Meng Po (Lady of Forgetfulness)

In Chinese popular accounts Meng Po functions as an official of Diyu, the realm of the dead. Sources place her serving at the Bridge of Oblivion (奈何桥; Nàihé qiáo) where she awaits deceased souls ready to depart the underworld and be reborn. Variant traditions disagree on her exact administrative placement—some locate her at the entrance to the ninth round at Fengdu, others describe her as serving in the tenth court of Diyu. An etiological variation identifies her with the legendary Lady Meng Jiang: in that telling, after personal grief prevented ordinary reincarnation she devised a forgetfulness brew to relieve the suffering of souls, providing a narrative account for why Meng Po administers the soup.

Traditional descriptions and popular iconography emphasize her as an elderly woman—hence the literal name 'Old Lady Meng'—presented as an underworld official. The supplied sources do not give consistent, detailed iconographic attributes (clothing, facial specifics, or standard accoutrements); she is identified primarily by age/sex and her role administering the forgetfulness brew rather than by a fixed visual canon.

Meng Po's principal power is the preparation and administration of the Five Flavored Soup (迷魂汤; míhúntāng), a concoction that, according to the sources, induces loss of memory so that souls 'do not remember their previous life or their time in hell' and can be reborn without carrying past-life recollections. Legends state she gathers herbs from earthly ponds and streams to make the brew; the soup is described as inducing instant and oft-described permanent amnesia. Her behavior is procedural and administrative: she awaits dead souls at the Bridge of Oblivion and gives each soul a draught before they leave Diyu to be reborn according to their karmic record.