Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
In modern society, online literature consists of the literary works we commonly see published and circulated on the internet. Such works meet people's need for leisure and relaxation outside of life and work.
Web novels make up the largest share of online literature, and the most popular web novels are xuanhuan fantasy novels about protagonists who cultivate the Tao and cultivate immortality, slaying monsters and vanquishing demons. Films, TV series, anime, and other screen works adapted from xuanhuan novels fill our screens and wield enormous influence; animated films such as The Eight Immortals and Ne Zha 2 (Nezha zhi Motong Nao Hai), for example, have achieved great international impact.
Xuanhuan novels are so influential that many people take their ideas to be genuine Taoist thought, and some even practice according to the fictional cultivation methods in these novels. Such misunderstandings require us to clarify the similarities and differences between Taoist thought and xuanhuan fiction, and the relationship between the two.
1. Taoism's Influence on Traditional Chinese Popular Literature
Historically speaking, Taoism has always exerted an important influence on the development of Chinese literature. Its influence on traditional Chinese popular literature passed through the following stages.
At the end of the Han dynasty, when Taoism had just arisen, its influence on literature showed mainly in the internal composition of Taoist scriptures: the texts Taoism used contained a great many beautiful verses explaining and propagating Taoist thought. The Scripture of Great Peace (Taiping Jing), for example, contains many seven-character and five-character poems setting out the Taoist idea of cultivating longevity. Later, the Scripture of the Yellow Court (Huangting Jing) was composed almost entirely of rhymed seven-character verse.
In the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern dynasties, a great many stories and legends of cultivating the Tao and becoming an immortal appeared in society, along with zhiguai tales of the strange. Beginning with the Biographies of Divine Immortals (Shenxian Zhuan) by Ge Hong, the famous Taoist figure of the Jin dynasty, every dynasty produced biographies of immortals. The deeds and images of immortals recorded in these biographies mostly became the source of ideas for later literary creation.
In volume 9 of the Biographies of Divine Immortals, for example, there is the legend of the Gourd Master (Hugong). The Gourd Master was a great recluse hidden in the marketplace: he sold immortal medicine there that could cure all ailments and gave the money he earned to the poor. The immortal gourd he carried functioned like a magic treasure; people could enter it and live and enjoy themselves inside. In the story he also repeatedly tested Fei Changfang's resolve to cultivate the Tao in order to guide him into the Tao and to immortality. From this legend of the Gourd Master, we can see that its content is strikingly similar to the plots of some xuanhuan novels we see today.
From the Tang dynasty onward there appeared a great many tales of the marvelous, known in literary history as “Tang chuanqi.” The Tang chuanqi was a new literary form that grew out of the zhiguai fiction of the Han and Wei, and all kinds of monsters, gods, and demons appear in it too. The most famous Tang chuanqi story is the “Yellow Millet Dream” in The World Inside a Pillow (Zhenzhong Ji). The film The Assassin by the renowned director Hou Hsiao-hsien is based on the chuanqi tale Nie Yinniang by Pei Xing of the Tang.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties there appeared a great many novels of gods and demons on the themes of contests of magic between gods and demons and of attaining the Tao and becoming an immortal. The term “novels of gods and demons” (shenmo xiaoshuo) comes from Mr. Lu Xun. In “Ming Novels of Gods and Demons” in his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, he first called a group of works depicting “contests of magic” between gods and demons “novels of gods and demons,” saying: “Moreover, the disputes among the Three Teachings had never been resolved; they accommodated one another and were said to ‘share a common source.’ Such matters as righteousness and profit, the heterodox and the orthodox, good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood were all mixed together and then divided, subsumed under a duality; though there was no special name for it, to call it ‘gods and demons’ covers it well enough.” Lu Xun pointed out that the gods and demons in these novels are not simple literary images: behind the opposed images of gods and demons lies a binary opposition of moral ideals.
