3. Li T’ieh-kuai, Li with the iron crutch, a lame beggar with a crutch and pilgrim’s gourd from which issue clouds and apparitions. He is patron of astrologers and magicians. 4. Ts’ao Kuo-ch’iu, in official robes, wearing a winged hat, and carrying a pair of castanets. He is patron of mummers and actors. 5. Lan Ts’ai-ho, of uncertain sex, carrying a hoe and a basket of flowers. Patron of gardeners and florists. 6. Chang Kuo Lao, the necromancer with the magic mule, of which he kept a picture folded up in his wallet. He would make the beast materialise from the picture by spurting water on to it; and at other times he would conjure it out of a gourd. His attribute is a musical instrument consisting of a drum and a pair of rods. He is patron of artists and calligraphers, and ranks as one of the gods of Literature. 7. Han Hsiang Tzŭ, who gained admission to the Taoist paradise and climbed the peach-tree of Immortality. He is shown as a young man playing on a flute, and is specially worshipped by musicians. 8. Ho Hsien Ku, a maiden who wears a cloak of mug-wort leaves and carries a lotus. She is patroness of housewives. The Immortals are commonly represented in a group paying court to Shou Lao, or crossing the sea on the backs of various strange creatures or other supernatural conveyances on their way to the Islands of Paradise. Grouped in pairs they lend themselves to the decoration of quadrangular objects. Other frequenters of the Shou Shan are the twin genii[500] of Union and Harmony (_ho ho êrh hsien_), an inseparable pair, depicted as ragged mendicants with staff and broom, or as smiling boyish figures, the one with a lotus and the other holding a Pandora box of blessings, from which a cloud is seen to rise; Tung-fang So, who stole the peaches of Hsi Wang Mu and acquired thereby a longevity of nine thousand years, is represented as a smiling bearded old man, not unlike Shou Lao himself, carrying an enormous peach, or as a boy with a peach to recall his youthful exploit. Liu Han, with his familiar three-legged toad, a wild-looking person, who waves a string of cash in the air, and very closely resembles the Japanese Gama Sennin (the Hou Hsien Shêng of China); Wang Tzŭ-ch’iao, who rides on a crane playing a flute, and Huang An, the hermit, whose steed is a tortoise. The god of Alchemy is figured, according to the identification of a statuette in the Musée Guimet, as a tall, draped person with beard and moustaches flowing down in five long wisps, a leaf-shaped fan in his left hand, and beside him a small figure of a devotee who holds up a book with questioning gesture.