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38-435: In popular culture, it is commonly represented as hopping or leaping. In folkloric accounts, however, it is more formidable, capable of giving chase by running, and if sufficiently ancient or if it has absorbed sufficient yang energy, capable also of flight. According to folkloric understandings, "jiāngshī” came from the hills, soaring through the air, to devour the infants of the people". In both popular culture and folklore, it

76-594: A case. In South Korea , the ri currently in use is a unit taken from the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) li . It has a value of approximately 392.72 meters, or one tenth of the ri . The Aegukga , the national anthem of South Korea, and the Aegukka , the national anthem of North Korea , both mention 3,000 ri , which roughly corresponds to 1,200 km , the approximate longitudinal span of the Korean peninsula . In North Korea

114-445: A lantern and warn his companion about obstacles ahead of him. The lantern was used as a visual guide for the corpse carrier to follow since they could not see with the robe covering them. It is speculated in the accounts in the book that corpses would be carried at night to avoid contact with people and the cooler air would be more suitable to transporting bodies. Actual corpse-driving using manual labor gave rise to legends and rumors of

152-449: A living person or even a West European vampire. The Chinese character for "jiang" ( 殭/僵 ) in "jiangshi" literally means "hard" or "stiff". Jiangshi are described as having greenish-white skin, possibly deriving from fungus or mould growing on corpses. They have long hair and may behave like animals. They are ferocious, ravenous beings possessing extreme strength, being described as attacking men with "brute force and clumsy violence". It

190-431: A piece of wood approximately 15 cm (6 in) high, be installed along the width of the door at the bottom to prevent a jiangshi from entering the household. De Groot observes that unburied corpses studded the landscape of imperial China, causing great fear and nourishing "an inveterate belief in these specters". Furthermore, it was supposed that corpses, if left unburied and exposed to the sun and moon so as to absorb

228-409: A recently deceased person returning to life, or a corpse that has been buried for a long time but does not decompose. Some causes are described below: In both folklore and popular culture, the appearance of a jiangshi can range from that of a recently deceased person in a state of rigor mortis to that of horribly decayed and rotting corpse. The jiangshi always lacks the suppleness that characterized

266-492: A vampire craze in East Asia, including Taiwan and Japan. Today, jiangshi appear in toys and video games. Jiangshi costumes are also sometimes employed during Halloween. The Qing dynasty scholar Ji Xiaolan mentioned in his book Yuewei Caotang Biji ( 閱微草堂筆記 ) (c. 1789 – 1798) ( The Shadow Book of Ji Yun , Empress Wu Books, 2021) that the causes for a corpse to be reanimated can be classified in either of two categories:

304-432: Is almost never used. Nonetheless, its appearance in many phrases and sayings means that "kilometer" must always be specified by saying gōnglǐ in full. As one might expect for the equivalent of "mile", li appears in many Chinese sayings, locations, and proverbs as an indicator of great distances or the exotic: The present day Korean ri (리, 里) and Japanese ri (里) are units of measurements that can be traced back to

342-473: Is either represented as anthropophagous (i.e. man-eating), therefore resembling Slavic vampires, or as killing living creatures by absorbing their qi , or "life force". It is usually not represented as blood-sucking, as in the West European conception. During the day, it rests in a coffin or hides in dark places such as caves and forests. De Groot suggests that the belief in jiangshi was the result of

380-530: Is often represented as being capable of giving chase by running, of dodging, and sometimes by flying - "a jiangshi came from the hills, soaring through the air, to devour the infants of the people". On eHow.com , there was a list of five methods: Architectural features It is also the conventional belief of feng shui practitioners in Chinese architecture that a threshold (traditional Chinese: 門檻 ; simplified Chinese: 门槛 ; pinyin: ménkǎn ),

418-507: The Black Death were thought to have had the potential to be a vampire . A suspected vampire would be incinerated or dismembered to prevent their return. Other preventive methods included deep buried burial, prone burials, and tying, staking, or pinning corpses with stones. These types of burials have been discovered in numerous locations, including Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Slavic folklore references vampires and preventions dating back to

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456-483: The Chinese mile , is a traditional Chinese unit of distance . The li has varied considerably over time but was usually about one third of an English mile and now has a standardized length of a half- kilometer (500 meters or 1,640 feet or 0.311 miles ). This is then divided into 1,500 chi or "Chinese feet". The character 里 combines the characters for "field" ( 田 , tián ) and "earth" ( 土 , tǔ ), since it

494-755: The East Asian counterpart to the Western league unit . However, in English league commonly means "3 miles." Like most traditional Chinese measurements , the li was reputed to have been established by the Yellow Emperor at the founding of Chinese civilization around 2600 BC and standardized by Yu the Great of the Xia dynasty six hundred years later. Although the value varied from state to state during

