Meng Po and Her Five-Flavored Soup of Oblivion

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Some of you may know that Diyu is the Chinese version of Hell. Diyu is a subterranean maze with several levels or “courts” that dole out punishments for various types of sins. Meng Po, the goddess of forgetfulness, resides in Diyu’s 10th court. 

Meng Po waits at the Naihe Bridge (the Bridge of Oblivion) to serve her five-flavored soup. Once a soul is ready to be reborn, he or she must drink the soup before Meng Po allows them to cross the bridge and leave Diyu. 

The souls permanently forget their past life as well as their experiences in Diyu once they ingest the soup. They will thus get a fresh start free from the burdens of their past existence. The new life will be shaped by the karma the souls accrued in their previous incarnations.  

Meng Po prepares the soup from herbs she collects from ponds and streams in the realm of the living.

In some variations of the mythology, Meng Po was the former Lady Meng Jiang who could not reincarnate because of her grief over her husband’s death. She created the soup of oblivion to spare other souls her pain. 

In another version, Meng Po was a woman from the Qin dynasty (221 to 206 BCE) who did so much good that the gods gave her the job of preparing souls for their rebirth. 



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