The figure is seated on a green base with one leg raised holding a hulu (double gourd container), the aubergine colored robe draped around his middle showing his emaciated chest. His bald head is modeled with a nice expression on it’s face showing his bulging eyes with hairy facial features. 

Dimensions:

Height 13 cm, width 5.5 cm, depth 5 cm.

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Code: B53

About Li Tieguai (source: Jing Pei, Fang - Symbols and Rebuses in Chinese Art)

Li Tieguai was one of the first Eight Immortals to attain immortality and become a Daoist god. A favorite folk hero god, he is a symbol of passion and mercy for the sick and unfortunate. As a god who possesses medical knowledge, he is portrayed with an iron crutch and carrying a gourd container, hulu, which holds his medicinal potions. The hulu is also a symbol of the joining of heaven and earth in his own body.

Legends indicate that his real name was Li Xuan, who lived in the eight century during the Tang dynasty. It is recorded the he was a tall, handsome hermit-scholar who was invited to visit Penglai, the Islands of the Blessed or Immortality, by Laozi, the founder of the Daoist philosophy and religion. Thus he took an out-of-body trip. Before he left, he instructed his disciple Yang Zi to keep vigil over his body and that on the seventh day, his soul would return to his body. Should he not return on the seventh day, his body was to be cremated. Yang Zi followed his instructions until the sixth day when he was suddenly summoned to attend his dying mother. Frustrated and feeling that Li Xuan was not going to return, he cremated Master Li’s body one day ahead of the assigned time. But Li’s soul returned on the seventh day. Without a body to inhabit, he entered the dead body of a lame roadside beggar who held an iron crutch that he had found lying in the street. He has since been known as Li Tieguai who walks with an iron crutch, carries his medical hulu, and unselfishly performs kind deeds by helping the troubled and sick. The story of Li Tieguai teaches that a person’s real mission on earth should not be inhibited by tragedy and impatience.