532-572: The Edo period , the Tokugawa shogunate defined 1 ri as 36 chō, allowing other variants, and the Japanese government adopted this last definition in 1891. The Japanese ri was, at that time, fixed to the metric system , 216 ⁄ 55 ≈ 3.93 kilometres or about 2.44 miles . Therefore, one must be careful about the correspondence between chō and ri . See Kujūkuri Beach (99- ri beach) for

570-515: The People's Republic of China as the equivalent of the centi- prefix in metric units, thus limi ( 厘米 , límǐ) for centimeter. The tonal difference makes it distinguishable to speakers of Chinese, but unless specifically noted otherwise, any reference to li will always refer to the longer traditional unit and not to either the shorter unit or the kilometer. This traditional unit, in terms of historical usage and distance proportion, can be considered

608-515: The Spring and Autumn period and Warring States periods, historians give a general value to the li of 405 meters prior to the Qin dynasty imposition of its standard in the 3rd century BC. The basic Chinese traditional unit of distance was the chi . As its value changed over time, so did the li ' s. In addition, the number of chi per li was sometimes altered. To add further complexity, under

646-582: The anti-Manchu or anti-Qing sentiments of the Han Chinese population during the Qing dynasty, as the officials were viewed as bloodthirsty creatures with little regard for humanity, although the plausibility of this claim is affected by the lapse of time between the modern depiction and the end of the Qing empire. Jiangshi legends have inspired a genre of jiangshi films and literature in Hong Kong and

684-458: The tu , which was equal to 150 li (96.7 km). These changes were undone by the Republic of China of Chiang Kai-shek , who adopted the metric system in 1928. The Republic of China (now also known as Taiwan ) continues not to use the li at all but only the kilometer ( Mandarin : 公里 , gōnglǐ , lit. "common li"). Under Mao Zedong , the People's Republic of China reinstituted

722-590: The 11th century with Drawsko, Poland being home to some of these burial sites and early discoveries of such practices. The three primary areas of focus upon burial to prevent vampirism were the mouth, the hands, and the feet, as the mouth is used for feeding, the hands are used for grasping victims, and the feet are used for movement. Folklore and burial practices dealing with revenants can also be traced back to Norse mythology with draugr or draug(s) that closely resemble stories of jiangshis. These draugr were also re-animated corpses that rose from their graves, and many of

760-653: The Chinese li (里). Although the Chinese unit was unofficially used in Japan since the Zhou dynasty , the countries officially adopted the measurement used by the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD). The ri of an earlier era in Japan was thus true to Chinese length, corresponding to six chō ( c. 500–600 m), but later evolved to denote the distance that a person carrying a load would aim to cover on mountain roads in one hour. Thus, there had been various ri of 36, 40, and 48 chō. In

798-557: The Imperial Palace in Beijing and came to light in 1924. This has allowed very accurate conversions to modern measurements, which has provided a new and extremely useful additional tool in the identification of place names and routes. These measurements have been confirmed in many ways including the discovery of a number of rulers found at archaeological sites, and careful measurements of distances between known points. The Han li

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836-496: The Qin dynasty, the li was set at 360 "paces" ( 步 , bù ) but the number of chi per bu was subsequently changed from 6 to 5, shortening the li by 1 ⁄ 6 . Thus, the Qin li of about 576 meters became (with other changes) the Han li , which was standardized at 415.8 meters. The basic units of measurement remained stable over the Qin and Han periods. A bronze imperial standard measure, dated AD 9, had been preserved at

874-412: The Qing dynasty). The influence of western vampire stories brought the blood-sucking aspect to the Chinese myth in more modern times in combination with the concept of the hungry ghost , though traditionally they feed solely on the qi of a living individual for sustenance and in order to grow more powerful. Some claim that their modern visual depiction as horrific Qing officials may have been derived by

912-479: The bamboo flexed up and down, the corpses appeared to be "hopping" in unison when viewed from a distance away. Two oral accounts of transporting corpses are included in Liao Yiwu 's The Corpse Walker . One account describes how corpses would be transported by a two-man team. One would carry the corpse on his back with a large robe covering both of them and a mourning mask on top. The other man would walk ahead with

950-431: The belief that their souls might feel homesick if they were buried far from home, so an industry for the transportation of these corpses to their native villages, often across thousands of miles, soon developed. The corpses would be arranged upright in single file and be tied to long bamboo rods on the sides, while two men (one at the front and one at the back) would carry the ends of the rods on their shoulders and walk. When

988-708: The comic elements, have met with criticism and lacked the same popularity. Today, jiangshi appear in toys and video games, such as Hsien-Ko from Darkstalkers , Qiqi in Genshin Impact , Chiaotzu in Dragon Ball , and Yoshika Miyako from Touhou Project . Jiangshi costumes are also sometimes employed during Halloween. Qi">qi The requested page title contains unsupported characters : ">". Return to Main Page . Li (unit) Li ( Chinese : 里 , lǐ , or 市里 , shìlǐ ), also known as