In his work Lu Xun analyzed several “novels of gods and demons”: The Three Sui Quash the Demons' Revolt, The Origins of the Eight Immortals: Journey to the East, Journey to the South, Journey to the North, Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi), The Popular Romance of the Three-Jewel Eunuch's Voyage to the Western Ocean, and Journey to the West. As part of popular literature, these novels of gods and demons directly influenced modern literary and screen works; even ordinary Chinese people's understanding—or misunderstanding—of Taoism and Buddhism comes from these works.
The various xuanhuan novels popular online, and even works with a xuanhuan flavor such as wuxia novels, immortal-sword novels, xiuzhen novels about cultivating perfection, novels about cultivating immortality, and even some tomb-raiding novels, can all be said to be variations and imitations of the novels of gods and demons. Their basic structure and inner spirit are largely borrowed from them.
The basic structure of the novel of gods and demons is roughly as follows: “The plot begins with the activities of the immortals in the ‘heavenly realm,’ or with myths of the immortals creating heaven and earth and all living beings; its main body is the protagonist's various acts of relief and cultivation of the Tao in the human world; and it ends with the protagonist's merit made complete and his return to the heavenly realm. Through the change of scene and shift of space from heavenly realm to human world to heavenly realm, the plot develops in an orderly way and is skillfully combined with the novel's theme.” What readers pay most attention to in the novels of gods and demons are the two main plot themes of cultivating the Tao and vanquishing demons. In modern xuanhuan novels, the story formula of fighting monsters to level up and the twists and turns of seeking the Tao and vanquishing demons are likewise inherited from these two themes.
2. The Theme of Cultivating the Tao: Implanting Taoist Elements in Xuanhuan Fiction
1. In xuanhuan novels, the protagonist acquires his abilities through arduous cultivation of the Tao; protagonists born with extraordinary supernatural powers are rare. The protagonist's powers and abilities are always built up bit by bit from weakness. This setting is closely related to Taoist thought on cultivation. First, the very notion of cultivating the Tao and its specific methods of practice both come from Taoism. Taoist thought on cultivation does stress that people have innate endowments and capacities that allow them to attain the Tao, but it holds that these innate endowments are often obscured by the qi of later heaven; so to succeed in cultivating the Tao one must strive to overcome all kinds of desires and continually cultivate oneself.
2. Generally, in xuanhuan novels, a protagonist who wants to succeed in cultivating the Tao must first be diligent and assiduous on the path of cultivation and firm in his resolve to cultivate the Tao. This emphasis on establishing firm faith in cultivation is also a quality that Taoist practice stresses as essential for practitioners. Taoist scriptures emphasize at the very outset that practitioners must keep their resolve to cultivate the Tao firm, and many eminent Taoists often stress in their poems that cultivation requires a firm will. For without a firm resolve to cultivate the Tao, one will retreat at the first difficulty, cannot win the special favor of the ancestral spirits, and one's practice will bear no fruit—it will inevitably be like drawing water with a bamboo basket, all in vain.
3. Ingesting elixirs and cultivating inner alchemy (neidan) are the main methods by which protagonists cultivate the Tao in xuanhuan novels, and both come from Taoism. Some xuanhuan novels even quote the names of immortal medicines, inner alchemy methods, and cultivation formulas directly from certain Taoist scriptures. For example, among the sixty-four quatrains of Awakening to Perfection (Wuzhen Pian) there is one that reads: “Only when the medicine meets its kind of qi does it take form; the Tao lies in emptiness and nothingness, in accord with what is so of itself. Once a grain of the numinous elixir is swallowed into the belly, one first knows that my fate is not up to heaven.” The line “my fate is not up to heaven” often appears repeatedly in xuanhuan novels as a cultivation formula.
The Taoist method of inner practice—“refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit, and refining spirit to return to emptiness, which is called the three flowers gathering in the cauldron”—comes from the Recorded Sayings of Qing'an Yingchanzi by Li Daochun of the Yuan dynasty, and this method is quoted all the more often by xuanhuan novelists.
