Long Chinese Silk Embroidery Hanging Tapestry. Depicts Shoulao with a deer and Xi Wangmu. 

Size: 82 X 39 in. 

#9013 . 

Shouxing, also known as Shoulao, is a popular god in Chinese mythology and one of the three star gods (or “San Xing”) along with Fuxing and Luxing. The star corresponds to Canopus, the second brightest star in the night sky, being 71 times the size of the radius of our own sun. Legend has it he was carried for ten years in his mothers womb before being born, and was already an old man when delivered. Shouxing is the god of longevity, immortality, and fortune, and is often depicted as a bearded old man with a high forehead and pronounced bald head, carrying a staff and the peach of immortality.

The Queen Mother of the West, known by various local names, is a mother goddess in Chinese religion and mythology, also worshipped later in neighboring countries. The first historical information on her can be traced back to Shang Dynasty oracle bone inscriptions that record sacrifices to a “Western Mother.” Even though these inscriptions illustrate that she predates organized Taoism, she is most often associated with that religion. The growing popularity of the Queen Mother of the West, as well as the beliefs that she was the dispenser of prosperity, longevity, and eternal bliss, took place during the Han Dynasty in the 2nd Century BC, when the northern and western parts of China became more accessible through the opening of the Silk Road. Her many names over the years have mostly come from her early association with prosperity and her popularity which soon spread to other countries, including Xiwangmu in China, Seiobo in Japan, Seowangmo in Korea, and Tay Vuong Mau in Vietnam.