The gods keep a table, and on the Chinese shelf its calendar is a fruit. Our witness is the 1922 compilation Myths & Legends of China, which holds the "periodical banquet of the Immortals" in the palace of Hsi Wang Mu, sovereign of the Western Air, called the "Golden Mother of the Tortoise", high on the snowy K'un-lun where a rampart of gold rings battlements of precious stones. The feast has a name — "P'an-t'ao Hui", the "Feast of Peaches" — and is spread on the borders of the Yao Ch'ih, the "Lake of Gems". Its guests are the Immortals themselves, ranked in seven orders by the colour of their robes.

The fare is marvel and menace at once: the Immortals are "served with bears' paws, monkeys' lips" and "dragons' liver, phoenix marrow," with peaches "conferring longevity on all who have the good luck to taste them". It is the peaches that fix the day, for the tree "put forth leaves once every three thousand years", and needed three thousand more to ripen its fruit; each ripening was the goddess's birthday, when all the Immortals assembled. The telling calls the gathering "more festive than solemn", filled with "songs not from mortal tongues."

Only the Chinese witness is wired to served text here; the record's Icelandic, Indian, and South American authorities for the gods' banquet wait unread. If a feast can be held only when a fruit three thousand years in the ripening at last comes ripe, is the banquet a meal at all, or a way of counting eternity?