In xuanhuan novels, authors also like to attach the different stages of cultivation to Taoist cultivation thought. The fictional stages of cultivation in these novels, such as Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment (laying the foundation), Golden Core (the golden elixir), and Nascent Soul, are all terms and concepts excerpted and adapted from the ideas and formulas of Taoist inner alchemy. In reality, the division of stages in Taoist inner alchemy is not as the xuanhuan novelists have imagined it.
4. Xuanhuan novels also often stress that the protagonist cannot reach the goal of cultivating the Tao and becoming an immortal merely by ingesting elixirs and cultivating inner alchemy; he must also temper his mind and nature in life, and accumulate merit in the secular world. This understanding of tempering the mind and nature is likewise absorbed and transformed from the Taoist ethics of cultivation: the “dual cultivation of nature and life,” plus “doing good deeds, accumulating virtue, and building up merit.”
3. Xuanhuan Fiction Embodies Taoism's Chief Duty and Commitment to Vanquish Demons and Defend the Tao
1. In xuanhuan novels, the side representing justice is often the immortals, while the side representing evil is the monsters and demons. These positive immortals mostly come from the traditional Taoist pantheon, and their functions and powers are usually already defined in the Taoist system of divine ranks. Taoist scriptures, however, contain very few descriptions of monsters and demons; in fact, these images of monsters and demons are mostly the externalization and concretization of obstacles encountered in the course of Taoist cultivation. Both Buddhist and Taoist thought on cultivation speak of “inner demons,” and in xuanhuan novels many demons are “born of the thoughts of the mind.” These demons are mostly symbols of desire in human nature, destructive forces in the process of cultivating the Tao and becoming an immortal.
Journey to the West, for example, has many female demons. And these demons harm the human world mostly because they covet its wealth, fine food, beauty, and power. Among the monsters and demons of xuanhuan novels there are also ghosts and specters, whose images derive in part from Taoist ideas of the hun and po souls, ghosts, and the Yellow Springs and underworld hells.
2. In the course of exorcising monsters, the magic arts and treasures used by protagonists in xuanhuan novels mostly come from Taoism. Arts such as flying, vanishing, shape-shifting, and invisibility all come from records of magic arts in Taoist scriptures. And the magic treasures the protagonists use—such as the horsetail whisk, the gourd, the ritual sword, elixirs, talismans, the bagua diagram of the Eight Trigrams, and mirrors—also come from objects commonly used in Taoism's own religious rituals and cultivation. The principles and incantations behind the treasures used by characters in xuanhuan novels likewise come from various arts in Taoist scriptures; the most common is the use of all kinds of talismans.
3. In the course of exorcising monsters, the protagonists of xuanhuan novels place great emphasis on how their own techniques counter the demons—that is, using the right technique to subdue them. Here the ideas of “yin and yang” and the “Five Phases” are often borrowed to explain how a particular technique counters a demon: thunder magic, for example, must be used against evil demons and ghostly things, and fire against creatures of the water. This use of the ideas of mutual generation and restraint in “yin and yang” and the “Five Phases” is in turn closely related to those ideas in Taoist cultivation thought. The Taoist ideas of “yin and yang” and the “Five Phases” are the core foundation on which its whole system of thought is built.
4. Xuanhuan Fiction Bears the Deep Imprint of Taoism's Original Aspiration for Cultivation and Its Philosophy of Life
1. Self-transcendence and the fighting spirit of “my fate is up to me, not to heaven.” The narrative of the underdog rising from the bottom through struggle: these works often take the point of view of “an ordinary youth” or “a humble mortal” who, through continual cultivation and defying heaven to change his fate, finally reaches the summit, conveying a positive aspiration to break through rigid social strata and change one's fate through personal effort.
2. An active pursuit of absolute power. The cultivation world is one where the strong prey on the weak; by constantly breaking through realms and mastering the laws of the universe, the protagonist transcends life and death, aging, and tyranny, satisfying the reader's spiritual need for “limitless growth” and “absolute power.”
