or Ch'iu Ch'u-chi orig. Changchun
born 1148, Qixia, Dengzhou, China
died 1227, Beijing
Daoist monk and alchemist.
His disciple Li Zhichang chronicled Qiu's journey to meet Genghis Khan (who wished to learn from Qiu) in The Travels of an Alchemist , which describes the land and people between the Great Wall and Kabul and between the Yellow and Aral seas. Qiu Chuji was a member of a sect known for its extreme asceticism and for the doctrine of xingming , which held that humanity's lost natural state could be recovered through prescribed practices.