The Real History of Chinese Alchemy: From Elixirs to Xianxia
When History Becomes Fantasy
Every time a cultivation protagonist in a xianxia novel swallows a 九品丹药 (jiǔ pǐn dānyào, ninth-grade medicinal pill) and breaks through to the next realm, they are unknowingly reenacting one of humanity's oldest obsessions. The gleaming pill bottles, the roaring cauldrons, the mad genius alchemists hunched over ancient texts — these are not purely fictional inventions. They are the direct literary descendants of a real historical tradition that shaped Chinese civilization for more than two thousand years.
Chinese alchemy, known as 炼丹术 (liàn dān shù, the art of refining elixirs), is a subject that most Western readers encounter only through its fictional grandchildren. But the real history is stranger, more dangerous, and ultimately more fascinating than anything a cultivation novel has yet imagined. Understanding it transforms your reading of xianxia from passive entertainment into something closer to decoding an encoded cultural memory.
Two Paths: Waidan and Neidan
The first thing to understand is that Chinese alchemy was never a single discipline. It split early into two distinct but philosophically related streams, and both left their fingerprints all over modern cultivation fiction.
外丹 (Wàidān) — External Alchemy
外丹 (wàidān) literally means "outer elixir" or "external alchemy." This was the tradition of physically combining and transforming substances — minerals, metals, herbs, and animal products — in crucibles and furnaces to create a tangible 丹 (dān, elixir or pill) that could be consumed to grant longevity or immortality.
The materials used were extraordinary and often lethal. Practitioners worked with 朱砂 (zhūshā, cinnabar, or mercuric sulfide), 铅 (qiān, lead), 硫黄 (liúhuáng, sulfur), 雄黄 (xiónghuáng, arsenic disulfide), gold, and dozens of other substances. The logic, rooted in early Chinese cosmological thinking, was that metals and minerals were extraordinarily long-lived — gold, famously, did not rust or decay. If you could extract their essence and transfer it to the human body, perhaps the body could be made similarly eternal.
The crucible used for this process was called a 丹炉 (dān lú, elixir furnace), and the act of heating and transforming substances inside it was called 炼 (liàn, to refine or smelt). Any cultivation reader will recognize these words immediately — they appear on virtually every page of every pill-refining chapter ever written.
内丹 (Nèidān) — Internal Alchemy
As the toxicity of external elixirs became impossible to ignore — and we will get to the body count shortly — a parallel tradition grew increasingly prominent. 内丹 (nèidān, inner elixir) rejected the external furnace and declared that the human body itself was the crucible. The three treasures of 精 (jīng, essence/vital essence), 气 (qì, vital breath/energy), and 神 (shén, spirit) became the raw materials. Through meditation, breathing exercises, visualization, sexual practices, and disciplined cultivation of the body, a practitioner could theoretically refine these internal substances into a 金丹 (jīndān, golden elixir) within their own body — achieving transcendence without swallowing a single milligram of mercury.
Internal alchemy eventually gave xianxia its most fundamental structure: the idea that the human body contains hidden energies that can be cultivated through disciplined practice, that these energies flow through specific channels (经脉, jīngmài, meridians), and that mastery of this inner landscape leads to superhuman capabilities and ultimately immortality.
The Historical Record: Real Alchemists and Their Obsessions
The Han Dynasty and the First Emperors
The obsession with immortality in China predates formal alchemy. 秦始皇 (Qín Shǐhuáng, the First Emperor of Qin) famously sent the alchemist-adventurer 徐福 (Xú Fú) on voyages into the eastern ocean to find the mythical islands of immortals and retrieve the herbs of eternal life. Whether Xu Fu ever returned is a matter of legend, but the story illustrates how deeply the pursuit of immortality was embedded in Chinese imperial ambition.
During the Han dynasty, 汉武帝 (Hàn Wǔdì, Emperor Wu of Han) became notorious for his obsession with immortality arts and his patronage of 方士 (fāngshì, magician-technicians or occult specialists) who promised to transform base metals into gold and brew life-extending elixirs. The historian 司马迁 (Sīmǎ Qiān) recorded these episodes with barely concealed skepticism, noting the enormous resources consumed and the endless parade of charlatans who claimed success just long enough to receive imperial patronage before vanishing.
