Jiangshi

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China has its own form of vampires.

Jiangshi, also spelt Jiang-shi and Gyonshee, amongst others, are better known as Chinese Hopping Vampires, though it might be more accurate to compare them to zombies. This is because of their definitive traits: they are undead entities from Chinese mythology who act much like vampires (though traditionally feeding on qi, or spiritual energy, instead of blood) and, as everybody knows, their legs are frozen stiff with rigor mortis, forcing them to get around by hopping (or levitation).

There are a huge number of different variations on the tale and consequently on what the jiangshi's traits actually are; whether or not they are averse to sunlight, how intelligent or bestial they are, whether they have fangs or claws or a prehensile tongue, whether or not they are forced to move in straight lines, how you can actually hurt them, whether they can see or if they hunt through smelling/hearing peoples' breathing, whether they wear a talisman on their heads, and a lot of other different traits.

Myths & Movies

Jiangshi, of course, have their roots in Chinese mythology, and have spread by osmosis to other parts of Southeast Asia. The characters for "jiāngshī" are read geung-si in Cantonese, cương thi in Vietnamese, kyonshī in Japanese, and gangsi in Korean. It is also known as phi dip chin in Thai, hantu pocong in Malay, and vampir cina in Indonesia. Older Western translations just call it the "Chinese Vampire".

As we stated at the start of this article, there are a lot of different interpretations of the creature, but the basic concept is of a stiff-limbed undead corpse that kills people to feed on their qi (life force) and usually prefers to only be active at night, hiding in caves or coffins during the day.

The earliest known source of the Jiangshi myth appears in the book Yuewei Caotang Biji, published at the tail-end of the 1700s by Qing Dynasty scholar Ji Xiaolan. According to this book, a jiangshi is a corpse that has been raised from the dead by dark sorcery, steeping it in too much yang qi, possession by an evil spirit, the person's own po souls, or a restless soul created by improper death, suicide or just lingering mischief, or when an unburied corpse is struck by lightning or a black and/or pregnant cat leaps across the body. Of all these methods, deliberate raising by Taoist sorcery is usually the most prominent, and the mythical jiangshi is most frequently created by sorcerer-gravediggers to make it easier to transport the bodies of the dead back to their own villages to be buried proerly. Hence the iconic depiction of the jiangshi featuring a large paper scroll glued to their forehead; this scroll contains a binding spell that keeps the jiangshi docile and obedient.

Repelling or slaying a jiangshi is, once again, a highly variable affair, with different regions and different sources mentioning different methods. Some of the most popular are using swords fashioned from coins (symbolic of the traditional monetary offerings used to pay for the upkeep of souls in the afterlife) or peach wood (regarded in many Chinese beliefs as able to disperse evil auras), repelling them with an eight-sided Feng Shui "ba-qua" mirror, and the use of sticky rice.

Adding to the confusion, alongside overlap between the wide body of "hungry ghost" mythology, jiangshi movies were big in the Hong Kong movie industry during the 1980s and 1990s, which shamelessly crosspollinated the traditional jiangshi with elements of Western vampires and even zombies. These movies created a new mythos that imbued the jiangshi with more bizarre traits and abilities, such as being able to spread a zombie-like plague with their claws, using barbed tongues to suck blood, or levitating a few inches above the ground instead of hopping. As years have gone past, jiangshi have been continually molded and modified by anime, manga, movies and games, and the concept is now largely as nebulous as the concept of their Western counterpart.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten

Jiangshi appeared in the All Flesh Must Be Eaten splatbook "Atlas of the Walking Dead", which named them as the Gyonshee. The same book also features the "Japanese Vampire", or Shuten-doji (which is actually the name of an oni in mythology, but never mind). This iteration of the jiangshi emphasizes the bestial, zombie-like interpretation of the creature.

• Created by improper burial or sorcerous ritual.
• Cannot move their legs at all; most hop to get around, some can levitate, and all cannot learn kicking-based martial arts techniques.
• Some can make tremendous leaps.
• May be incapable of moving in anything other than a straight line; has to stop, turn in the new direction, then start again.
• Are blind, use their sense of smell to home in on victims.
• Feed on blood and/or souls.
• Have claws.
• May have a prehensile tongue for use as a weapon/feeding implement.
• May have fangs for biting victims with.
• Strong, but variable in durability and intelligence.

World of Darkness

Jiangshi appear in two distinct forms to match the two iterations of the World of Darkness.

Firstly, you have the Kindred of the East, which is the Japanese/Chinese alternative gameline to Vampire: The Masquerade.

Secondly, the New World of Darkness, before it became the Chronicles of Darknesss, featured its own take on jiangshi in the splatbook "Night Horrors: Wicked Dead".

• Sorcerers who sought immortality and became monsters as a result, much like the ghul.
• Ritual of creation involves cutting out the heart of a virgin and your own heart in order to use the virgin's heart like a phylactery.
• Are considered "imperfect" vampires; can be transformed into Kindred-style vampires in certain ways, mostly through diablerie.
• Possess superhuman strength, durability and speed (can learn the Celerity, Vigor and Resilience disciplines).
• Are intelligent and can act rationally, but are easily overwhelmed by their savage instincts, making them very vulnerable to Frenzy.
• Possess Anchors for their soul, akin to ghosts; their grave and either family heirlooms or family members. If these anchors are destroyed, the jiang-shi perishes.
• Cannot be destroyed through any means other than fire, otherwise are simply recreated in the presence of their grave.
• Are paralyzed and immobile, but conscious, throughout the day.
• Have unique powers, including entering the Twilight plane, teleport back to their graves, adopt the shape of a bird-like demon to fly, shapeshift into a human-like form of either gender, or adopt a terrifying mien.

