The simplified Chinese character 厨 omits the 士 element in 壴, leading to a "graphic folk etymology" of "A 厂 'room' for cooking 豆 'beans' with your 寸 'hands'".

[20] While Maspero uniquely interprets the xing (行) in xingchu as a verb ("to perform"), the other scholars read it as a modifier ("to go; to move") translated as traveling, mobile, or movable (cf.

The banquet was hosted by families on the occasion of births and deaths, prepared for a ritually-fixed number of parishioners, and accompanied by specific ritual gifts to the Daoist priest.

Although orthodox Daoists criticized, and sometimes banned, these chuhui (廚會, "cuisine congregations") for making immoral animal sacrifices, they nevertheless perpetuated the custom by adapting and codifying it.

The 7th-century Daoist Zhaijielu (齋戒錄, Records of Fasting) suggested that zhai were anciently called shehui (社會, "festival gatherings of the soil god"—now the modern Chinese word for "society"), which was later changed into zhaihui (齋會).

[2] The anti-Daoist Erjiaolun (二教論, Essay on Two Religions) by the Buddhist monk Dao'an (312–385) said chu kitchen-feasts were intended to bring about jiěchú (解除, "liberation and elimination") from pollution and sins, which were connected with the soil god and tombs.

[26] Ge Hong's c. 318 Baopuzi (see below) mentions profligately expensive chu Kitchen Feasts in contrasting heterodox yaodao (妖道, "demonic cults"), which involved sacrificing animals to gods who enjoyed their blood, with the Lijia dao (李家道, Way of the Li Family).

The xingchu, which Campany called a "curious business",[29] was a sumptuous banquet of rare delicacies, exotic foods, and wines that could be instantly served up by spirits anywhere on command.

[30] Xian transcendents were portrayed as eschewing what counted in China as ordinary foods, especially grains (see bigu), and instead eating superior, longevity-inducing substitutes such as sesame seeds and lingzhi mushrooms, typically found in distant and legendary places removed from the heartland of agriculture-based Chinese civilization.

Transcendents were frequently depicted as winged beings able to fly long distances rapidly and summoning a xingchu banquet at will eliminated the need to travel across the world and heavens in order to obtain rare foodstuffs of immortality.

[31] The Jin Dynasty Daoist scholar Ge Hong compiled the two primary sources of information about xingchu Mobile Kitchens, the Baopuzi and Shenxian zhuan.

Ge portrayed adepts seeking xian-hood as avoiding ordinary food such as grains, instead eating "rare, exotic foodstuffs from the far reaches of the cosmos", marvelous products conveying the "numinous power" suggested by their peculiarity.

"The ability to command at will a spirit-hosted serving of exotic food and drink in elegant vessels may seem trivial, but when one recalls that many Daoist scriptures prohibit the feasting on sacrificial meats and liquors enjoyed by the aristocracy, and that many adepts did their work on mountains and were isolated from agricultural communities and markets, the practice assumes a more serious aspect."

"[34] Second, a list of methods for eating and drinking realgar says, "In each case it confers Fullness of Life; all illnesses are banished; the Three Corpses drop from the body; scars disappear; gray hair tums black; and lost teeth are regenerated.

Fourth, the Jiuguang dan (九光丹, Ninefold Radiance Elixir) is made by processing certain unspecified ingredients with the wushi (五石, Five Minerals, see Cold-Food Powder), i.e., cinnabar, realgar, purified potassium alum, laminar malachite, and magnetite.

"If you wish to summon the Traveling Canteen [欲致行廚], smear your left hand with a solution of black elixir; whatever you ask for will be at your beck and call, and everything you mention will arrive without effort.

Coating the pills with different substances will produce magical effects, for instance, if one is smeared with ram's blood and thrown into a stream, "the fish and the dragons will come out immediately, and it will be easy to catch them."

When Wang Yuan and his heavenly entourage arrived on the auspicious "double-seven" day, he invited his old friend Magu to join their celebration because it had been over five hundred years since she had been "in the human realm."

When the Cannabis Maiden and her attendants arrived at Cai's household, She appeared to be a handsome woman of eighteen or nineteen; her hair was done up, and several loose strands hung down to her waist.

[47] Guo Pu's commentary to the Classic of Mountains and Seas described the mò (貘, giant panda) as "bear-like, black and white, and metal-eating";[48] and the mystical qilin beast is sometimes identified as a Chinese unicorn.

Second, the Shenxian zhuan narrative of Li Gen (李根) says he studied under Wu Dawen (吳大文) and obtained a method for producing alchemical gold and silver.

[51] Third, Liu Jing (劉京) was an official under Emperor Wen of Han (r. 180–157 BCE) who "abandoned the world and followed Lord Zhang 張君 of Handan to study the Way."

Zixun transmitted to him all the secret essentials of the Five Thearchs, Numinous Flight (lingfei, 靈飛), the six jia spirits, the Twelve Matters (shier shi 十二事), and the Perfected Forms of the Ten Continents of Divine Transcendents (shenxian shizhou zhenxiang 神仙十洲真形).

[30] "This method, accessible only to the initiate who possessed the proper series of talismans (fu 符) and had mastered certain visualization techniques, conferred powers to become invisible, to cause thunder, and to call for rain."

[8] In Chinese cosmological wuxing Five Phases correspondence theory, the wuchu Five Kitchens or wuzang (五臟, Five Viscera / Orbs) system includes not only the physiological internal organs (lungs, kidneys, liver, gallbladder, and spleen), but also the associated psychological range of mental and emotional states.

[8] Second, the 1019 Yunji Qiqian (Seven Bamboo Tablets of the Cloudy Satchel) anthology edition titled Wuchu jing qifa (五廚經氣法, Energetic Methods of the Scripture of the Five Kitchens), also includes Yin's commentary, with slight variations, such as noting the text was presented to the emperor in 736.

Du records that the Chinese Buddhist canon of the Tang period contained a text titled Fo shuo san tingchu jing (佛說三停廚經, Sutra of the Three Interrupted Kitchens, Preached by the Buddha).

As Xingduan "wards off the blow with his hand, several fingers are lopped off", he begs for mercy, and the Daoist deity agrees to spare his life if he retrieves and destroys all the fakes.

Then the divine being reappears and announces: "Having vilified the sage's text, restitution won't save you—you do not deserve to escape death", the monk falls prostrate and dies on the spot.

[74] Despite this concern with the human body, the text strongly emphasizes mental restructuring over physical practices, saying that "accumulating cultivation will not get you to detachment" and that methods of ingestion are ultimately useless.