Life
Elder Zhang Guo was a Taoist fangshi (方士 "occultist-alchemist") who lived as a hermit in the Zhongtiao Shan in Heng Prefecture (恒州 Héngzhōu) during the Tang Dynasty. By the time of Empress Wu, he claimed to be several hundred years old. A strong believer in the magic of necromancy, he also declared that he had been Grand Minister to the Emperor Yao during a previous incarnation. Zhang Guo Lao also had a love for wine and winemaking. He was known to make liquor from herbs and shrubs as a hobby. Other members of the Eight Immortals drank his wine, which they believed to have healing or medicinal properties. He was also known to be a master of Taoist Breath or Qigong and could go without food for days, surviving on only a few sips of wine.
He was the most eccentric of the Eight Immortals, seen clearly in the kung fu style dedicated to his memory. The style includes moves such as delivering a kick during a back flip or bending so far back that your shoulders touch the ground. He was known to be quite entertaining, often making himself invisible, drinking water from the petals of poisonous flowers, snatching birds in flight from the sky, as well as wilting flowers simply by pointing in their direction.
Read more about this topic: Elder Zhang Guo
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have ... insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.”
—John Ruskin (18191900)
“The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (16131680)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (18241899)