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Ghost and Vampire tales of China by G. Willoughby-Meade
I found that the library had a copy of a paper read by G. Willoughby-Meade to the Chinese Society in London in 1925 on Vampires and Ghosts and had to go and find it. The paper was very short, only about 25 pages, and shockingly bad. I can't quite decide if it was so bad it became good or not. It seemed to be written by a man who didn't read Chinese, but drew mostly from the works of J.M. De Groot, who is much better!
On the second page when talking about ghosts he refers to the "monotheism of Confucius" and states how in ancient China only the Emperor was able to worship, God (he used the capital G) and everyone else had to worship their ancestors of spirits. I know that for awhile missionaries like to translate the deity Di of the Zhou and the Shang as God, but didn't realise it was still believed so recently. Needless to say his views on Taoism and Buddhism were equally bad.
The main body of the text retells short versions of folk tales, illustrating the points he makes about different types of evil spirits. He intersperses these with examples from the rest of the world. Here is a story about an evil fox, and look here in X we also have a story about an evil fox, clearly this illustrates that they both had the same primitive superstitious beliefs about everything. He seemed to relate all stories about demons to being foreigners, particularly Melanesian cannibals. Claiming that the forgotten memory of the trauma of these invasions led to the creation of these stories. Unfortunately the fact that China has written records of the surrounding tribes, nations, and documents their interactions with China going back 2000 years kind of discredits this idea. He also seems obsessed with the idea that different animals represent totem spirits for different tribes, "just like they did in America".
He was also guilty of classifying all references to "folk tales" as being identical to classical mythology, i.e., faith and beliefs that people once believed but no longer did. That survives only "among the credulous" He seemed to be forever portraying the Chinese as "primitive" for their superstitions, even though the vast majority of his stories came from the 8th century!
His last brief mention of Vampires was quite disappointing, he mentioned that they were referred to as ch'iang shi, but alas did not include which characters he meant. His definition of a vampire was, "a demon which inhabits a corpse and keeps it from decay by preying upon other corpses and living creatures". A rather broad definition, that can be applied to several different cases in Chinese supernatural stories, which don't necessarily fit his definition. The definition has problems for a number of reasons, one it's to broad, second bodies not decaying is usually seen as a sign of Taoist immortality, and is considered to be a good thing! Three, the idea of "demons" seems to be used in a western way, often what gets translated as demons, simply means spirit, and is completely different to Christian concepts of demons. He only illustrates from a few stories what he means by "vampire" and often these stories could be seen better as vengeful ghosts. There was one very nice story about a girl corpse who rose from the dead and killed the three men who were sheltering in the temple with her by breathing on them. (Why these men were sheltering with a corpse was not explained) The fourth man was able to hide from her breath, run away and live to tell the tale.
When looking for the origins of these Vampire tales, which he finds to be a recent, past few hundred years, occurrence he blames everything from "invasion of savages, (which I would really like to interpret as the western Europeans), from the scourge of tropical disease, from wild beasts and various reptiles, and the misuse of opium, from ignorance of hygiene and medicine". Hardly accurate or fair and with no proof whatsoever.
Really terribly disappointing, though it did make for a more interesting tube ride home. And now I want to turn to Degroot and find what he had to say about Vampires in China. I'm sure it would have been much more interesting, and I know for a fact he would have included the Chinese characters.
I found that the library had a copy of a paper read by G. Willoughby-Meade to the Chinese Society in London in 1925 on Vampires and Ghosts and had to go and find it. The paper was very short, only about 25 pages, and shockingly bad. I can't quite decide if it was so bad it became good or not. It seemed to be written by a man who didn't read Chinese, but drew mostly from the works of J.M. De Groot, who is much better!
On the second page when talking about ghosts he refers to the "monotheism of Confucius" and states how in ancient China only the Emperor was able to worship, God (he used the capital G) and everyone else had to worship their ancestors of spirits. I know that for awhile missionaries like to translate the deity Di of the Zhou and the Shang as God, but didn't realise it was still believed so recently. Needless to say his views on Taoism and Buddhism were equally bad.
The main body of the text retells short versions of folk tales, illustrating the points he makes about different types of evil spirits. He intersperses these with examples from the rest of the world. Here is a story about an evil fox, and look here in X we also have a story about an evil fox, clearly this illustrates that they both had the same primitive superstitious beliefs about everything. He seemed to relate all stories about demons to being foreigners, particularly Melanesian cannibals. Claiming that the forgotten memory of the trauma of these invasions led to the creation of these stories. Unfortunately the fact that China has written records of the surrounding tribes, nations, and documents their interactions with China going back 2000 years kind of discredits this idea. He also seems obsessed with the idea that different animals represent totem spirits for different tribes, "just like they did in America".
He was also guilty of classifying all references to "folk tales" as being identical to classical mythology, i.e., faith and beliefs that people once believed but no longer did. That survives only "among the credulous" He seemed to be forever portraying the Chinese as "primitive" for their superstitions, even though the vast majority of his stories came from the 8th century!
His last brief mention of Vampires was quite disappointing, he mentioned that they were referred to as ch'iang shi, but alas did not include which characters he meant. His definition of a vampire was, "a demon which inhabits a corpse and keeps it from decay by preying upon other corpses and living creatures". A rather broad definition, that can be applied to several different cases in Chinese supernatural stories, which don't necessarily fit his definition. The definition has problems for a number of reasons, one it's to broad, second bodies not decaying is usually seen as a sign of Taoist immortality, and is considered to be a good thing! Three, the idea of "demons" seems to be used in a western way, often what gets translated as demons, simply means spirit, and is completely different to Christian concepts of demons. He only illustrates from a few stories what he means by "vampire" and often these stories could be seen better as vengeful ghosts. There was one very nice story about a girl corpse who rose from the dead and killed the three men who were sheltering in the temple with her by breathing on them. (Why these men were sheltering with a corpse was not explained) The fourth man was able to hide from her breath, run away and live to tell the tale.
When looking for the origins of these Vampire tales, which he finds to be a recent, past few hundred years, occurrence he blames everything from "invasion of savages, (which I would really like to interpret as the western Europeans), from the scourge of tropical disease, from wild beasts and various reptiles, and the misuse of opium, from ignorance of hygiene and medicine". Hardly accurate or fair and with no proof whatsoever.
Really terribly disappointing, though it did make for a more interesting tube ride home. And now I want to turn to Degroot and find what he had to say about Vampires in China. I'm sure it would have been much more interesting, and I know for a fact he would have included the Chinese characters.