Shouxing- Chinese GodDeity"Star God of Longevity"

Canopus, the Star of Old Age

From northern China, Canopus is rarely visible. When it does appear near the southern horizon, it takes on a reddish hue. Red means happiness and long life in Chinese culture, and the infrequent, crimson-tinged star became the Star of Old Age, believed to govern the lifespan of every mortal. Han dynasty court astronomers tracked its appearances as omens: when Canopus was visible, it portended peace for the realm.

By the Tang dynasty, the stellar omen had crystallized into a god, the Old Man of the South Pole, one of the Sanxing alongside Fuxing and Luxing. He is the most recognizable of the three: an old man with an enormously elongated, domed forehead, pink-cheeked, white-bearded, carrying a peach of immortality and a gnarled staff.

The Boy with Nineteen Years

The best-known legend of Shouxing tells of Zhao Yen, a sickly boy whose fate was divined to end at the age of nineteen. A fortune-teller, taking pity on him, gave cryptic instructions: go to a certain field carrying a jar of wine and dried meat. There Zhao found two old men absorbed in a game of wéiqí beneath a mulberry tree. He did not interrupt. He waited silently, refilling their cups whenever they ran dry and offering the dried meat when they reached for it.

The two players were the stellar deities of the North Pole and the South Pole, too engrossed in their game to notice the boy until the wine was half gone. Pleased by his patience, Shouxing consulted the ledger of lifespans and reversed the numerals: nineteen became ninety-one. After more wine, he struck the number out entirely and granted the boy immortality. Zhao Yen walked home with a lifespan transformed by an afternoon of silence, courtesy, and well-timed cups of wine.