Some of you who are familiar with this monster may call out "Wait, isn't this some kind of Chinese vampire? Isn't that breaking one of your rules?" Well, yes and no. Let me explain.
'Jiangshi' means 'stiff corpse' and is often compared to the west's ideas of vampires and zombies. Rather than eating brains or drinking blood, they instead suck in the soul, or 'chi' of a person for sustenance. They are so stiff that they are unable to bend their outstretched arms and legs, requiring them to hop from place to place, giving them the name 'hopping corpses' or 'hopping vampires'. They also tended to dress in traditional Qing dynasty attire, along with braided white hair and round-trimmed hat. Their skin would also be somewhat green-white color due to fungus and mould growing on the corpse. So really, it is but also isn't. Not exactly sure how to put that better.
Anyway, the tales of the Jiangshi reach back since the Qing dynasty (hence having attire comparable to that time period). Scholar Ji Xaolin brought mention to this in his book Yuewei Caotang Biji, making note of how they can manifest from someone recently deceased coming back to life or a long-dead corpse that doesn't decompose. How the body can move again can come about through different ways, like mystical arts to revive the dead, a spirit possessing the body or the body itself absorbing enough yang ki (or negative energy). A person can also become a jiangshi by an infection that turns them overtime.
Another story of the jiangshi comes from the folk practice 'Xiangxi ganshi' of 'transporting a corpse over a thousand li (or Chinese miles, which amounts to 1640 feet). Due to the extreme amount of distance to carry a body for burial, Taoist priests would be hired to revive the body so that it could 'hop' to their home instead of being carried. They could only be allowed to move at night and bells would be rung to notify others about the jiangshi, as it is believed to be bad luck should a living person see it themselves.
There is certainly a lot more to the jiangshi that I thought there would be, but it is certainly informative. So, how exactly has the being been portrayed in pop culture? Let's see.
In Hong Kong cinema, the jiangshi movies were created during the 1980s and 1990s, merging with the Hong Kong kung fu movies and even Western vampires. The first movie to start this was 'Encounters of the Spooky Kind' in 1980. Directed by martial arts legend Sammo Hung, the film was also the start of the genre kung fu horror comedy. It managed to spawn a sequel in 1990 along with other films such as 'Vampires vs Vampire' and 'Mr Vampire'. Still, the jiangshi film popularity ended in the mid-1990s, with a brief resurgence in the 2000s and 2010s.
As noted from the picture, the overall design of the jiangshi was kept rather on par with the written sources, but their use in more comedy-horror films have left them as bit of a joke. In a way, it is more of an attitude towards the original writing of a 'hopping corpse' being frightening at all, if just incredibly silly.
Speaking of silly, we now turn out attention to the video game series 'Darkstalkers' by Capcom. The game had its own iteration of monsters fighting one another, from the popular succubus Morrigan to the undead Lord Raptor. Hsien-Ko would make her first appearance in the second game of the series, 'Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge'. She had a fraternal twin named Mei-Ling, with both training to be Senjutsushi or 'Hermit Sages'. However, their village was attacked by Darkstalkers before they could become masters. Their mother sacrificed herself to protect them, causing her own soul to be captured by darkness. Wanting to save their mother, the two sisters used a technique to become a Darkhunter, one who hunts the Darkstalkers. Hsien-Ko became a Jiangshi, while Mei-Ling became the talisman on her hat to keep her under control. Eventually, the two would succeed and free their mother, their reward being reborn in a new life away from Darkstalkers.
As you can see, Capcom has taken a lot of liberties with their character designs in the 'Darkstalkers' series compared to their source material. While Hsien-Ko does have the overall resemblance of Qing dynasty attire, it has also been 'jazzed' up a bit with revealing cleavage and oversized sleeves. In combat, the sleeves would contain several kinds of weapons for Hsien-Ko to use, ranging from claws, swords, spiked balls, knives, shurikens, and a shield and mallet to release sonic attacks. Despite her status as one of the undead, Hsien-Ko is still quite lively and energetic.
Again, keeping a bit close to the source material, but still with quite a bit of liberties taken with the creature becoming more goofier (in a sense).
Now heading from east to west, we have the animated series 'Jackie Chan Adventures'. While each of its seasons focused on a major McGuffin(s) that need to be retrieved and such, there have been many filler episodes simply to fill up space. One involves the Jiangshi awakening and stealing the chi of most of the main cast, which gets into a weird bit when one of the cast tries to save others by using chi of other people and it gets kind of screwy there (at least for my tastes). Anyway, much like a filler episode, it wraps up with the Jiangshi being defeated and everyone returning to normal.
It is a very interesting take on the lore, but I'm not sure how good or how bad it is. The Jiangshi doesn't really resemble the usual look, relying on a mix of eastern and western influences ,some of which is brought up in the episode itself. It still hunts for chi, absorbing it through its eyes and growing stronger with each draining. So much so that, after feasting on the chi of three people, it can resist sunlight and even speak clearly, where it was more animalistic before. It was capable of creating minions after absorbing out their chi, much like in the original writing.
Again, I'm not really sure what to think about this portrayal. It certainly has a lot of the Jiangshi behaviors, like absorbing chi of people, aversion of light, capable of being stopped by talismans. However, the overall look of the creature is a bit jarring, cause it seems like they wanted to go with the western style of vampire but threw in a some eastern flair despite the setting being more European. Yeah, you can see how this is screwing with me a bit.
Overall, I'm kind of mixed about this. I don't really know what else to say about it other than...it existed.
Final conclusion? For a creature referred to mostly as a 'chinese vampire', the respect for the creature and its history has dropped a bit in recent memory. Its more of an easy joke monster to bring up and use, nothing really too threatening is made about it and the accuracy of it in modern storytelling can be rather splintered. A shame, really.
Okay, need to move onto another creature. This one kind of depressed me in the end.
Until next time...
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