Okay, If eating rocks isn’t your thing, there are of course other paths to immortality. Lan Caihe, wandering gardener, florist, and street musician, took a longer path than most- they walked barefoot across all of China, gathering wildflowers, stopping in villages to entertain crowds with improvised songs that encouraged listeners to free the soul and eschew convention. Sometimes Lan Caihe was perceived as a young man, other times as a woman. They dressed and spoke in a manner that blended or disregarded the gender norms of the Tang Dynasty. Elderly people in the villages remarked that Lan’s face hadn’t changed since they last carried their flower basket through town decades before.