] 26.49). The organization was composed of a director, an accountant, an auditor, a receptionist, and a general manager. The director was elected by the members once every three years, and operational expenses came mainly from membership fees, donations, and money offerings made in the annual celebrations.
The association purchased a great deal of real estate, including houses and shops, which in turn provided a significant income. In the early years, members typically belonged to the local elite, that is, they were local gentry, literati, doctors, teachers, wealthy merchants, and so on.
Soon after the establishment of the group, the Governor General Qi Ying sent a tablet in his own calligraphy, demonstrating the support of the Yunquan xianguan by the upper classes.
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Another prominent institution of the early phase was the Changchun xianguan in Guangzhou City, established around 1850 by the Governor General Ye Mingchen, a spirit-writing fanatic who allegedly commanded his troops during the Second Opium War (1856–1860) on the basis of orders received from the divine. The Changchun xianguan served as a residence for Daoist literati without kin but fell into decline after the Opium War. In the late 1860s the general Jiang Liyi established the Jupo Academy on its site (Huang 1994, 81; Gray 1875, 413). In the meantime, Ye Mingchen and his father in 1855 established another association, called Xiaopeng xianguan in the western suburb of Guangzhou City. According to Gray, they worshiped Lüzu as their main deity and provided efficacious medicine prescriptions that became very popular among the people (Gray 1875, 662–666).
Several associations named xianguan also arose in the Guangdong countryside, in Qingyuan County. In 1854 the Taihe Cavern was opened on Mount Huajian in 1873, and the Taoyuan xianguan was established here as a center for the worship of Lüzu and the immortal Wei Ruyi. According to a local gazetteer, three provincial governors sent tablets with their own calligraphy in celebration of its establishment, lauding its provision of charitable services, such as burying war victims without kin. All these xianguan of the mid-nineteenth century were in isolated locations with scenic beauty and relied heavily on the support of the upper classes. They offered charitable services and morality books and were a venue for retired upper-class people to practice self-cultivation.
The Daotan Movement after the Reign of Guangxu
Around the turn of the century, local elites were caught up in an eschatological sentiment and the hope of salvation from “the great catastrophe” in response to the social disorder caused by frequent disasters, epidemics, and wars. Responding to these conditions, the daotan movement began to lean more toward charitable activities and spread further into the lower classes. Traditionally, xianguan had been hermitages for the upper classes, but now many began to shift their concern from esoteric Daoist knowledge and individual cultivation to moral reformation and the practice of goodness.
It was a general belief at the time that moral decline caused “great catastrophes,” such as natural disasters and epidemics. There was no way to escape these catastrophes other than to restore moral order (Yamada 1995), an idea also expressed in the Lüzu oracles as recorded
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in the Shanyu rentong lu (256, 274–275). To escape the great catastrophes, the text advises its followers to confess sins, be without fault, act with charity, and appeal to the Emperor of Heaven (286). As a result, the local elites at this time focused on helping others rather than cultivating themselves; they thought that only good deeds could prevent the great catastrophes that were beyond human knowledge.
They believed that while the goodness practiced by one person might be small, the collective practice of goodness would be significant. However, another passage states that “in the case of large-scale disasters, you cannot escape unless you do great good and earn great merit”
(134). If the small goodness and merit of an individual cannot avert great catastrophes, what can people do? The oracles answer that establishing charitable societies is a very effective way to escape the great catastrophes.
Heaven is not fair or humane, the Shanyu rentong lu points out, and there is no way to be always prosperous and forever escape the great catastrophes. Thus, every year people become victims of wars, floods, droughts, epidemics, and famines. Seeing these things happen, Heaven is grieved but cannot bring relief to people immediately. To make up for this insufficiency, human beings must take action.
I propose to establish charitable societies in many places such as the Aiyu Charitable Society in Guangzhou and the Tongwa Hospital in Hong Kong. These are large scale societies. But regardless of the size, big or small, you should set up such societies. Next time a disaster happens, charitable societies can rescue more people. (218) The rise of charitable societies in Guangdong province peaked during the reign of Guangxu (Fuma 1982, 42). Members of the Yunquan xianguan were deeply affected by this trend and took an active part in it. Similarly, most spirit-writing cults arising during the Guangxu reign tended to take on the character of charitable societies; their growth was frequently triggered by epidemics, beginning with the plague of 1894 (Benedict 1996). Three cults serve as pertinent examples.
First, the Puji tan, the predecessor of the Wong Tai Sin group in Hong Kong (see Lang and Ragvald 1993), arose in direct response to the 1894 plague. The founder, Liang Ren’an, was born in a village near the foot of Mount Xiqiao in 1861. His father was a merchant of herbal medicines. When he was in his early twenties, he joined the Customs Service, but the plague c
hanged his fate and he began to perform spirit-writing séances to ask for divine protection and prescriptions.
Receiving messages from Wong Tai Sin, he and his friends continued
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to have spirit-writing sessions and eventually set up a formal altar in Guangzhou City in 1897. In 1899 they built a shrine called Puji tan in a western suburb across the Pearl River, worshiping Wong Tai Sin as their main deity together with Lüzu and Wei Zheng. In 1915 Liang moved to Hong Kong, rented a flat in Wanchai, and set up an altar for Wong Tai Sin in his room. In the following year he opened a medicine shop near his apartment. In 1921 he received a message from Wong Tai Sin that a new shrine should be built; he duly erected one in the village of Zhuyuan at the foot of Lion Rock Mountain. This small shrine developed into the most popular temple in Hong Kong after World War II (Lang and Ragvald 1993).
The second example is the Shenggong caotang. It, too, began during the plague of 1894, as documented in their main morality book, the Shenggong lu. A statue of Guangchengzi5 had been set up in the rear of a study hall near the government seat of Fanyu County in the eastern part of Guangzhou City. This became renowned for its miraculous efficacy, and many people came to worship. When the plague broke out, people held a spirit-writing séance in front of the statue, and Guangchengzi descended on the twenty-third day of the fourth moon, preaching that people should practice goodness to avoid the plague and widely distribute talismans to cure people. After several sessions, followers decided to establish a charitable society, supported by the local gentry and officials of Fanyu County as well as by a government land grant. This was the beginning of the Shenggong caotang. They worshiped Guangchengzi as their main god together with other immortals, including Lüzu ( Fanyu xianxu zhi vol. 5.26; Shenggong lu vol. 1 and vol. 2).