Han Xiangzi is defined by his uncle. The tradition makes him a relative of Han Yu, one of the towering figures of Tang letters, a Confucian of a severe kind who wrote a famous memorial against the reception of a relic of the Buddha at court and was exiled for it. Setting a young Daoist transcendent inside that household is a deliberate arrangement, and every story about the two is a version of the same argument.
The best known has the young man abandoning study for the mountains and returning to a family gathering where his uncle presses him to take the examinations and make something of himself. Asked what he can do instead, he grows flowers in front of the company out of season, and on the petals are characters forming a couplet about clouds across the Qin ranges and snow blocking the passes. His uncle does not understand it. Years later, exiled to the south and stopped by snow at Lan Pass, he remembers the words and finds his nephew waiting for him on the road.
The story is doing something more interesting than scoring a point. The Confucian is not made a fool: he is a man of integrity punished for his integrity, and the prophecy is a kindness rather than a taunt. It is a story about two ways of being serious, told by people who did not think one had to defeat the other.
He carries a flute, is patron of musicians, and is said to make plants grow when he plays.