Jiang Shi
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Jiang Shi (Traditional Chinese: 僵屍 or 殭屍; Simplified Chinese: 僵尸; pinyin: jiāngshī; literally "stiff corpse"), sometimes called Chinese vampires by Westerners, are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life essence (qì) from their victims. jiāngshī is pronounced geungsi in Cantonese. They are said to be created when a person's soul (魄 pò) fails to leave the deceased's body. The influence of Western vampire stories brought the blood-sucking aspect to the Chinese myth in modern times. In fact, Dracula is translated to Chinese as "blood-sucking jiāngshī" where the thirst of blood is explicitly emphasized because it is not a traditional trait of a jiāngshī.
It came from the mythical folklore practice of "Traveling a Corpse over a Thousand Li" (千里行屍), where traveling companion or family members who could not afford wagons or have very little money would hire Tao priests to transport corpses of their friends/family members who died far away from home over long distances by teaching them to hop on their own feet back to their hometown for proper burial. Some people speculate that Jiang Shis were originally smugglers in disguise who wanted to scare off law enforcement officers.
Jiang Shis were a popular subject in Hong Kong movies during the 1980s; some movies even featured both Jiang Shis and "Western" zombies. In the movies, Jiang Shis can be put to sleep by putting on their foreheads a piece of yellow paper with a spell written on it (Chinese talisman or 符 pinyin fú). Generally in the movies the Jiang Shi are dressed in imperial Qing Dynasty clothes, their arms permanently outstretched due to rigor mortis. Like those depicted in Western movies, they tend to appear with an outrageously long tongue and long fingernails. They can be evaded by holding one's breath, as they track living creatures by detecting their breathing. Their visual depiction as horrific Qing Dynasty officials reflects a common stereotype among the Han Chinese of the foreign Manchu people, who founded the much-despised dynasty, as bloodthirsty creatures with little regard for humanity.
It is also conventional wisdom of feng shui in Chinese architecture that a threshold (Chinese: 門檻), a piece of wood approximately six inches high, be installed along the width of the door to prevent a Jiang Shi from entering the household.
[edit] Cultural references
- The Jiang Shi has appeared in many films from Hong Kong that have seen Western release, including the Geungsi Sinsang (also known as Mr. Vampire) series featuring Lam Ching-Ying.
- In the film Fei zhou he shang, a hopping vampire appears as a character used by the heroic oriental necromancer and is the ancestor of his coward sidekick.
- In the Jackie Chan cartoon series there is a "Chi Vampire" that is an exaggerated version of the Jiang Shi.