3. Philosophical reflection on the Tao following naturalness and the unity of heaven and humanity. The process of cultivating immortality is often given profound philosophical metaphors, such as “reversal is the movement of the Tao” (achieving a spiral ascent through tribulation) and “through non-action (wuwei), nothing is left undone” (awakening to the Tao in quiet accumulation), exploring the relationship between humanity, nature, and the Way of Heaven, and stressing conformity to natural law and the cultivation of the mind.
4. The distinction between immortal and mortal, and concern for this world. Cultivating immortality is not a complete departure from the human world but rather “the great recluse hides in the marketplace”: cultivating the mind amid the red dust and awakening to the Tao amid the ordinary. This embodies the practical philosophy that “the Tao is not far from people” and stresses self-fulfillment within the secular world.
5. Secular faith and a pragmatic concern for this world. The original motive for cultivating immortality is usually to escape the suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death, to protect the everyday life of the human world, and to gain worldly security and dignity, rather than to pursue salvation on an illusory other shore. This reflects the Chinese practical faith of “not believing in salvation on the other shore, only in cultivation in this life.” The immortal realms of the cultivation world often replicate the order of the human world (such as the imperial court, aristocratic clans, and contests of interest), with gods and the Way of Heaven serving secular ends, reflecting a secularized logic in which “divine authority depends on royal authority,” and a pragmatism that is “useful, oriented to the good, and grounded in the human world.”
6. Individual awakening and the values of “economic rationality.” Protagonists often take “economic rationality” as their rule of conduct, weighing interests and honoring contracts, and freeing themselves from the constraints of traditional personal ties, morality, and collectivism. This reflects the rationality of the “economic man” in the internet age, in which the individual seeks to maximize self-interest.
7. Emotional compensation and the gospel of success: the “leveling-up” logic of cultivating immortality (fighting monsters, seizing treasures, instant feedback) offers readers emotional compensation in the style of “success literature,” using virtual “gratification” to relieve real-life anxiety about class, the pressure of cutthroat competition, and a sense of emptiness.
8. Interrogating human nature and reflecting on good and evil. While depicting the cruelty and contests of interest in the cultivation world, these works often probe human nature deeply, exploring the boundaries between good and evil, cause and effect, morality and desire, seeking a balance between “giving desire its full scope” and “upholding morality,” and ultimately returning to a commitment to the light of human nature.
9. The inner mechanism of xuanhuan cultivation literature. Xuanhuan cultivation literature is not unbridled fantasy; it is a mirror of traditional Chinese cultural philosophy and contemporary social psychology, using fantastic narrative to explore individual destiny, cosmic law, and the value of human nature in depth. All of this is rooted in Eastern Taoist culture: it has absorbed a great deal of Taoism's motives for cultivation, philosophy of life, attitude to life, reverence for teachers and the Tao, notions of right and wrong and good and evil, training of body and mind, cultivation systems, use of techniques, “yin and yang” and the “Five Phases,” settings of magic arts, and more, and has re-created them in literary and fantastic form. From the analysis above, we can see that xuanhuan novels are full of Taoist elements and deeply influenced by Taoist thought. Their content and elements mostly come from Taoism, but they also contain mistaken understandings of Taoist thought, and this is where we need to think critically.
The creation and spread of xuanhuan fiction has also affected Taoism in real life, kindling in many people an enthusiasm for learning about and studying Taoism; many people have even come into contact with and entered Taoism under its influence. So objectively, the creation and spread of xuanhuan fiction has helped promote the spread of Taoist culture. By stressing that individuals should strive to do good and eliminate evil, actively correct their own shortcomings, and overcome mediocrity, inaction, and lack of ambition, xuanhuan fiction also indirectly helps publicize Taoism's social concern of saving oneself and saving others, which benefits the building of ethical values in modern society.