The Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu) is one of the oldest and most enduring goddesses of China, whose character changed dramatically over time. In the earliest sources, including Shang references and the Classic of Mountains and Seas, she is a fearsome, part-feline being of the far west linked with plague and cosmic punishment; by the Han dynasty she had been transformed into a beautiful and benevolent goddess of immortality, and in Daoism she became the highest goddess, ruler of the western paradise on Mount Kunlun and keeper of the peaches of immortality that ripen but once in several thousand years.
In popular tradition and later fiction her birthday banquet, at which the assembled immortals eat the miraculous peaches, is a favourite theme, and she presides over a court of female transcendents. Widely venerated by women and by seekers of long life, Xiwangmu became, and remains, one of the principal goddesses of the Chinese religious world.