Jiang Shi, with binding spells stuck to their foreheads.

I’ve written a great deal about zombies on this blog.  In the West, we have a pretty fixed view of what a zombie looks and acts like – they’re corpses that have gotten up and walked again, and they hunger for the flesh of the living.  Fast or slow, either way anyone with a pulse is lunch.

With this view being so ubiquitous on this side of the pond, it is easy to forget that zombies as we know them are largely a modern cinematic invention - the folkloric zombies they were based on were quite different from what zombies have become.  While the walking dead are common to just about every culture on Earth, they take many different forms, many of them much more bizarre than the plague zombie to which we in the West have grown accustomed.

A perfect example of this is the Jiang Shi.  These undead have haunted the collective unconscious of the Chinese people for thousands of years.  The word “Jiang Shi” means “stiff corpse”.  Their appearance can vary depending on how long they’ve been in the grave – fresh Jiang Shi could look like an average person, while Jiang Shi who have taken longer to resurrect have a hideous appearance.  These latter type stiff corpses are reported to be covered in green moss and antiquated clothing.  They have long white hair, long black fingernails, and a lolling black tongue.

The most distinctive feature of the Jiang Shi though is its odd gait.  Rather than stumbling about like Western zombies, the Jiang Shi hops with its arms held out straight in front of it.  This is due to the fact that the creature is in a constant state of rigor mortis, and is thus too stiff to do anything but hop.

That…doesn’t sound terribly threatening.  But then I guess at first glance the shuffling, clumsy zombies of Romero lore don’t either, and they seem to do pretty well for themselves.

But I digress.  If the locomotion of the Jiang Shi seems less than sinister, its diet certainly makes up for the lack.  Jiang Shi feed on the qi energy of living beings – which is to say, they suck out people’s life force.  If that sounds suspiciously like that other infamous undead thing, the vampire, you’re right.  The Jiang Shi are sorta like vamps, but they lack any kind of knowledge or willpower of their own – they are only driven by the desire to feed, which puts them firmly into zombie territory.  Some modern interpretations of the Jiang Shi in Chinese cinema have them feasting on the blood of the living rather than their qi…so take that for whatever it is worth.  In my mind, these hopping freaks are still zombies.

So with the Jiang Shi’s zombiehood thus established, what should we do if we run into one on some back country road in China?  Those of us who are trained in the art of (Western) zombie killing would simply whip out a shotgun (although I’m not sure the Chinese government would be very happy with a bunch of gun-toting American tourists wandering around their countryside) and blast the thing’s head off before calling it a day.

…I don’t know why, but this picture makes me laugh.

Not so fast, my trigger happy friends!  That may work for a zombie born of biological infection, but the Jiang Shi are different beasts.  They arise in a variety of ways.  Typically, a Jiang Shi is born when, for whatever reason, a spirit cannot leave its body.  This may be because of an “improper death” (not sure what that means, precisely), suicide, or a simple desire to cause trouble.  Also, a Jiang Shi can result from a corpse being inhabited by an evil spirit, or when a body is buried in a place too rich in the wrong sort of qi energy.  It may take a long time for the process to occur,  hence the Jiang Shi’s infamous moss coverage and outdated fashion sense.

So, the Jiang Shi are supernatural critters rather than merely the product of evolution gone wrong.  I’m thinking that pretty well nullifies the shotgun as an effective weapon for mowing these buggers down – unless you carry silver buckshot or blessed slugs or some other such horror movie contrivance.

Mostly, the goal outlined by folklore seems to be to avoid the things with your qi intact.  There are a variety of ways to achieve this.  One is simply to hold your breath – Jiang Shi can’t see, so if they can’t hear you they’ll hop on by.  Some say that sucking out the Jiang Shi’s dying breath will kill it.  Not sure about you, but that sounds a bit too close for comfort – I have a strict rule of staying at least fifty yards from any walking corpses in my vicinity.  You know, to avoid blood spatter.

Another way to avoid the Jiang Shi is to throw small objects in its path.  The creature will be compelled to count them (although how exactly a stiff, dumb corpse can count objects tossed onto the ground is anyone’s guess).  A good whack with peach wood will supposedly end a Jiang Shi’s unlife.  Various other common household items like awls, brooms, and axes can also ward away Jiang Shi.

The Jiang Shi are not the only undead critter that haunted the nightmares of our ancestors, but they are certainly among the oddest.  It just goes to show that when it came to making up things that went bump in the night, our ancestors were no slouches.