Are Chinese people really that scared of Jiangshi 僵尸 zombies?

[vellocet]

For Halloween this year, I thought it would be a hoot to go as a Chinese spook instead of the usual visual English pun that most foreigners seem to dress up as.  After looking at a couple of horror films, I decided on the Jiangshi zombie.  Costume 80 yuan from Taobao, white and blue makeup, done.  Of course I had to post photos of myself on Wechat, and I got some reactions.  Stuff like 太恐怖了 or just a bunch of those Wechat fright icons.  I even won a costume contest (woo ¥1500 bar credit!)  I can't shake the feeling though that they thought it was actually scary, not just the ghosts 'n goblins kind of scary.  Am I reading too much into this?  

[roddy]

Show us the photos then...

[Yorin]

 

 I even won a costume contest (woo ¥1500 bar credit!)  I can't shake the feeling though that they thought it was actually scary, not just the ghosts 'n goblins kind of scary.  Am I reading too much into this?

 

Assuming they could see you're a foreigner, you giving this enough thought to choose something from Chinese mythology could have given you some bonus points.

 

By the way, which 僵尸 films would you recommend to watch? I think apart from "A Chinese Ghost Story" and "The Bride with White Hair" I've never seen any Chinese movie that would quality as "supernatural horror". But I must admit I avoid much of the stuff that's been coming out since CGI made their way into Chinese movies of that kind.

[Shelley]

Here in the UK about 15 years or more ago, Channel 4 showed a whole series of Chinese vampire and ghost films. They were great, hopping vampires and having to hold your breath so they couldn't detect you, write their name on a piece of paper and put it on their forehead to stop them moving and other great stuff, would love to watch them again.

 

Any titles in English or Chinese?

[vellocet]

Photos...haha, nice try. I'll never take my figurative mask of internet anonymity off to show my literal mask.  And by literal mask I don't literally mean a mask, just white face makeup with blue eyes. I just look like a laowai with a costume, literally. 

 

The movie I tried to copy was Mr. Vampire 1 暫時停止呼吸, a successful series that went up to 6 at least.  The link I found on Youtube was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw9Bd2tXgWQ but unfortunately not subtitled in Chinese or English, spoken Cantonese only.  If anyone has a link to the film with subtitles I'd love to watch it.  It's a Hong Kong flick which means half scary, half physical comedy.  

[thinkpanda]

On 2016/11/3 at 0:51 AM, Shelley said:

write their name on a piece of paper and put it on their forehead to stop them moving and other great stuff,

 

http://npic7.edushi.com/cn/zixun/zh-chs/2016-07/21/e-3200062-s16042GP4-6.jpg

 

 

 

those are not their names but taoist incantations

 

there is no chance to know the name of a zombie from Qing dynasty ...

 

they usually have manchu names...

[Shelley]

@thinkpanda Thank you for that, all these years I have thought it was there names. I was told this by a chinese friend of mine so I never really doubted it was true. Maybe he didn't know better.

 

Thanks again for the info.