Baosheng Dadi

Wu Tao was, by regional tradition, a physician of the Song dynasty from Fujian who practiced medicine without charging the poor, was noted for genuine clinical skill, and was credited after his death with continued miraculous healing at his shrine — the pattern common to many Chinese healing-deity cults, where an unusually effective or generous historical practitioner is remembered, then venerated, then eventually formally deified. Successive Song emperors granted him escalating posthumous titles, culminating in the honorific Baosheng Dadi, "the Great Emperor Who Protects Life," under which he is worshipped today.

His cult remains strongest in its region of origin — Fujian province and, through the substantial Hokkien emigration to Taiwan beginning in the 17th century, Taiwan itself, where Baosheng Dadi temples (most prominently Taipei's Bao'an Temple) remain active pilgrimage and petition sites. Worshippers historically came, and in many cases still come, seeking his intercession for illness alongside or in place of formal medical treatment, and his festival remains a significant temple event in the Taiwanese Hokkien religious calendar. As with several other figures on the boundary of formal Taoism and regional folk cult, Baosheng Dadi is generally administered within the Taoist temple system while functioning, in lived practice, as part of the broader popular religious landscape of southern Fujian and Taiwan rather than as a deity of pan-Chinese Taoist doctrine.