Ge Hong and the Baopuzi
No figure in the history of Chinese alchemy looms larger than 葛洪 (Gě Hóng, approximately 283-343 CE), a scholar-official of the Eastern Jin dynasty who wrote the 抱朴子 (Bàopǔzǐ, "The Master Who Embraces Simplicity"), one of the most comprehensive alchemical and Daoist texts ever compiled.
Ge Hong's work is a goldmine for xianxia researchers. He catalogs hundreds of 仙药 (xiānyào, immortality medicines), describes in meticulous detail the preparation of various elixirs, and provides what reads almost like a cultivation system — a ranked hierarchy of achievements on the path to immortality. He distinguishes between those who ascend bodily to heaven (上仙, shàng xiān), those who become earth immortals (地仙, dì xiān), and those who achieve lesser forms of transcendence. Sound familiar? Modern xianxia cultivation realm systems map almost directly onto these ancient classifications.
Ge Hong also wrote extensively about 辟谷 (bìgǔ, abstaining from grains), the practice of giving up ordinary food in favor of 气 (qì) and special substances — an idea that shows up in xianxia whenever a cultivator is depicted subsisting on spiritual energy alone rather than mundane food.
The Tang Dynasty: Peak and Catastrophe
The Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) represents both the zenith and the catastrophic collapse of external alchemy as a serious imperial pursuit. Tang emperors were devotees of Daoism, and the court maintained official alchemists. The results were frequently fatal.
At least six Tang emperors are believed to have died from consuming alchemical elixirs. 唐宪宗 (Táng Xiànzōng, Emperor Xianzong of Tang) died in 820 CE, likely poisoned by the very elixir that was supposed to make him immortal. 唐穆宗 (Táng Mùzōng), 唐敬宗 (Táng Jìngzōng), 唐武宗 (Táng Wǔzōng), and others followed into elixir-poisoned graves. Modern toxicological analysis of the symptoms described in historical records points consistently to heavy metal poisoning — mercury, lead, arsenic — the very substances that alchemists believed would transfer their enduring qualities to human flesh.
This is dark and grim history, but xianxia preserves the memory of this danger in the concept of 走火入魔 (zǒu huǒ rù mó, "fire deviating into demonhood"), the catastrophic failure mode of cultivation where a practitioner loses control of their inner energy. The original meaning encoded in this phrase reaches back to the very real phenomenon of alchemical practice going lethally wrong.
The Sacred Texts and the Imagery They Created
The Zhouyi Cantong Qi
The 周易参同契 (Zhōuyì Cāntóng Qì, "The Kinship of the Three According to the Book of Changes"), attributed to 魏伯阳 (Wèi Bóyáng) during the later Han dynasty, is considered the earliest surviving systematic text of Chinese alchemy. Its influence is almost impossible to overstate.
The text fuses alchemy, the cosmological system of the 易经 (Yìjīng, I Ching), and Daoist philosophy into a single framework. It introduced the use of hexagrams and the symbolic interplay of 坎 (kǎn, water) and 离 (lí, fire), 铅 (lead) and 汞 (hǒng, mercury) as paired opposites whose union produces transformation. This language of paired opposites — yin and yang elements that must be balanced and unified — runs through xianxia like a structural spine.
Mountains, Caves, and Sacred Spaces
Historical alchemists didn't work just anywhere. They sought out specific mountains considered powerful nodes of 灵气 (língqì, spiritual energy or spiritual breath) — a term that any cultivation reader knows as the ambient energy that practitioners absorb. Real mountains like 武当山 (Wǔdāng Shān), 华山 (Huà Shān), 崂山 (Láo Shān), and 茅山 (Máo Shān) were considered ideal locations for alchemical work because of their concentration of this energy.
The cave retreats where historical Daoist practitioners withdrew to practice became the 洞天 (dòngtiān, "grotto-heavens") — sacred spaces that exist in a different relationship with ordinary time and space. Xianxia is saturated with this concept: the immortal's cave dwelling, the hidden valley where time flows differently, the pocket dimension within a mountain. These aren't invented tropes — they are genuine features of the historical Daoist sacred geography.
