Many Chinese movie fans and readers think Western thrillers are not scary enough. Murder and crime movies, such as "The Silence of the Lambs" are bloody and cruel, while vampire stories are romantic, with their myths of everlasting youth. But none of them seems extremely frightening.
It is not that Chinese people have stronger nerves. Many of those complaining about the tameness of Western ghost stories tell vivid stories of their own experiences of fear, how they did not dare fall asleep after seeing or reading something, or how they dared not do certain things at certain hours.
"Ever since I watched the Japanese movie 'The Ring', I unplug my telephone every night before I go to bed," said one local young woman.
"The Ring" is an extremely scary ghost story. A teenage girl with super-natural abilities cannot help hurting others, including her family. She is pushed into a well and drowned, becoming a vicious ghost. Her ghost goes on hurting people through a video tape. Whoever sees the video tape receives a phone call, warning them about their death within seven days.
The thrilling effect comes through the danger associated with common daily appliances -- the telephone, the television and videotapes.
The ghost is a classical image in Chinese and Japanese culture: a young woman whose face is covered by long black hair, who dies due to misfortune, coming back for revenge.
Mentioning "ghosts" to many Chinese brings forth similar images. Often the ghost is a beautiful young woman. The sudden switch between being a beautiful girl and then a frightening ghost is striking enough. The seemingly fragile, helpless and beautiful girls turning into fearful killers is a favorite theme of Asian movie directors and story writers.
One Asian movie director, Ronny Yu, produced a work in America a few years ago, about the ghost of a serial killer lodged in a toy doll who went on his killing sprees together with his doll bride.
Young women in traditional societies are rarely endowed with much power. Fearful powers only come together with keen hatred and a desire for revenge. The more badly they were wronged, the more powerful they become after death.
Such beliefs are closely related to the Chinese attitude toward life and death, with superstition mixed with religion.
Buddhist doctrines of the life circle stimulated many vivid descriptions in Chinese legends about people being paid back after death for their wrongdoings in life. For example, Buddhism is against killing, and in folklore, people believe butchers return in their next lives as the animals they used to kill. People who treat others badly or do cruel things turn into pathetic beings, suffering for the whole of their next life.
Besides retribution in lives to come, vivid and complicated descriptions of heaven and hell also exist in Chinese legends.
People have imaginatively transfigured their experiences of real life into visions of the unknown world. There is a king and a complete bureaucratic system in the Chinese legendary hell.
The king of the underground takes charge of people's lives keeping a book that sets out the exact time of everybody's death.
In the classic novel, "Journey to the West", the Monkey King Wukong goes to visit the king of hell and reads the book of death. He looks for his own name and erases it, ensuring himself everlasting life.
Hell and corruption
A short story writer of the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) known for his collection of ghost stories, (1640-1715), wrote a sarcastic story about the bureaucracy to be found in hell: a man dies in misfortune and his brave son feels certain that the king of hell has done the wrong thing by taking his father's life. The spirit of the young man, named Xi Fangping, goes to hell to seek justice.
The story depicts hell as a world with a strict hierarchy, where officials take bribes, cheat, and torture poor dead souls. The king, also corrupt, makes Xi suffer by roasting him on an iron bed and sawing him in two. But Xi still insists on calling for justice.
It is not until Xi meets with an official from heaven that justice is achieved. The king of hell, and the corrupt officials under him, are all imprisoned.
In folklore, two officials called "Wuchang" (Transience, Uncertainty), one in white, the other in black, run errands for the king of hell -- taking people's lives away when their time is up.
They are often pictured as weird-looking skinny characters wearing high hats. Sometimes, people picture the low-rank ghosts serving in the underground court as beings with sharp horns.
Another story by Pu, adapted into a movie in the early 1980s, became a longlasting source of fearful memories for many Chinese. Pu used to depict women ghosts as beautiful, kind, and devoted to their loved ones, but in this story named "Hua Pi" (Painting the Skin), the ghost borrows a beautiful skin to trap a young man.
The most frightening scene comes when the young man returned home unexpectedly. He found the horrible looking ghost standing revealed, painting the beautiful skin.
The large number of women ghosts in Chinese legends makes people associate horrible images with women's ordinary accessories or clothing. That is why red shoes, silk scarves and long hair appear so often in Chinese ghost stories.
(Shanghai Star May 23, 2003)
