Zombie Culture: Chinese VS American Undead
One ear was missing and both of his lips had been bitten off. Even though he was slowly staggering towards you, the rotting stench of flesh preceded. Zombie, he is the endless nightmare in folklore.
Zombie History
The image of the zombie in America was originally featured in Haitian rural folklore, typified as dead persons physically revived by a witch. They were likened to slaves to the witch and had no free will of their own. Nowadays, zombies have been described in many horror and fantasy genre works in America. According to these movies and novels, there are a variety of ways in which a normal human can become a zombie such as radiation, mental diseases, viruses, and scientific accidents. It is a common theme that zombies completely lose their human consciousness and starve for human flesh. （Picture Source）
Chinese zombies, on the other hand, also known as Jiangshi have distinct habits and characteristics. Chinese zombie culture relates to geomancy tradition. People in the ancient time believed that the location of a house or tomb has an influence on the fortune of the relative family. The folklore derived from this believe was that if a person who was killed ruthlessly had been buried in a infelicitous place, the whole world's resentment and grievance would concentrate on the corpse. Eventually, this person might regenerate, becoming the undead looking for revenge.
Additionally, the extinct tradition called "the handler" also influenced the image of the Chinese zombie. In the time of war, soldiers who died in a foreign land could not be buried in their hometown. However, some rich families hired handlers to carry the corpses back home. Due to the traffic inconvenience and social taboo, handlers needed to walk at night and use bamboo to elevate the corpse for transporting. The thrashing made the corpses looked like it was jumping with stretching out arms. Therefore, Chinese zombies in the movies and novels were described as jumping corpses with fatal patho-amine.
Different Characteristic Between Chinese Zombie (Jiangshi) and America Zombie
1. Dead people turns to Jiangshi, and this processes takes minimum 100 years. In contrast, in the popularized American video game franchise, Resident Evil, living persons that are infected with zombie virus transfer to zombies in an hour.
2. American zombies want to eat human flesh, but Jiangshi only suck blood like vampire. People who are bitten by zombie will turn to another zombie. However, people who bitten by Jiangshi will die because of ptomaine.
3. Jiangshi never rot. They are similar to Egyptian mummy without bandages. Most of the time their bodies are rigid. Since they can't bend their knee, they can only jump to moving forward. Contrary to the perpetual Jiangshi, an American zombie's body will rot if they don't have food. In the American zombie movie 28 Weeks Later, American army successfully eliminates zombies by isolating them for 28 weeks.
4. Jiangshi still retain human emotions and memories. A head shot can stop American zombies movement but not a Jiangshi. Jiangshi are afraid of some special items like the blood of black dog, a sword made by peach mood, and amulets. Burning either culture’s adaptation of the zombie will be the most efficient way of eliminate it.
The Decline of Chinese Zombie Culture and the Rise of American Zombie culture
The popular period of Chinese zombie movies was 1980-1991. Most of these movie were produced in Hongkong as a combination of comedy and horror. The most famous one is Mr. Stiff Corpse.
In that movie, Jiangshi which wear Qing Dynasty robes became the protagonist for later films. There are several reasons to explain why people love Qing Dynasty Jiangshi at that time. To begin with, the transition of human corpse to Jiangshi takes more than 100 years. So the Jiangshi in the movie are supposed to be the people lived in Qing Dynasty. Second, in the Chinese traditional concept of the underworld, hierarchy also existed. Therefore, people believe ghost who wearing robe could receive more respect in the underworld, and thus they buried their relatives with Qing Dynasty robe. Finally, Hong Kong was split from China by the government of Qing. Because of the history, people with Qing robe naturally created as a villain. However, the cultural connotation of Chinese zombie was gradually out of date. After reunification with China, the history of animosity was much less important to the Hong Kong people. Compared to the western zombie, the jumping Chinese zombie is comedic and not scary at all. As a result, the Jiangshi film industry finally languished.
The concept of zombie in western culture is still popular today. That is because in America, there is something more than simply fear offered by zombie film; there is a pervasive anxiety. Even though the zombie can be unrealistic, the fear about famine, disease, and war feels real in the film. Similar to earthquakes, floods, and scourge of diseases, in western culture zombie have been considered as symbol of doomsday. In addition, zombie movies like World War Z reflect the history of class warfare in America. Today, real social issue such as race and class conflicts have been described in film under the background of zombie disaster. For example, the Walking Dead contains points explicitly about race relations in America. Thus, "zombie" like the memories of terrible events people experience every day. Writers and directors will never feel too tired to create more stories about them.
Conclusion
Even though the Chinese zombie movie already disappeared, and the young Chinese generation generally accept the western zombie culture, Jiangshi which, reflected Chinese traditional folktale and audience demand under specific historical background should not be overlooked. It is entirely possible that Jiangshi come back to the film screen and continue scary people in the future.
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