| | Tai Shan Laofu was a person whose name and family background were unknown. When Emperor Wu of Han made an eastern inspection tour, he saw Old Man Tai Shan working with a hoe along the road. There was white light several chi high above his head. The emperor found this strange and called out to ask him about it. Old Man Tai Shan appeared to be a man in his fifties, but his face had the color of a child. His body was radiant and unlike that of ordinary people. The emperor asked, "Do you have any Daoist techniques or skills?" Old Man Tai Shan replied, "When I was 85 years old, I was aged and on the verge of death, with a white head and missing teeth. A Daoist priest taught me to stop eating grains, take herbs, drink water, and also make a divine pillow. Inside the pillow there were thirty-two objects: twenty-four of them symbolized the Twenty-Four Solar Terms, and the other eight corresponded to the Eight Winds." I practiced them, and thus transformed from old age into youth. My black hair grew again, my fallen teeth regrew, and I could walk three hundred li a day. "I am 180 years old this year." Emperor Wu was fond of his method and bestowed gold and silk upon him. Old Man Tai Shan later went into Mount Dai, returning to his hometown every ten or five years, but after more than three hundred years, he never returned again.
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