Zhong Kui

In Tang-era accounts preserved in later anthologies and narrative inscriptions, Emperor Xuanzong dreamed of a confrontation between a small thief-ghost (named Xuhao) and a larger wrathful figure who seized and punished the smaller spirit. The larger figure identified himself as Zhong Kui, described as a failed imperial examination candidate who died shamed and thereafter devoted himself to hunting harmful spirits; the emperor honored him and commissioned a likeness (a painting attributed in tradition to Wu Daozi). Sources also stress that Zhong Kui's ultimate origins remain unresolved and are the cumulative product of folk practice, ritual, and literary-artistic creation across centuries.

Sources describe Zhong Kui as a large, fearsome man with a big black beard, bulging eyes, and a wrathful expression. Tang-era narrative detail adds hair dishevelled, beard bristling, clad in a blue robe and battered cap in certain accounts; one sleeve stripped and legs bound in hide appear in some dream-inscription variants. A painting attributed in tradition to the master Wu Daozi provided a vivid likeness that influenced later iconography.

Narrative and ritual sources portray Zhong Kui as locating, seizing, punishing, and subduing petty and harmful spirit-beings (for example, the dream-account in which he seizes the thief-ghost Xuhao, gouges out and devours its eyes). He is depicted as an incorruptible champion of justice who rids the world of certain evil ghosts on behalf of the living, and later summaries attribute to him command over vast numbers of subordinate demons (a modern summary notes he can command '80,000 demons' as part of hagiographic accretion). His invocation and depiction are credited with therapeutic/exorcistic effects in ritual contexts (e.g., resolving the emperor's malarial fever in the dream-narrative and functioning in Nuo exorcistic rites).