The Immortals: Real Mythology, Fictional Cultivation
The Eight Immortals and Their Precedents
The 八仙 (Bā Xiān, Eight Immortals) of Chinese mythology — figures like 吕洞宾 (Lǚ Dòngbīn), 铁拐李 (Tiě Guǎi Lǐ), and 何仙姑 (Hé Xiān Gū) — represent a fascinating middle layer between pure mythology and historical memory. Some of them, particularly Lü Dongbin, appear to have been based on historical individuals. Lü Dongbin is associated with the 全真道 (Quánzhēn Dào, Complete Perfection school of Daoism) and is credited with transmitting inner alchemy teachings.
These figures became the archetypes for the eccentric, powerful, often morally ambiguous immortal teachers who populate xianxia. The 仙人 (xiānrén, immortal person) archetype in fiction — appearing suddenly to test or teach a young cultivator, living in impossible locations, wielding power that bends reality — is drawn directly from the religious folklore surrounding figures like Lü Dongbin.
Zhang Sanfeng and the Martial Connection
The legendary 张三丰 (Zhāng Sānfēng), the supposed creator of 太极拳 (Tàijíquán, Tai Chi), represents the point where alchemy, internal cultivation, and martial arts converge. Whether historical or largely mythological, his legend encapsulates the xianxia ideal: a practitioner who refined internal energy to such a degree that it manifested as extraordinary martial and spiritual power. The cultivation novel's protagonist who cultivates 真气 (zhēnqì, true qi) until it can shatter mountains is Zhang Sanfeng's spiritual and literary descendant.
From Historical Practice to Modern Fiction
The Ming and Qing Novels as Bridge
The direct bridge between historical alchemy and modern xianxia runs through the great fantastical novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties. 封神演义 (Fēngshén Yǎnyì, "Investiture of the Gods") and 西游记 (Xīyóu Jì, "Journey to the West") are absolutely saturated with alchemical imagery and Daoist cultivation concepts filtered through centuries of accumulated legend.
太上老君 (Tàishàng Lǎojūn, the Supreme Elder Lord, the deified form of Laozi) in Journey to the West possesses a 八卦炉 (bāguà lú, Eight Trigrams Furnace) in which he refines elixirs. When the Monkey King 孙悟空 (Sūn Wùkōng) is thrown into this furnace and survives, emerging with eyes that can see through illusion, we are watching a narrative processing of alchemical transformation mythology. The furnace that destroys impurity and reveals an indestructible core is the central metaphor of both historical alchemy and modern xianxia cultivation.
What Modern Xianxia Gets Right (and Gloriously Exaggerates)
Modern xianxia fiction like 修真世界 (Xiūzhēn Shìjiè), 仙逆 (Xiān Nì), or 斗破苍穹 (Dòupò Cāngqióng, "Battle Through the Heavens") takes the real historical framework of Chinese alchemy and performs several key transformations. The genuine historical uncertainty about whether these methods worked gets replaced with a world where they demonstrably do. The very real danger of the practice — those Tang emperors poisoned in their palaces — gets converted into dramatic 走火入魔 episodes that kill minor characters and threaten protagonists. The hierarchical structure of achievement described by Ge Hong becomes elaborated into the multi-tiered realm systems that define the genre.
The 丹药 (dānyào, alchemical medicine/pill) culture that dominates so many xianxia stories is the direct fictional descendant of the real materia medica of 外丹 (wàidān) and the complex pharmaceutical traditions of 本草 (běncǎo, herbal medicine). Even the 炼丹师 (liàn dān shī, pill refiner) as a character class — the person of extraordinary skill who transforms raw materials into transformative medicines — reflects the real social role that skilled alchemists occupied in historical Chinese society.
Conclusion: Alchemy as Living Tradition
What makes the relationship between historical Chinese alchemy and modern xianxia fiction so compelling is that it isn't merely one of surface-level borrowing. The fundamental philosophical premises — that the human body contains hidden energies, that these energies can be refined and cultivated, that the boundary between the material and the spiritual is permeable, that extraordinary effort and knowledge can transform an ordinary human being into something transcendent — these ideas are not decorative. They were believed, practiced, and died for.
