A Little World of My Own

Saturday, October 13, 2007

The Origin of Chinese Vampire aka. Jiang Shi

Jiang Shi are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life essence from their victims. They are said to be created when a person's soul fails to leave the deceased's body. Just like Dracula, Jiang Shi sucks blood too.

In the olden days, family members of the dead 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. This practice, known as 湘西趕屍 was popular in Xiang Xi where many people left their hometown to work elsewhere. After they died, their corpses were transported back to their rural hometown.

Since Xiang Xi is a very rural area, a lot of the locals went out to look for more money in order to support the family. When they die outside, their body were transported back for proper burial. However, because of the narrow and steep path, the corpse can only be carried back using man power. So it begins with a 1 to 1 way to carry the corpse back.

When they have more than one corpse to carry, they need a stretcher, which is made of bamboos. but the tool can only transport 3 corpses at most.


So, someone invented another way to carry multiple corpses at one go. No need to explain in detail la, picture shows it all.

How the corpse is tied to the bamboo.

Also, the traditional chinese dresses are big in nature. Especially the long and broad sleeve, often covered the bamboo stick. So, from far it looked as if the corpses are moving in a line with their arms pointing straight ahead.

Not only that, the corpses can only be transported at night to avoid from direct sunlight. Adding that the priest only hold a dim lantern back then. As they move, the elasticity of the bamboo will cause the corpses to move up and down, making them look as though they are jumping from far. So, this is how the Jiang Shi is created.

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