Article originally published May 30, 2025
by Yvonne Lau
We were fortunate enough to be surrounded by Chinese art growing up, and I would see paintings of the “8 Immortals” everywhere—in offices, restaurants, and Daoist temples. You usually saw them depicted in a boat (“8 Immortals Crossing the Sea” is a common theme in Chinese paintings) with 1 woman, 6 men, and what I always thought was a child, sometimes a boy and sometimes a girl. As a kid, I knew that they were gods because they were called the “immortals”, but they just looked like regular people hanging out together. In fact, the 8 Immortals are believed to be Daoist gods that were once mortals from all walks of life who achieved enlightenment. Although they developed magical powers, they also retained their human qualities, including flaws, and this endeared them to the common folk. Recently, I was in Chinatown and was looking closely at an 8 Immortals painting when I realized that the "child” (a young man in this painting) was obviously queer (at least to me). That was startling, as I’ve always understood Chinese culture to be quite homophobic, so I decided to learn more about how this person became accepted as part of the pantheon.
It turns out that this god is named Lan Cai He 藍採和 (“Cai He” meaning “pick/harvest harmony”) and is considered the most mysterious and least understood of the 8 Immortals.
Depending on his mood Lan Caihe dressed in either colorful women's clothes or a ragged set of blue men’s clothes with a three-inch wide wooden belt decorated with six dark wood strips. He often wore a boot on one foot and nothing on the other, which led some to believe he was the reincarnation of the Barefoot Immortal, a famous Daoist deity. Others believed he a wandering Daoist priest, with psychic and magical powers, but most probably thought he was a beggar and a street artist as he held a three-foot-long clapperboard in one hand and a large flower basket in the other as he sang about magical beings and recited Daoist teachings while walking around the city begging. He gave the money he received from begging to the poor, but more often spent it in wine shops. What everyone could agree on was that Lan Caihe was usually drunk and seemed crazy, but also not crazy as he spoke and readily answered questions with wisdom and humor.
Lan Caihe would wander far and wide, and it was said that people in Chang An who saw him as children and then again in their old age were startled to find that he hadn’t aged a day. When he finally disappeared, it was widely rumored that Lan Caihe had been asleep in a wineshop when he heard the flute of Zhong Liquan (another of the 8 Immortals), immediately woke up, and had flown away drunkenly on the back of a crane with his flower basket in hand.
Another version of how Lan Caihe became an immortal has to do with Chinese Medicine!
Lan Caihe learned Chinese herbalism from his grandfather and at 18 took over his practice. He often went into the mountains to collect herbs with his basket. When he was hungry, he would eat the Ling Zhi (Reishi/Ganoderma lucidum) and Fu Ling (Poria cocos) mushrooms he found. One day, while collecting herbs, he came to a lotus pond, where he saw an old man with curved eyebrows, big eyes, a flat face and a big belly lying by the pond sleeping.
There on his belly was a large sore next to his navel that was rotting and oozing pus and black blood. Lan Caihe pitied the old man, so went to him and squeezed and sucked away the disgusting pus and blood with his mouth. Afterwards, Lan Caihe took some of the herbs he had collected and applied them as an herbal plaster on the sore. But the wound began to bleed profusely. Lan Caihe was stunned and thought, "Strange, my medicine is always 100% effective!" As he tried to think of what to do, the old man, who had not reacted at all through the treatment, suddenly opened his eyes, sat up, and scolded, "You fool! Why don't you use your basket and fetch some water? There’s still blood here!" Lan Caihe was taken aback and knew that it wasn’t logical, but he quickly waded into the pond to fetch water to appease his patient. Of course, by the time he returned to the old man, all the water had run through the basket. At which the old man scolded him again, "How stupid you are! Use the mud in the pond to paste up the empty spaces in the basket! And hurry up with the water!" and sighed exasperatedly. Lan Caihe was flustered and did what the old man commanded. This time, there was some water, but it was a muddy soup! The old man was livid when he saw it and said, "Fool! Why don't you pour it out and get a basket of clean water!" At this point, Lan Caihe was a bit angry but kept his temper in check. After all, he thought, this was a poor old man who deserves my compassion.
Lan Caihe stood there in his sopping wet clothes when he suddenly saw a pretty woman nearby covering her mouth and laughing, which made him even more embarrassed. The woman came nearer and said to him: "Brother, why don't you think of another way?" Lan Caihe looked around at the lotus pond and his bamboo basket, but his nerves were ragged, and his mind was blank. A look passed between the young woman and the old man, and then she said gently: "Do you think the lotus leaves might be helpful?" Lan Caihe looked at the large green leaves rising out of the pond and slapped his forehead. Wading in again, he picked a few leaves and lined the basket with them, finally able to draw a basket of clear water. Seeing this, the old man lay back down, and Lan Caihe understood what to do. He removed the plaster and poured the basket of clean water on the bleeding, black sore.
Miraculously, the old man's belly was immediately healed, the water having washed away all traces of the wound and infection. Lan Caihe was, of course, extremely surprised, and heard the old man say amusedly, “How silly! Weren’t you cold when you went into the pond just now?” He continued, “This water is very strange. Why don’t you take a sip and see what it is?" The old man stood up and pointed at the lotus pond. Still a little dazed, Lan Caihe waded into the water again and, cupping his hands, scooped up some of the cool water and drank it. It was the sweetest, most refreshing water he had ever had, and when he took a breath, his lungs filled with an indescribably refreshing fragrance. His body felt as light as he imagined clouds to be. The young woman handed him his basket and said, "Brother, you are now immortal. Join us!" Smiling, the old man tugged on Lan Caihe’s sleeve, and together they rose into the sky with the young woman floating behind holding a lotus. It turns out that the old man was Zhong Liquan, and the young woman the lotus fairy He Xiangu, two immortals who would eventually become part of the “8 Immortals”.