When you read about a protagonist refining their 金丹 (jīndān, golden elixir) in a modern cultivation novel, you are not reading pure fantasy. You are reading the latest chapter in a conversation that began in Han dynasty laboratories, continued through Tang dynasty imperial courts where emperors drank mercury and hoped for immortality, deepened through the philosophical synthesis of Song dynasty internal alchemists, and was transmitted through centuries of religious practice, popular mythology, and literary tradition.
The cauldrons are still burning. The elixir is still being refined. Only the medium has changed.
Key Terms Reference: 炼丹术 (liàn dān shù) · 外丹 (wàidān) · 内丹 (nèidān) · 丹炉 (dān lú) · 金丹 (jīndān) · 灵气 (língqì) · 洞天 (dòngtiān) · 走火入魔 (zǒu huǒ rù mó) · 仙人 (xiānrén)# The Real History of Chinese Alchemy: From Elixirs to Xianxia
When Ancient Science Became Immortal Fantasy
Long before cultivators in Renegade Immortal (Xian Ni, 仙逆) spent decades refining pills in isolated mountain caves, real Chinese alchemists were doing something remarkably similar — and equally dangerous. The tradition of 炼丹 (liàn dān), literally "refining elixirs," stretches back more than two thousand years and represents one of humanity's most ambitious and deadly quests: the pursuit of physical immortality through chemical transformation.
Understanding this real history doesn't just satisfy historical curiosity. It fundamentally transforms how you read xianxia fiction. Every pill furnace that explodes in The Pill Emperor (丹帝), every poison-laced "heavenly elixir" that kills a side character in Martial World (武界), every argument between a master alchemist and his skeptical disciple — these scenes are soaked in genuine historical DNA. The authors didn't invent this world from nothing. They inherited it.
The Two Branches: Outer and Inner Alchemy
Chinese alchemy developed along two distinct but deeply intertwined paths, and understanding both is essential to reading xianxia intelligently.
外丹 (Wài Dān): Outer Alchemy
外丹 (wài dān), or "outer alchemy," is what most Westerners recognize as alchemy in the traditional sense: the physical manipulation of minerals, metals, and organic compounds to produce a tangible immortality elixir. This tradition flourished roughly from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) through the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), driven by imperial patronage and the terrifying ambitions of emperors who refused to accept death.
The central substance in outer alchemy was 丹砂 (dān shā), cinnabar — mercury sulfide — whose brilliant red color made it cosmically significant to early Chinese thinkers. When heated, cinnabar releases mercury, and when that mercury is heated further, it can revert to a red sulfide compound. This apparent death and resurrection of matter seemed miraculous to early alchemists. If cinnabar could transform and return, perhaps it could grant the same cyclic permanence to the human body.
The legendary alchemist 葛洪 (Gě Hóng, 283–343 CE), author of the Baopuzi (抱朴子, "He Who Embraces Simplicity"), systematized much of this thinking. He classified elixirs in hierarchical tiers, from the most potent 金丹 (jīn dān, "golden elixir") at the top down to lesser preparations. His writings describe extraordinary preparations involving gold, cinnabar, realgar, orpiment, and dozens of other substances. He also carefully noted — with what reads today as alarming understatement — that some elixirs caused the practitioner to experience fevers, convulsions, and the sensation that their skin was "falling away," after which immortality would presumably follow.
It would not follow. What followed was usually death. The poisons in these preparations — mercury, arsenic, lead — were devastating. Historians now believe that multiple Tang Dynasty emperors died from elixir poisoning, including Emperor Taizong (唐太宗), Emperor Xuanzong (唐玄宗), and Emperor Muzong (唐穆宗). The imperial court consumed these deadly preparations not from ignorance but from a combination of desperate hope, political pressure, and the genuinely seductive logic of an internally consistent cosmological system.
内丹 (Nèi Dān): Inner Alchemy
As the failures of outer alchemy became impossible to ignore, a parallel tradition gained dominance: 内丹 (nèi dān), or "inner alchemy." Rather than transforming external minerals, inner alchemists sought to transform the energies within the human body itself. The body became the furnace. The practitioner's own vital substances became the ingredients.
