Representation of Li Tieguai, one of the eight Daoist Immortals, with a gnarled face and carrying a gourd. Flat figure made of card padded with coloured silk. The figure wears short red trousers, grey jacket, a burden on his back and leggings striped green, blue and white.
Li Tieguai is usually represented as a beggar leaning on an iron staff with a pilgrim's gourd. Due to his magic powers he spent much time in spirit in the celestial regions, leaving his body, apparently dead, in the charge of his disciple. Once when he was absent longer than usual, having to go and take care of his sick mother, his servant decided that his master was really dead this time and buried the body. When the soul of Li Tieguai returned, he found that he had no body into which to enter, so he entered into the body of the first good person he could find, a lame beggar. His emblem is a gourd, which is said to contain all kinds of magical cures.
