Case file · Folklore / legend
Jiangshi, the hopping corpse
A reanimated corpse of Chinese folklore, today pictured hopping stiffly in Qing official robes thanks to Hong Kong cinema.
1789 CE · 28.71, 109.81 · status: legend
The account
An 18th-century Qing writer classified how corpses could return. The image owes much to 'corpse-driving' in western Hunan (Xiangxi), when the bodies of dead labourers were carried home for burial.
The sceptical view
The corpse-driving custom, and later Hong Kong films, explain much of the modern image.