Inner alchemy developed a sophisticated map of the body's energy systems, centered on three 丹田 (dān tián, "elixir fields"): energy centers located in the lower abdomen, the heart region, and between the eyebrows. The alchemist's task was to cultivate and circulate three fundamental substances:
- 精 (jīng): Essence or vital essence, often associated with reproductive energy
- 气 (qì): Vital breath or life force
- 神 (shén): Spirit or consciousness
The goal was to refine these substances through meditative practice, breathing exercises (导引, dǎo yǐn), sexual cultivation (房中术, fáng zhōng shù), and strict dietary discipline until the practitioner produced an "immortal embryo" (圣胎, shèng tāi) — a purified spiritual body that could survive physical death. This inner alchemical embryo would eventually become the practitioner's true immortal self, liberated from the decay of flesh.
If this sounds familiar, it should. The cultivation system in virtually every major xianxia novel is inner alchemy with fictional elaboration. When Wei Wuxian in The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (魔道祖师, Mó Dào Zǔ Shī) loses his golden core (金丹, jīn dān), the narrative weight of that loss depends on readers understanding — consciously or not — that the golden core represents the culmination of inner alchemical refinement, the very seat of a cultivator's power and identity.
Daoist Cosmology: The Framework Beneath Everything
Neither branch of alchemy makes sense without its cosmological foundation, and that foundation is 道教 (Dào Jiào), Daoism. The universe, in Daoist understanding, operates through the constant interaction of complementary forces: 阴 (yīn) and 阳 (yáng), the five phases or 五行 (wǔ xíng) — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water — and the endless creative potential of the 道 (Dào) itself.
Alchemists worked within this framework with painstaking precision. Cinnabar was classified as belonging to the Fire phase, associated with yang energy, and its red color connected it to southern directions and the heart. Gold (金, jīn) belonged to the Metal phase, associated with permanence and incorruptibility. Combining these substances wasn't random experimentation — it was cosmological engineering.
The concept of 天人合一 (tiān rén hé yī), the unity of Heaven and humanity, meant that transformations achievable in the cosmos were achievable in the human body, and vice versa. This is why inner and outer alchemy weren't seen as contradictory but complementary. The macrocosm and microcosm mirrored each other perfectly.
Xianxia authors absorb and remix this cosmology constantly. The realm hierarchies in novels like Coiling Dragon (盘龙, Pán Lóng) or Against the Gods (逆天邪神, Nì Tiān Xié Shén) — Earth Realm, Heaven Realm, God Realm — echo the layered cosmological geography of Daoist texts. The five-element pill formulations in cultivation novels directly reference wǔ xíng theory. The breakthrough "insights" that allow cultivators to advance echo the Daoist concept of 悟道 (wù dào), awakening to the nature of the Way.
Real Alchemical Texts That Shaped Fictional Worlds
Several actual historical texts left fingerprints all over modern xianxia fiction, and they're worth knowing by name.
The Zhouyi Cantong Qi (周易参同契, "The Seal of the Unity of the Three"), attributed to Wei Boyang (魏伯阳) in the 2nd century CE, is often called the earliest surviving alchemical text in Chinese history. It fuses the Book of Changes (易经, Yì Jīng) with cosmological theory and alchemical practice in dense, deliberately obscure verse. Later inner alchemists would reinterpret its language as referring exclusively to internal practice, establishing a tradition of layered meaning — the same text could be read as outer or inner alchemy depending on the reader's initiation level.
The Baopuzi (抱朴子) by Ge Hong, mentioned earlier, is more practically minded. It includes detailed preparation instructions, cost estimates for ingredients, and frank discussion of which emperors and nobles had successfully consumed which preparations. It reads at times like a very dangerous recipe book combined with a philosophical treatise. Ge Hong's systematic ranking of immortals — from 天仙 (tiān xiān, celestial immortals) who ascend bodily to heaven, to 地仙 (dì xiān, earthly immortals) who roam the mortal world, to 尸解仙 (shī jiě xiān, "corpse liberation" immortals) who fake their deaths — directly anticipates the realm taxonomy of modern xianxia.
The Huangdi Neijing (黄帝内经, "Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine") isn't strictly an alchemical text, but its medical cosmology — the map of meridians (经脉, jīng mài), acupuncture points, and qi circulation — became inseparable from inner alchemical practice. The "meridian blockage" and "meridian cleansing" that beginning cultivators undergo in virtually every xianxia novel trace directly back to this text's influence.
