This magical ascent and decent of an object threaded on a cord—variously a tube, ball or puppet—depends on a simple but clever arrangement of two cords on a ring inside the object. This old trick is generally given an East Indian origin. See, for example, J. N. Hilliard's Greater Magic, 1938. p. 838. In Hilliard's title for the trick, he claims it to be “A Genuine Hindu Trick”. Zhang Boxue notes that, in a book titled Les Rues de Pékin (a copy of which resides in the Bibliothèque nationale de France), is an illustration of a Chinese street performer juggling balls. On a blue cloth lying beside him are various props, one being a string-threaded cloth figure that corresponds to the traditional Chinese apparatus known as “The Immortal Walking on a String” (仙人走线). An explanation of this trick is given in Goose Illusion Collection: Illustrated Conjuring (鹅幻汇编: 戏法图说), 1889, by Tang Zaifeng. While Les Rues de Pékin bears no date of publication, handwritten notes indicate three prior owners, the earliest being Henri Léonard Jean-Baptiste Bertin (1720–1792). This suggests a publication date prior to 1792, predating the earliest documented East Indian mentions, the dating of which remains uncertain. This evidence suggests a possible origin for the trick in China rather than India.