The Xiwangmu of the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) is a wild figure with a leopard's tail, tiger's teeth and a crown of jade, who keeps the peaches of immortality at Kunlun and is attended by a three-legged crow, a hare and a toad. Through the Han and Six Dynasties she becomes the goddess of longevity and of the west, appearing on bronze mirrors and in the Huainanzi; by the Tang and Song she is the refined queen of the female immortals, and late imperial novels such as Xiyou ji put her peach banquet at the centre of the cosmos. She is the curator of immortality rather than its dispenser: the peaches ripen every three, six or nine thousand years.
Modern Practice
The practice is the longevity altar: peaches or peach-shaped buns, jade, incense and clean silk, kept at her peach festival, which many temples hold on the third day of the third lunar month although the date varies by region. The request is not usually deathlessness but entry into the register of the long-lived.