I have received some private inquiries about this post, and have decided to share what I came up with publicly. I did not post initially because the results of my admittedly not exhaustive searching do not lend any credence to Wu's claims, and in fact may lead him to look like rightly or wrongly like a fraud. Well, if the stories are true, then perhaps this post will cause evidence to come to light, which I'm sure would make everybody happy--most of us would like to believe such miracles can happen in the middle of huge cities in the modern day.   Here's what I found:     1. A monk by the name attached to the master in Wu's stories was active in/around Beijing in the last century, but he was at the White Cloud Monastery only briefly, and was never abbot from what I can tell.   If you follow this link you can find a short biography of a Daoist monk in Beijing in the last century named Du Xinling (杜信灵) who was apparently a very skilled acupuncturist. I'm too busy to translate it all, but below I'm pasting Google's attempt, which more or less conveys the gist. The confusing part about the prison stint refers to an event in recent history when a White Cloud Monastery abbot and his assistant were bound and immolated on the monastery's grounds by other monks who were furious at their corruption and collusion with Japense occupying forces. These monks were imprisoned for their crime (which was actually permissible in accord with the monastery's official rules) but then released not long after because public opinion in favor of executing traitors who helped the Japenese was strong. Apparently this Du was a part of this uprising, which is explained in detail in the book The Taoists of Peking. Below, the Google translation:     The last sentence is exactly as the original Chinese states: this man died of illness, not of turning into a rainbow.   Conversely, I found no evidence of there having been a 20th century abbot of the White Cloud Monastery having this name. Two Daoists both having this name is not impossible. If they are both 25th generation Dragon Gate or Hua Shan sect initiates, they will both have the character 信-xin in their name, and 灵-ling is a popular enough character that two or more guys all having this same Daoist name is very probable. However, two guys whose last names are both 杜-du and both live in Beijing, one makes onto the internet for being an acupuncturist at a small temple after he leaves the White Cloud Monastery, while another, who serves as abbot and turns into pure light, fades into obscurity? Seems unlikely to me.   This brings me to the next points:   2. I persuaded a lay Daoist friend who has worked at the White Cloud Monastery clinic for years to ask around for me. Nobody she asked was familiar with the name Du Xinling. That seems highly remarkable, given that the man supposedly performed his miracle during 1980s. Daoists everywhere eat this stuff up--it wouldn't have been quickly forgotten!   3. There is a librarian/editor at the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine who studies Daoism and who is always interested in miraculous tales related to this tradition. He Had not heard of Wu's master, nor of any rainbow body attainment by a White Cloud Monastery Daoist master in the 1980s or any other time.   4. Finally, I asked an Yi Quan practitioner who was trained by Wang Xiangzhai's own daughter. I mention this martial art because supposedly Du Xinling taught Wang Xiangzhai, founder of Yi Quan. If that is really the case, my acquaintance not having heard of him is very unlikely. To make matters worse, the fellow is not just an Yi Quan player but a Daoist doctor who is affiliated with the Chinese Daoist Association, which is headquartered in the White Cloud Monastery. This man is extremely well-read and well-connected in Daoist circles, and he is a native Beijinger to boot. He had heard nothing about this miracle.   Having received so many nugatories, eventually I gave up asking. Knocking on every door in Beijing asking people if they know about the guy who turned into a rainbow is a good way to end up in a straight jacket! Since I highly doubt any newspaper archives from the 1980s have been digitized, there is no way I'm pouring over microfilm to try and substantiate Baolin Wu's claims, which I'm frankly prone to believe are probably fantasy.