Immortal Lü Brings Enlightenment 呂仙教化

During the Song Jingding era (1260-64), the family of Qian Yan, guard commander for Shaowu, had a shop selling incense and spirit money, and often gave alms to mendicant monks, always contributing one copper dangsanqian (‘worth three’) coin, and never skimping, showing weariness or forgetting. One day, as they rose at dawn to open the shop, there was a religious holding a palm-leaf fan who came to the gate to receive alms. He happened to meet Yan’s wife, who, being angry owing to an unrelated matter, and showing this in words and expression, threw two dangsanqian coins onto the fan, from which they then fell on the floor. The religious trampled them underfoot, without even a turn of the head, and departed as if floating on air. When Yan himself emerged to pick up the coins, they were bonded to the cobblestone, and even using all his strength he was quite unable to shift them. The onlookers were shocked and marveled at this, and hurried to find the religious, who had vanished without a trace. When they scooped out the cobble using a pickaxe, a poem was found inscribed on the back:

The Master’s great vow spans the cosmos,

Until today it has encountered no boundary.

Intending with special purpose to return once more,

Pity the lady Yan whose character hampers immortals.

The cobblestone is now in the city god’s temple and can be inspected.

Anon., Huhai xinwen yijian xuzhi, 後1.129 (Tale 224):



Yuan Haowen 元好問, Chang Zhenguo 常振國 (ed), Xu Yijian zhi 續夷堅志 (Continued Records of the Listener), and Anon., Jin Xin 金心 (ed.), Huhai xinwen yijian xuzhi 湖海新聞夷堅續志 (Continuation of Records of the Listener with New Items from the Lakes and Seas) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986).