Legend has it that Tan fell into a river when he was six years old and was found sitting serenely above water by neighbors, who rushed to his rescue. He became a great scholar, who loved to drink and get drunk. Once he got so drunk that he passed out on the way home from a village tavern. It was winter and he suffered from frostbite. He counted himself lucky that he was not frozen to death. But he wasn’t fully recovered; no doctors could cure his rare disease.

As it happened, Wang Chong-yang, the founder of the All True sect was practicing his Taoist and Buddhist rules at a small cottage in a backyard of Ma Yu’s big estate in Ninghai. Friends took Tan to the cottage to see the Taoist master, who was known for his power to cure rare maladies. Wang refused to see Tan, who was kept outdoors for hours on end, while a roaring blizzard raged. Yet the master wouldn’t open the cottage doors to let the wretched patient in. Then at midnight, a furious gust blew open the doors. “Karmic relations are achieved,” Wang said when the doors were blown off. He came out of the cottage to welcome Tan.

The poor creature was all but frozen after the long wait outdoors. The only remedy the Taoist master offered was to let the patient hold his right foot. The foot was like a small Franklin stove. It warmed Tan’s hands and sent the warmth throughout his body. In no time Tan began to sweat all over. Then he fell asleep in peace. When he woke up the next morning, all his woes were gone. He was just as well as he had been before his snow night encounter a few years before. The first thing he did then was to kneel before the master and beg to become his disciple. Wang accepted him and gave him the Taoist honorific name of Zhang Zhen-zi (長真子) or the Eternal Truth.

Tan left Ninghai after his master Wang Chong-yang had passed away. He began his mendicant life in Loyang (洛陽) in present-day Henan province (河南). He happened to beg for alms at Cizhou (磁州) in Henan one day. A hoodlum in the town tried to tease the All True apostle. The young strong thug stopped the mendicant friar, asking where he came from. Before the mendicant could answer, the thug landed a heavy left hook on his jaw. The apostle was knocked down on the ground. He lost a couple of molars and his mouth was bleeding. Passers-by were so indignant that they tried to avenge the fallen mendicant. But he stopped them. He said calmly and thankfully, “I am very grateful for his teaching me a lesson.”

On learning of the incident, Ma Yu said: “That left hook undid all the evil-doings Chu-duan had done in his previous existence.”

Subscribe to The China Post and save.  Click hereSharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 800 characters max

Receive China Post promos

Respond to this email