Han Xiangzi

Also Known As: 韓湘子; also Han Xiang, Han Xiang Zi; courtesy name given as Qingfu in the legends and Beizhu in the Tang history
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Chinese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: A young Daoist immortal who carries a flute, he can make flowers bloom out of season and write prophecy into their petals.
Role in Mythos: He is one of the Eight Immortals, the disciple of Lü Dongbin whose stories turn on his attempts to win his stern Confucian uncle Han Yu over to the Way.
Relation to Humans: He began as the relative of a real Tang statesman, and his legend grew out of a few lines about that young man in Tang writings. Musicians and flute players honour him as their patron, and he is linked with florists through his out-of-season flowers.

In the middle of a banquet a young man fills a bowl with earth, sprinkles it with water, and sits back. A green shoot pushes up through the soil. It thickens, branches, buds, and in the time it takes the guests to set down their cups there is a peony tree in full flower on the table, heavy with blossoms, each one carrying a line of verse written across its petals.

The young man is Han Xiangzi, one of the Eight Immortals of Chinese tradition, and the verse is a warning. It speaks of clouds across the Qinling mountains and snow piled deep at Lan Pass, and of a horse that will not go on. His uncle, the great scholar Han Yu, reads it and makes nothing of it. That is the point of the story. He will understand later, in the snow.

Unlike most of his immortal companions, Han Xiangzi has a real person standing behind him, and that person is unusually well documented. Han Yu, who lived from 768 to 824, was one of the towering writers of the Tang dynasty, a champion of Confucian learning and an unsparing critic of Buddhism. The official New Book of Tang records that he had a grandnephew named Han Xiang, who passed the imperial examinations and served as an official in the judiciary. In 819 Han Yu sent the emperor a memorial attacking the court’s veneration of a relic said to be a bone of the Buddha. The emperor was furious and nearly had him put to death; instead Han Yu was demoted and packed off to govern Chaozhou, far in the south. On the road out of the capital, at the mountain gateway of Lan Pass, Han Xiang came to keep him company, and Han Yu wrote a poem for him about the journey, the mountains and the snow. That poem survives. It is the hinge on which the whole legend turns.

The legend began to grow almost at once. A Tang miscellany, the Youyang zazu of Duan Chengshi, tells of an unnamed grandnephew of Han Yu who came from the Huai River country and was a disaster as a student, thrown out of a Confucian school and then out of a Buddhist one. When his great-uncle scolded him, the young man offered to change the colour of the peonies. He did it, and the flowers bore a couplet that matched lines Han Yu would later write about his exile. Han Yu, startled, let him go home, and the young man lived out his days as an ordinary commoner. In that early version there is no immortality at all. There is only a gifted, unsettling boy and a set of flowers that seem to know the future.

Later tellers made him a saint of the Dao. In the developed story Han Xiangzi is raised in his uncle’s household, uninterested in office or marriage, and drawn instead to Daoist books and meditation. He leaves home as a young man and finds his teachers in Lü Dongbin and, in some accounts, Zhongli Quan, two of the most senior of the Eight Immortals. One telling has him become immortal after falling from a peach tree. He returns to his uncle’s house as a wonder-worker, conjuring wine for a birthday gathering that never runs dry, bringing flowers out of bare soil, calling down snow in a time of drought. Han Yu is unimpressed by all of it. A Confucian magistrate is not easily converted by party tricks.

Then comes Lan Pass. On the road to exile, in the legend, a blizzard swallows the mountain track, and Han Yu’s horse stops dead in the drifts. Through the blowing snow a figure comes walking toward him, unbothered by the cold, and it is his nephew. In some versions Han Xiangzi sweeps the path clear for him. Han Yu remembers the verse on the peony petals and understands at last that it was prophecy. Han Xiangzi sees him safely through, and then rises into the sky and is gone.

The fullest version of the cycle is a novel of the early seventeenth century, the Han Xiangzi quanzhuan, by Yang Erzeng, a writer and publisher of Hangzhou. Philip Clart translated it into English in 2007 as The Story of Han Xiangzi. Yang’s novel gives Han Xiangzi a wife, Lin Luying, whom he abandons for the Way, and sets him a long series of trials to save his uncle, his aunt and his wife by bringing each of them to enlightenment. Shorter tellings of the same origin appear in the Ming novels about the Eight Immortals as a group. By then the boy who changed the colour of peonies had become a full member of the most beloved company of immortals in China.

His emblem is the flute, the transverse bamboo dizi, and in paintings and carvings he is usually a beardless young man holding it or playing it, sometimes with a flower basket beside him. The music of the flute is credited with the same power as the peonies: it makes things grow and stirs the weather. Flute players took him as their patron, and the Cleveland Museum of Art notes his link to florists for the flowers he forced into bloom in winter. A Daoist piece of music, Tian Hua Yin, is credited to him in tradition.

His powers all come out of one root. He can make time hurry for living things, so that a seed becomes a flowering tree in the space of a toast, and he can read time running ahead, so that the flowers carry tomorrow’s news. What he cannot do is make anyone listen. Every one of his miracles in the presence of Han Yu is witnessed and rejected, and the warning on the petals is understood only when it has already come true, in the snow at Lan Pass, with a horse that will not move.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Han Xiangzi?

Han Xiangzi is one of the Eight Immortals of Chinese tradition, usually shown as a young man carrying a bamboo flute. In legend he is the nephew or grandnephew of the Tang dynasty scholar Han Yu and a disciple of the immortal Lü Dongbin. He is honoured as the patron of flute players and musicians.

Was Han Xiangzi a real person?

Han Xiangzi’s legend grew from a real person. The New Book of Tang records that the scholar Han Yu, who lived from 768 to 824, had a grandnephew named Han Xiang who passed the imperial examinations and became an official. Han Yu also wrote a surviving poem for Han Xiang after they met at Lan Pass in 819, when Han Yu was going into exile.

What is the peony story of Han Xiangzi?

In the peony story, Han Xiangzi makes peonies bloom or change colour in front of his uncle Han Yu, and verse appears on the petals. The verse foretells snow at Lan Pass and a horse that will not go forward. Han Yu understands the prophecy only later, when it comes true on his road into exile.

What happened at Lan Pass?

At Lan Pass, Han Yu was travelling into exile in 819 when, in the legend, a blizzard stopped his horse. Han Xiangzi appeared through the snow and helped him on his way, and Han Yu realised the verse on the peonies had been a prophecy. Historically, Han Xiang did meet Han Yu at Lan Pass, and Han Yu wrote him a poem there.

Why does Han Xiangzi carry a flute?

Han Xiangzi carries a flute because it is his emblem among the Eight Immortals, and its music is said to make things grow and stir the weather. Because of the flute he is regarded as the patron of flute players and musicians. Tradition also credits him with a Daoist piece of music called Tian Hua Yin.