The attributes of the Eight Immortals occur among the many symbols used in porcelain ornament; and among the landscapes will be found the gardens of Hsi Wang Mu and Mount P’êng-lai,[503] one of the three islands of the blessed, situated in the ocean east of China. Here the fountain of life flows in a perpetual stream: “the pine, the bamboo, the plum, the peach, and the fungus of longevity grow for ever on its shores; and the long-haired tortoise disports in its rocky inlets, and the white crane builds her nest on the limbs of its everlasting pines.”[504] Presumably, too, the Shou Shan is situated on this delectable island; and perhaps also the heavenly pavilion (_t’ien t’ang_), which appears among clouds as the goal to which a crane is often seen guiding some of the Taoist genii. Possibly, too, the conventional border of swirling waves punctuated by conical rocks carries a suggestion of the rocky islands of paradise rising from the sea. [Illustration: Fig. 1.--The Yin-yang and Pa-kua] There are besides many primitive beliefs traceable for the most part to Nature-worship, which prevailed in China long before the days of Confucius, Lao-tzŭ or Buddha. Some of these have been incorporated in the later religious systems, especially in that of Taoism, which was ready to adopt any form of demonology. The oldest system is that expounded by the legendary Fu Hsi, in which the phenomena of Nature were explained by reference to the mystic diagrams revealed to him on the back of a dragon horse (_lung ma_) which rose from the Yellow River. These are the _pa-kua_ or eight trigrams formed by the permutations of three lines, broken and unbroken, as in Fig. 1. A more common arrangement of them is according to the points of the compass, and enclosing another ancient device, the Yin-yang, a circle bisected by a wavy line, which symbolises the duality of Nature, _yin_ being the female and _yang_ the male element. Demons abound in Chinese superstitions, and the demon face appears early in art on the ancient bronzes, from which it was sometimes borrowed by the porcelain decorator. This is the face of the _t’ao t’ieh_ (the gluttonous ogre) supposed originally to have represented the demon of the storm, and as such appropriately appearing against a background of “cloud and thunder” pattern, as the key-fret is called by the Chinese. Afterwards the _t’ao t’ieh_ seems to have been regarded, on homœopathic principles, as a warning against greed. Demons also appear in complete form in certain battle scenes and conflicts, such as the combat of the demons of the water and of air which proceeds in front of a group of Chinese dignitaries seated in the Kin-shan temple on the Yangtze river (see Plate 134, Fig. 2).