I · 炼丹 The Elixir of Gold
原文：
方士炼丹砂为黄金，以金为器，食之可长生。淮南王安，招方士作丹，丹成而鸡犬食之皆升天。
The fangshi (alchemists) refine cinnabar into gold. Make vessels from this gold, eat from them, and you may live forever. Liu An, Prince of Huainan, gathered alchemists to make the elixir. When it was complete, even his chickens and dogs who ate it ascended to heaven.
The phrase "鸡犬升天" (even the chickens and dogs ascend) became one of the most famous idioms in Chinese — meaning that everyone around a person of power benefits, whether they deserve it or not. Zhang Hua preserves both the alchemical claim and the irony.
文化注释 Cultural Note
淮南王刘安 (Prince Liu An of Huainan, 179–122 BC) was a historical figure — a patron of scholarship and the arts who compiled the Huainanzi, one of the great encyclopedic works of the Han dynasty. The legend that he achieved immortality and that even his livestock ascended with him is a later addition, but it captures the popular association between erudition and alchemical power. The idiom 一人得道，鸡犬升天 ("when one person achieves the Way, even the chickens and dogs ascend") remains in common use today.
II · 辟谷 The Art of Fasting
原文：
辟谷之术，不食五谷，服气饮露，可至百日不死。
The art of bigu (grain avoidance) — eating no cereals, subsisting on air and dew — can sustain life for a hundred days without death.
Grain avoidance (辟谷) was one of the core practices of Daoist cultivation. The idea was that ordinary food clogs the body with impurities; by abstaining from grain and "eating" only qi (vital breath) and dew, the practitioner purifies the body and approaches immortality.
文化注释 Cultural Note
辟谷 (bigu, "avoiding grain") was a widespread practice in medieval Daoism, documented in texts from the Zhuangzi to Tang dynasty alchemical manuals. Modern scholars have linked it to various ascetic traditions across Asia. The Mawangdui medical texts (discovered in a Han dynasty tomb) include instructions for grain avoidance, suggesting it was taken seriously as a health practice. Zhang Hua records the claim without endorsing the hundred-day survival time — his characteristic stance between credulity and reason.
III · 画地为牢 Drawing Prison Walls on the Ground
原文：
方士能画地为牢，令有罪者不敢出。以符水饮之，令人自缚。
The fangshi could draw prison walls on the ground, and the guilty would not dare to cross them. By making someone drink charmed water, they could cause the person to bind themselves.
A form of enchantment so powerful that drawn lines become real barriers. The "prison on the ground" is a recurring motif in Chinese supernatural fiction — the idea that symbolic acts, when performed with sufficient qi, become materially effective.
文化注释 Cultural Note
The concept of "drawing on the ground to make a prison" (画地为牢) appears in the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), where it describes a form of punishment so respected that prisoners would not dare escape. In the alchemical context, it becomes a magical ability — the power of the fangshi to make symbols physically binding. This concept influenced later Daoist talismanic practices (符箓), where written characters and diagrams were believed to have real-world effects.
IV · 变化 The Art of Transformation
原文：
左慈于曹操前，化为羊群。追之则入群中，不可复辨。
Before Cao Cao, the alchemist Zuo Ci transformed himself into a flock of sheep. When pursuers chased him, he mingled with the flock and could no longer be distinguished from the animals.
Zuo Ci (左慈) is one of the most famous fangshi in Chinese history — a Daoist magician whose tricks (or miracles) so infuriated Cao Cao that the warlord repeatedly tried to capture and kill him, and repeatedly failed. The sheep transformation is only one of many escapes attributed to Zuo Ci in the Bowu Zhi.
文化注释 Cultural Note
左慈 (Zuo Ci) was a historical figure of the late Eastern Han dynasty, a Daoist practitioner associated with the Tianshi (Celestial Masters) tradition. His encounters with Cao Cao are recorded in multiple sources, including the San Guo Zhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms). The "sheep transformation" story became one of the most popular episodes in Chinese supernatural fiction — it appears in the Soushen Ji, the Yi Yuan, and in numerous later retellings. The story works because it pits raw magical power against political authority — and power loses.
V · 招魂 Summoning the Dead
原文：
方士能招亡者之魂，与生人相见言语。但不可触，触之即灭。
The fangshi can summon the spirits of the dead, allowing them to meet and speak with the living. But they cannot be touched — touch them, and they vanish.
The summoning of ghosts (招魂) was one of the most emotionally charged of all the alchemical arts. It offered the living a chance to see their dead — but only at a distance, and only briefly. The prohibition against touching is exquisite: the ghost is present but untouchable, real but fragile, here but not here.
文化注释 Cultural Note
The practice of 招魂 (summoning the soul of the dead) has roots in pre-Qin ritual, particularly the Chu Ci (Songs of Chu) tradition. The "Summons of the Soul" (招魂) poem, attributed to Qu Yuan or Song Yu, calls the dead person's spirit back to their body. In the Han dynasty, this ritual practice merged with fangshi culture, becoming a commercially available service. Zhang Hua's detail about the ghost vanishing when touched is psychologically precise: it captures the paradox of grief — the desire to hold what cannot be held.