He Was 256

A couple months back, a friend and client piqued my interest in people reputed to have had fantastical lifespans. The other day I happened upon the best-documented case of extreme longevity yet.

In Qijiang County, Sichuan province, in the year 1677, Li Qingyun was born. By age thirteen, he had embarked upon a life of gathering herbs in the mountains with three elders. At age fifty-one, he served as a tactical and topography advisor in the army of General Yue Zhongqi.

When seventy-eight he retired from his military career after fighting in a battle at Golden River, and returned to a life of gathering herbs on Snow Mountain in Sichuan province. Due to his military service in the army of General Yue Zhongqi, the imperial government sent a document congratulating Li on his one hundredth year of life, as was subsequently done on his 150th and 200th birthdays.

Say what you will about China; having sufficient continuity of government and enough bureaucratic competency to congratulate a retired soldier on his 150th and 200th birthdays is impressive.

In 1908, Li Qingyun and his disciple Yang Hexuan published a book, The Secrets of Li Qingyun’s Immortality.

In 1920, General Xiong Yanghe interviewed Li (both men were from the village of Chenjiachang of Wan County in Sichuan province), publishing an article about it in the Nanjing University paper that same year.

In 1926, Wu Peifu invited Li to Beijing. This visit coincides with Li teaching at the Beijing University Meditation Society at the invitation of the famous meditation master and author Yin Shi Zi.

Then in 1927, General Yang Sen invited Li to Wanxian, where the first known photographs of Li were taken. Word spread throughout China of Li Qingyun, and Yang Sen’s commander, General Chiang Kai-shek, requested Li to visit Nanjing. However, when Yang Sen’s envoys arrived at Li’s hometown of Chenjiachang, they were told by Li’s wife and disciples that he had died in nature, offering no more information. So, his actual date of death and location has never been verified. Li [Qingyun] died in Kai County in 1933.

In 1928, Dean Wu Chung-chien of the Department of Education at Min Kuo University, discovered the imperial documents showing these birthday wishes to Li Qingyun. His discovery was first reported in the two leading Chinese newspapers of that period, North China Daily News and Shanghai Declaration News, and then maybe one year later, potentially in 1929 by The New York Times and Time magazine. Both of these Western publications reported the death of Li Qingyun in May 1988.

To clarify, Li’s official date of death was in 1933, which if accurate would mean he was 256 years old when he died.

But how did he achieve such amazing longevity?

One of Li’s disciples, the Taijiquan Master Da Liu, told of his master’s story: when 130 years old Master Li encountered in the mountains an older hermit, over 500 years old, who taught him Baguazhang and a set of Qigong with breathing instructions, movements training coordinated with specific sounds, and dietary recommendations. Da Liu reports that his master said that his longevity “is due to the fact that he performed the exercises every day – regularly, correctly, and with sincerity – for 120 years.”

The article “Tortoise-Pigeon-Dog”, from the 15 May 1933 issue of Time reports on his history, and includes Li’s answer to the secret of a long life:

     Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog.

     — Li Ching-Yuen
An article in the Evening Independent claims that Li’s longevity is due to his experimentation with medicinal herbs in his capacity as a druggist, his discovery in the Yunnan mountains of herbs which “prevent the ravages of old age” and which he continued to use throughout his life.

Despite his book’s title, Li Qingyun didn’t quite prove immortal in the end.

That’s something for all of us to meditate on.

For an even stranger story, read my hit horror-adventure novel.