Legend of the Eight Immortals

The legend of the Eight Immortals was born in Yantai's Penglai, long famed as a "fairyland on earth," where the mirages over the sea fed tales of immortal isles. The eight immortals each stand for a different walk of secular life, and the legend tells of their crossing the sea, each showing a wondrous power, on the way to a gathering; it has spread among the people since the Tang and Song. In 2008 the legend of the Eight Immortals was entered into the second national ICH list under folk literature.

The legend circulates through oral tales, opera, New-Year pictures, carvings and more, and the immortals with their emblems — the gourd of Li Tieguai, the palm-leaf fan of Han Zhongli, the sword of Lü Dongbin — have entered the popular imagination, an inexhaustible source for folk literature and the decorative arts, closely woven into customs such as the Penglai Pavilion temple fair.

The legend of the Eight Immortals bears a rich human warmth and a strong sense of place, providing abundant material for folk literature and the decorative arts, and forms an important sample for the study of Chinese folk belief and the culture of the immortals, while making Penglai famous as the land "where the Eight Immortals crossed the sea."