1026-461: The impression of a hopping corpse. These professionals operated during the night to avoid crowds during the day, which served to amplify the fearful effects of their trade. Jiangshi legends have inspired a genre of jiangshi films and literature in Hong Kong and the rest of East Asia. Movies such as Mr. Vampire and its various spin-offs Mr. Vampire II , Mr. Vampire III , and Mr. Vampire IV became cult classics in comedy-horror and inspired

1064-526: The natural horror at the sight of dead bodies, nourished by the presence of unburied corpses in the imperial China, which "studded the landscape", the idea of the vital energy flowing through the universe as capable of animating objects - including exposed corpses, and by severe cultural taboos concerning postponement of burial. These fears are described as having preoccupied "credulous and superstitious minds in Amoy". The belief in jiangshi and its representation in

1102-430: The popular imagination was also partly derived from the habit of "corpse-driving", a practice involving the repatriation of the corpses of dead laborers across Xiang province (present-day Hunan) to their hometowns for burial in family gravesites. The corpses were trussed up against bamboo sticks and carried by professionals known as corpse-drivers and transported over thousands of miles to their ancestral villages, which gave

1140-482: The rest of East Asia. Movies such as Mr. Vampire and its various spin-offs Mr. Vampire II , Mr. Vampire III , and Mr. Vampire IV became cult classics in comedy-horror and inspired a short-lived vampire craze in East Asia, including Taiwan and Japan. The craze subsided quickly by the mid-1990s but enjoyed a brief resurgence in the early 2000s. Attempts to experiment with the genre by producing pure horror movies, such as Tsui Hark's The Era of Vampires without

1178-401: The traditional units as a measure of anti-imperialism and cultural pride before officially adopting the metric system in 1984. A place was made within this for the traditional units, which were restandardized to metric values. A modern li is thus set at exactly half a kilometer (500 meters). However, unlike the jin which is still frequently preferred in daily use over the kilogram, the li

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1216-443: The use of Taoist sorcery to transport dead bodies. According to these tales, the relatives of a person who died far away from home could not afford vehicles to have the deceased person's body transported home for burial, so they would hire a Taoist priest to conduct a ritual to reanimate the dead person and teach him/her to "hop" their way home. The priests would transport the corpses only at night and would ring bells to notify others in

1254-428: The various accounts report the draugr to be sighted far from its initial burial site. In popular culture, such as in jiangshi movies , jiangshi have a standard appearance. They have a paper talisman ( fulu , with a sealing spell) attached onto and hanging off the forehead in portrait orientation, and wear a uniform coat-like robe and round-top tall rimmed hat characteristic of a mandarin (Chinese official from during

1292-632: The vicinity of their presence because it was considered bad luck for a living person to set eyes upon a jiang shi . Some speculate that the stories about jiang shi were originally made up by smugglers who disguised their illegal activities as corpse transportation and wanted to scare off law enforcement officers. Archaeologists have found revenant and what appear to be deviant burials dating back to 4500–3800 BC in Cyprus. Those born as illegitimate children, with abnormalities, or on inauspicious days, or who were victims of murder, drowning, suicide, curses, or

1330-479: The vital energy permeating the universe, could reanimate as ravening jiangshi. The notion that corpses are prone to becoming jiangshi when their burial is long-postponed would have motivated the populace to quickly bury the dead in their midst. A supposed source of the jiangshi stories came from the folk practice of "transporting a corpse over a thousand li " ( traditional Chinese : 千里行屍 ; simplified Chinese : 千里行尸 ; pinyin : qiān lǐ xíng shī ). This

1368-458: Was also known as "driving corpses in Xiangxi" ( traditional Chinese : 湘西趕屍 ; simplified Chinese : 湘西赶尸 ; pinyin : Xiāngxī gǎn shī ). During the Qing dynasty, laborers from all over China often engaged in difficult construction work in the backwaters of western Hunan ( Xiangxi ), and the mortality rates were high. The Chinese preferred to be buried alongside family, partly due to

1406-401: Was calculated by Dubs to be 415.8 metres and all indications are that this is a precise and reliable determination. Under the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907), the li was approximately 323 meters. In the late Manchu or Qing dynasty , the number of chi was increased from 1,500 per li to 1,800. This had a value of 2115 feet or 644.6 meters. In addition, the Qing added a longer unit called

1444-401: Was considered to be about the length of a single village. As late as the 1940s, a "li" did not represent a fixed measure but could be longer or shorter depending on the effort required to cover the distance. There is also another li (Traditional: 釐 , Simplified: 厘 , lí ) that indicates a unit of length 1 ⁄ 1000 of a chi , but it is used much less commonly. This li is used in

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