The God of Happiness began as a magistrate who took pity on dwarfs. Werner's Myths & Legends of China (published 1922) tells how "The God of Happiness, Fu Shên," "owes his origin to the predilection" of the Emperor Wu Ti (A.D. 502-50) of the Liang dynasty, who levied dwarfs from the Tao Chou district of Hunan to serve in his palace. The demand grew until it "prejudiced the ties of family relations." When Yang Ch'êng was made Criminal Judge of Tao Chou, he argued to the throne that "the dwarfs were his subjects but not" his slaves — and the touched Emperor ordered the "levy to be stopped." Overjoyed at their release, the people set up his images and offered sacrifice, and he was everywhere "venerated as the Spirit of Happiness."

The record is unsettled about who the god really was. Beside Yang Ch'êng it sets a second claimant, Tsêng-fu Hsiang-kung, glossed in the text as "the Young Gentleman who Increases Happiness" and then Li Kuei-tsu, a minister of the Wei dynasty; but "in modern times the honour" for the office "seems to have passed to Kuo Tzu-i", "the saviour of the T'ang" dynasty, who lived A.D. 697-781 and was "one of the most illustrious of Chinese generals"—pictured in blue robes leading his small son to Court.

This address rests on a single witness, Werner's collection of 1922, but the witness carries it whole. What does it reveal that a people made their god of happiness not from the emperor who relented, but from the magistrate who dared argue that his subjects were not his slaves?