Ghosts in Chinese culture
Many Chinese folk beliefs about ghosts have been adopted into the mythologies and folklore of neighboring East Asian cultures, notably Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
The annual Hungry Ghost Festival, celebrated in China (including Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions), Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora, is dedicated to performing rituals to honor and remember the spirits of the dead.
Incense and paper money are burned and other rituals are performed in hopes that the spirits of the dead will protect and bring good luck to the family.
Zhong Kui is said to be himself the ghost of a man who failed to pass the civil service examinations and committed suicide.
[7] It is thought that the soul of a deceased person is made up of yin and yang components called hun and po (魂 and 魄).
At death the components split into three different souls; the po stays with the body to the grave, another goes to judgment, and the hun resides in an ancestral tablet.
Three years later, according to historical chronicles, Tu Po's ghost shot and killed Xuan with a bow and arrow before an assembly of feudal lords.
The Chinese philosopher, Mo Tzu (470–391 BC), is quoted as having commented: If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voices, how can we say that they do not exist?
Announcing a death in the apartment block is distasteful and setting up an altar for a deceased relative can be illegal in the bigger cities.
Funeral parlors may set up small fires so that visitors can jump over them to counter the yin received from the dead.
In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, ghosts are depicted as the souls of wicked humans who, after undergoing punishment for their offenses in the afterlife, are eventually reborn as demons.
One particular type of ghost, the chang (伥; 倀; chāng), is referenced in the four-character classical idiom wèihǔzuòchāng (为虎作伥; 爲虎作倀).
[20] They have the "power to generate life-threatening obstacles" to attack people who recently lost friends or family, but their danger can be "averted by counteracting rituals.
"[20] The use of mediums to communicate with spirits is an important practice in traditional Chinese culture, and is closely linked to ancestor worship.
[24] The Buddhists associate the Chung Yuan festival with the legend of Moginlin (Mulian) saving his mother from the underworld.
Other festivities may include, buying and releasing miniature paper boats and lanterns on water, which signifies giving directions to the lost ghosts and spirits of the ancestors and other deities.
In some parts of China, believers make small roadside fires where they burn paper money and other offerings to appease the restless spirits that have temporarily been released from the underworld.
The Ghost Festival shares some similarities with the predominantly Mexican observance of El Día de los Muertos.
Desire, greed, anger, and ignorance are all factors in causing a soul to be reborn as a hungry ghost because they are motives for people to perform evil deeds.
Since the corpse, or at least the bones, continues to have powers that could affect the fate of living relatives, an expert in feng-shui is needed to determine an auspicious time, place, and orientation of the burial.
[32] A ghost marriage was usually set up by the family of the deceased and performed for a number of reasons, including the marriage of a couple previously engaged before one member's death, to integrate an unmarried daughter into a patrilineage, to ensure the family line is continued, or to maintain that no younger brother is married before an elder brother.
[33] Fengshen Bang (封神榜, The Investiture of the Gods) is one of the major vernacular Chinese epic fantasy novels written in the Ming dynasty.
It tells the story of the monk Xuánzàng and his quest to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Vulture Peak in India.
[36] Other notable collections of supernatural tales that were published later in the Qing dynasty include What the Master Would Not Discuss by Yuan Mei and Notes of the Thatched Abode of Close Observations by Ji Yun.
The theme of ghosts is popular in Chinese cinema, including films made in Hong Kong, Singapore and the mainland.
A Chinese Ghost Story (倩女幽魂) is a 1987 Hong Kong romantic comedy-horror film starring Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong, and Wu Ma, directed by Ching Siu-tung, and produced by Tsui Hark.
[40] The Eye (見鬼; 见鬼; Jiàn Guǐ}) is a 2002 Hong Kong-Singaporean-Thai horror film directed by the Pang brothers.
The film is based on the story of a young woman who receives an eye transplant, which gives her supernatural powers.
There are two remakes of this film, Naina, made in 2005 in India and The Eye, a 2008 Hollywood production starring Jessica Alba and produced by Peter Chan and Paula Wagner.
In the television series The X-Files, 1996, Season 3, Episode 19 entitled Hell Money a story of Chinese ghost culture is spun around a black market organ procurement scheme.
