Chinese alchemy is a historical Chinese approach to alchemy, a pseudoscience. According to original texts such as the Cantong qi, the body is understood as the focus of cosmological processes summarized in the five agents of change, or Wuxing, the observation and cultivation of which leads the practitioner into alignment and harmony with the Tao. Therefore, the traditional view in China is that alchemy focuses mainly on longevity and the purification of one's spirit, mind and body, providing, health, longevity and wisdom, through the practice of Qigong and wuxingheqidao. The consumption and use of various concoctions known as alchemical medicines or elixirs, each of which having different purposes but largely were concerned with immortality.
Crystals of cinnabar, crystals of barite, crystals of quartz, crystals of calcite : Wanshan Mine, Wanshan District, Tongren Prefecture, Guizhou Province, China, an example of material historically associated with Chinese alchemy
Chinese woodblock illustration of a waidan alchemical refining furnace, 1856 Waike tushuo (外科圖説, Illustrated Manual of External Medicine)
Chinese woodblock illustration of neidan "Cleansing the heart-mind and retiring into concealment", 1615 Xingming guizhi (Pointers on Spiritual Nature and Bodily Life)
Alchemy is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.
Depiction of an Ouroboros from the alchemical treatise Aurora consurgens (15th century), Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland
Ambix, cucurbit and retort of Zosimos, from Marcelin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vol., Paris, 1887–1888)
15th-century artistic impression of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber), Codici Ashburnhamiani 1166, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence
"An illuminated page from a book on alchemical processes and receipts", ca. 15th century