Images of the Immortal

The Palace of Eternal Joy (Yongle Gong) is a mammoth cult site dedicated to one of late imperial China's most popular deities, Lu Dongbin. This study focuses on the Palace's role in the development of Lu's legend. It takes into account the various histories of the Palace presented in different texts and stresses the ways in which the site both reflected and produced cultural diversity. Paul R. Katz analyzes the texts in terms of the textuality - the processes by which they were produced, transmitted and understood.