Dreaming of the Female Immortal: Xu Xishen’s Chants on the Paintings of Embracing the True

This article examines a late Qing woman writer Xu Xishen’s writings titled Chants on the Paintings of Embracing the True. In these poetic and prosaic writings, Xu portrayed her deceased daughters, especially her older daughter, as Daoist female immortals. Xu’s writings were uniquely inspired by twenty paintings based on various dreams. These dreams concern a wide variety of human-immortal encounters between the deceased daughters and the dreamers from the family community, including Xu herself, her husband, extended family members, and maidservants. These writings, involving multiple perspectives and literary genres, will shed light on our understanding of how Daoist imagery played a significant role in a late imperial woman writer’s literary creation.