The Historical Immortals Who Became Fictional Templates
Chinese alchemy produced legendary figures who crossed from historical record into mythology, and then from mythology into xianxia's character roster.
张道陵 (Zhāng Dào Líng), the founder of the Celestial Masters tradition of Daoism in the 2nd century CE, became a template for the powerful, founder-level patriarch characters that populate xianxia sects. His supposed ability to command demons, heal disease with talismans (符箓, fú lù), and transmit his power through an unbroken lineage of disciples established a model that xianxia authors reproduce endlessly.
吕洞宾 (Lǚ Dòng Bīn), one of the Eight Immortals (八仙, Bā Xiān), represents the wandering cultivator archetype — the powerful but eccentric figure who appears unexpectedly, tests the protagonist with riddles or combat, and sometimes offers guidance. His historical and legendary biography involves a dream vision, a period of intensive cultivation, mastery of the sword, and centuries of wandering. Sound familiar? He is, functionally, the prototype of the "senior expert" character who gives the protagonist a chance encounter early in their journey.
葛洪 (Gě Hóng) himself later became semi-legendary. Stories about him describe his apparent death and the discovery that his coffin was empty — a classic 尸解 (shī jiě) narrative, where the physical body dissolves and the immortal self ascends. The idea that death itself might be a technique, a final transformation rather than an ending, is profoundly present in xianxia — think of the many protagonists who "die" and are reborn, or whose masters fake their deaths to escape heavenly tribulation.
From History to Xianxia: The Transformation
The journey from historical alchemy to modern xianxia fiction ran through several centuries of popular literature, theatrical performance, and eventually early 20th century martial arts (武侠, wǔ xiá) fiction before arriving at the fully realized xianxia genre.
The crucial bridge text is arguably Journey to the West (西游记, Xī Yóu Jì, 1592), which dramatized Buddhist-Daoist cosmology for mass audiences with unforgettable characters and spectacular immortal combat. Its influence on xianxia is incalculable. The concept of 劫难 (jié nàn, tribulation or calamity that powerful beings must survive), the hierarchies of heaven, the pill-stealing chaos that motivates Sun Wukong's (孙悟空) rampage — all of these became foundational xianxia elements.
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异, Liáo Zhāi Zhì Yì, 1740) and other classical collections normalized the idea of mortals encountering and sometimes transcending the supernatural through personal cultivation and moral quality.
When online fiction (网络文学, wǎng luò wén xué) exploded in China in the late 1990s and 2000s, authors had access to all of this material simultaneously and began remixing it with unprecedented freedom. The result was xianxia as we know it: inner alchemical cultivation mechanics mapped onto game-like progression systems, Daoist cosmology serving as a sandbox for power fantasy, and millennia of genuine philosophical and spiritual tradition transformed into the most dynamic and imaginative fantasy subgenre in contemporary world literature.
Why This History Matters
Understanding the real history of Chinese alchemy doesn't diminish the fantasy. It deepens it immeasurably.
When a character in I Shall Seal the Heavens (我欲封天, Wǒ Yù Fēng Tiān) speaks of the 道 (Dào) as something that can be perceived, grasped, and eventually transcended, that moment echoes two thousand years of genuine human seeking. When an alchemist in The Alchemist God (炼神领域) argues that the will of the refiner must enter the pill for it to achieve its highest grade, they're expressing a real historical doctrine — that the practitioner's 神 (shén), their spirit and consciousness, is the irreplaceable catalyst in transformation.
The history of Chinese alchemy is a history of humans staring mortality in the face and refusing to accept it as the final answer. It is a history of terrible mistakes, visionary philosophy, genuine chemical discovery, and extraordinary spiritual practice. It was pursued by emperors and hermits, by credulous charlatans and rigorous scholars who simply believed, with everything they had, that the cosmos was not indifferent to human aspiration.
That belief, transformed and elaborated across two millennia, eventually became the genre we read today. Every cultivation breakthrough, every pill that might kill or might elevate, every sect protecting its secret methods from the world — it all began with someone, alone in a mountain cave or a palace laboratory, feeding cinnabar into a furnace and asking the oldest question humanity knows:
What if we don't have to die?
Further reading: Ge Hong's Baopuzi (partial English translation by Jay Sailey), Fabrizio Pregadio's Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China*, and Nathan Sivin's* Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies*.*