That same basket has become Lan Caihe’s magical symbol, and was purported to contain everything imaginable, was mysterious. and exuded a fragrance that could ward off evil spirits. In art, it is depicted containing flowers, fruit, or herbs.
As I mentioned, the 8 immortals were believed to have once been regular people, and in history, there was indeed a man named Lan Caihe. The Lan family of Stone Horse Village, Fengyang County, in Anhui Province embraces him as an ancestor. They claim to have descended from him 21 generations ago, and the clan’s genealogical records from the Ming Dynasty records: "Lan Caihe, achieving the position of Jinshi in the first year of…Tang Dynasty Emperor Gaozong was appointed as a court doctor. Because he offended the powerful minister Yang Guosui, he later resigned from his official position, left his wife and son, cultivated [himself] for a hundred days and ascended to heaven. He was called the Daluo Immortal.”
Whether Lan Caihe was based on a real person or not, I find it lovely that he is part of this celebrated pantheon at all, which piqued my interest in furthering my understanding of queerness in Chinese culture. It turns out that like other ancient societies, for eons China was accepting and respectful of queerness and same-sex relationships. These relationships were out in the open; bisexuality was common, and gender fluidity probably raised far less eyebrows than it does today.
In ancient China, educated, upper-class men often had same-sex relationships while having wives and children. Maybe because of general misogyny, male couples were associated with a higher, ennobling aspect of love that tended to elevate the pair. This was also true among the less educated, such as among theater actors and soldiers, although considered less noble or elevated. Records referencing same-sex male relationships in China date back to at least 600 BCE, and same-sex couples are mentioned in poems, anecdotes, and histories with more frequency starting with the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE). (Female same-sex relationships were ignored in Chinese history and literature in the same way women were generally passed over by historians.) Scholar Louis Crompton, commenting on the stories which came to define same-sex relationships in China, writes: “Clearly, these normative tales, if we may so call them, show an unselfconscious acceptance of same sex relations, an acceptance that was to persist in China for twenty-four centuries. They contrast strikingly with the myth that dominated the imagination of Western Christendom – the story of Sodom with its supernatural terrors. But they are also quite distinct from the traditions of ancient Greece. Instead of legends of heroic self-sacrifice in a warrior society, we have piquant tales of delicate consideration and tenderness.”
It was also common for monarchs to be openly bisexual and to take male lovers from among their courtiers. One tale, The Cut Sleeve, relates how Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty (25-1 BCE) was resting with his lover, Dong Xian, who had fallen asleep on the sleeve of Ai’s robe. When a servant came to fetch the Emperor to court, rather than wake Dong Xian, the Emperor had the servant cut off his sleeve and held court in this disheveled state. “The cut sleeve” became a tender euphemism for same-sex relationships that is still widely used today.
So, when did Chinese society’s accepting attitude change? In his article “LGBTQ+ in the Ancient World”, Joshua Mark writes, “Distinctions concerning sexual identity, and prohibitions on same-sex relationships, only begin to appear after the rise of Christianity which rejected practices associated with earlier religious beliefs. It was not, then, a same-sex relationship that was being condemned but any activity non-Christians participated in such as sacrificing to pagan gods or attending non-Christian religious festivals.”
China was exposed to Christianity in the 7th century during the Tang Dynasty, but didn’t take root until the early 16th century. By the 17th century, Chinese cultural attitudes toward homosexuality were markedly different from ages past. Non-heterosexual relationships were seen as unnatural and forced underground, re-emerging only recently with the rise of social media platforms where the queer community could semi-anonymously interact and slowly gaining acceptance or at least tolerance with the rise of gay bars and clubs in larger cities.
Interestingly, although China is a communist country politically, today most Chinese in China and even abroad still deeply espouse Confucianist views that may or may not also be to blame for the persistent lack of societal and cultural openness towards homosexuality, gender fluidity, and queerness. While some scholars argue that Confucianism, being primarily a social and political philosophy, focused little on sexuality at all, critics have argued that under Confucian teachings, not having children was one of the greatest sins against filial piety. Even emperors were obligated to marry women and raise heirs, and any same-sex sexual activities and relationships were tolerated as secondary practices.
I personally feel that this emphasis on continuity of the family blood line to be one of the biggest cultural factors affecting Chinese people of all genders and sexual preference today. I know many men and women who have had to lead “normal” lives first before being able to fully be themselves, often at the cost of breaking familial ties, and others, who have opted to just stay in the closet. Fortunately, this cultural bias is slowly changing in the Chinese and Asian community as advocacy, social media, and usually younger, more courageous voices emerge. Either way, I have a newfound appreciation of “8 Immortals” paintings and the fact that ancient peoples were in many ways just as, if not more, open-minded and accepting of differences than we “modern” people today.
References
- https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%97%8D%E9%87%87%E5%92%8C
- https://www.epochtimes.com/b5/2/8/26/n232684.htm
- https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1790/lgbtq-in-the-ancient-world/
- https://daily.jstor.org/in-han-dynasty-china-bisexuality-was-the-norm/
- https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/441293803
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Jiulang
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_China#:~:text=Legal%20status,-Further%20information%3A%20LGBT&text=Adult%2C%20consensual%20and%20non%2Dcommercial,national%20penal%20code%20was%20revised.
- https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%93%9D%E9%87%87%E5%92%8C/462624
- https://botanwang.com/articles/202004/%E5%8F%A4%E4%BA%BA%E4%BF%AE%E7%82%BC%E4%BC%A0%E8%AF%B4%E7%B3%BB%E5%88%97%E4%B9%8B%E4%B9%9D%EF%BC%9A%E8%93%9D%E9%87%87%E5%92%8C.html
