16
and she turned out to be a loving wife, so he was relieved that he
had not killed her.
Chinese artists most often depicted Yue Lao as a kindly look-
ing elderly man. But many of the other gods were portrayed as
looking like animals or a mixture of human and animal. Also, sev-
eral deities were regularly portrayed in paintings and statues in
the company of various animal companions. Common animal
features among the gods, according to Birrell, included
serpentine tails, tiger fangs, bovine [cow] horns, and avian
wings, which are emblems respectively of fertility, ferocity,
aggression, and aerial flight. Queen Mother of the West
[Wang-mu] is represented with wild hair, the fangs of a ti-
gress, and a panther’s tail. Three bluebirds bring her food.
In the later [artistic] tradition, she is accompanied by a
nine-tailed fox and guarded by a leopard. Many deities are
represented with snakes in their ears and riding dragons
through the sky.
4
Deification and the Jade Emperor
Another factor that complicated the identities and images of the
ancient Chinese gods was the fact that some of them did not start
out as divine, immortal beings. Rather, they were initially ordinary
humans who, because of their extraordinary achievements, were
deified, or made into gods. Usually, officials in individual ancient
Chinese governments made the decision to deify someone. But to
make it look legitimate to the people and country as a whole, they
claimed that the so-called Queen of Heaven, the goddess Wang-
mu, had chosen the candidates and actually made them divine.
Sometimes the deified person ended up as a sort of honorary
sacred being having little actual power or divinity. This was the
case with Guan Yu, a warrior who lived in China’s Three King-
doms period (220–280 CE). He became so famous for his coura-
geous military exploits that he was deified.
