The Yi-Wei Tai Sui: General Yang Xian

Bamboo in an immortal's garden

Yi is soft wood, like jade-green bamboo, light and graceful yet tough at every joint. Wei is late summer, the richest time of year, when fields turn into ripe harvest and the goats graze happily.

General Yang Xian guards this year. People born in Yi-Wei years are often kind and tender-hearted and feel other people's pain deeply, yet like bamboo in the wind, they bend and do not break.

Eyes like spring water

She wears a small golden crown shaped like a flower bud. Her round face is like a full moon, and her clear eyes hold a faint smile that makes your worries settle.

She wears dark blue armor and a heavy red cloak and holds a straight sword upright: a protector's weapon and a line between good and evil.

Three leaves and a fever

According to Taoist legend, she was Yang Xian, a young woman from the southern mountains who felt close to plants and healing from childhood. An old Taoist hermit taught her everything he knew about curing the sick.

She came down the mountain and traveled from place to place, healing anyone, rich or poor, for free. Stories followed her: a child's fever broken with a single sprig, an old man who lived half a year longer, just long enough to see his son come home. She never argued about which stories were true. She just went on to the next person who needed her.

Someone asked, "Don't you get tired?" She said, "I do. But every time someone gets better, I get my strength back."

The Immortal's Terrace

One morning in old age, she was found sitting on a mountaintop facing the sunrise, gone peacefully. Local people named the spot the Immortal's Terrace, and old folks still say, "Go pay your respects there. Lady Yang will look after you."

Heaven named her the Tai Sui of the Yi-Wei year. A sword held upright and a compassionate heart: that is her gift to everyone born in the Year of the Goat.