Pathfinder

Pathfinder actually beat Dungeons & Dragons to the punch in featuring jiangshi as their own distinct undead... well, sort of. Spelling it as Jiang-shi, they are a Vampire sub-type, but at least they were more myth-accurate than their traditional D&D counterparts! In the meta-mythology of Golarion, jiang-shi evolved from the ancient ur-vampires, the strigoi, when some chose to hibernate in places and found themselves trapped for centuries, even millennia, emerging from their long torpors mutated and driven half-mad by starvation, before passing their curse on to living beings.

• Created when a restless spirit refuses to abandon its body and instead rises again.
• Feed on ki by consuming breath from living creatures.
• Prayer scroll on the forehead is not a control talisman, as in classic depictions, but created by the vampire as its source of spell resistance and fast healing; destroying it weakens the jiang-shi.
• Unaffected by sunlight, although they prefer to avoid it.
• Can only physically move by hopping.
• Possesses fangs and extendable, elongated claws that are much more vicious than normal claws.
• Highest ability score modifier is Dexterity (+6), followed by Strength and Wisdom (+4 each), with Int and Cha the lowest (+2 each).
• Born of obsession, which they channel into an ever-shifting focus on strange and obscure signs and portents.
• Particular signs & symbols that can attract a jiang-shi's fixation are Broken Objects, Colors, Foreign Tongues, Knots & threads, Sets and The Written Word.
• Gravitate towards the Monk class.

Dungeons and Dragons

Like most vampire variants, the jiangshi debuted in Dungeons & Dragons via the Ravenloft setting... and was not actually very mythologically accurate at all.

The original D&D jiangshi was the Oriental Vampire, which was actually a weird mishmash of a conventional western vampire and a bakeneko; a spiritually awakened cat with a modus operandi similar to a vampire or succubus. This vampire looks largely like its living self, save a feral cast to its features, slightly luminescent skin, and that its nails grow into massive claws, which it tends to favor over weaponry. They can't turn into mist, but can turn invisible and walk through walls. Their gaze paralyses a victim with a mesmeric effect rather than charming them. They can summon insect swarms and great cats to their aid, and transform into tigers (unlike the regular vampire, which can turn into bats, rats and woles). They are repulsed by mirrors, holy symbols, garlands of rosemary & ivy, and the scent of incense of rosemary and myrrh. They lack the ability of the "western" vampire to climb walls like a spider, but can instead levitate at will, and retain their cousin's lack of a reflection or shadow and their ability to move in complete silence. Nonmagical weapons that strike these vampires do no damage and are destroyed. They must rest in at least a cubic foot of soil from their original burial place at night; if exposed to sunlight, or prevented from sleeping in this grave-soil for nine days in a row, they are destroyed. Staking them through the heart with bamboo renders them inert; killing them requires placing blessed rosemary in the vampire's mouth and then sewing its mouth and eyes shut with golden thread using a silver needle. These vampires are largely associated with the Japanese-based domain of Rokushima Taiyoo and the India-based domain of Sri Raji, in large part due to the setting's only China-based domain, I'Cath, being an uninhabited wasteland. Third edition brought this vampire back, renaming it the Chiang-shi.

Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead (aka, the Mummy Mini-Monster Manual for Ravenloft) would, ironically, feature a picture of a Chinese-themed Ancient Dead that looks a lot like a jiangshi, and is featured here.

A more mythologically accurate jiangshi, including actually being called "jiangshi", wouldn't enter D&D canon until 5th edition, via Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

• Created when a soul becomes trapped in its own corpse.
• Affected by rigor mortis, they hold their arms rigidly and walk with a stiff gait.
• If it drains life energy from the living, for the next 7 days its walking speed doubles and it gains the ability to fly.
  • the creature killed with the draining attack then immediately rises as a CR 3 Wight which can become a Jiangshi 5 days later if kill a person with a Drain attack.
• They can polymorph into a Beast, a Humanoid, or an Undead that is Medium or Small while maintaining their statistics (imaging a rat starts flying, superman their 3 presents head and then devour the four's soul).
• Hide in their tombs and ruins during the day to avoid the living.
• Scared of their own reflection.
• Touching or wearing a holy symbol causes them to automatically fail saving throws against effects that turn undead.
• A Sleeper apocalypse: Van Richten's Guide may introduce zombie plague spreaders, Jiangshi have better built for a single one create an undead horde. Using only Datasheets as written, Jiangshi is likely to down several common low CR humanoids that make up most villages, Creating squads of battle-ready Wights in a minute (10 rounds of combat) which then mature into more Jiangshi 5 days later after it turns a sob into a zombie. This effectively turns CR 0 Villagers instantly into CR 3 mobs that later Morph into CR 9. If that's not bad enough, they have high intelligence (so supposedly smart, on pare with common wizards and Dragons). They do have some weakness: must Use its reaction to move away a seen reflection (just look away or send the Wights); Low Dex (only matters for people that know Fireball, and they are not supposed to be that numerous even in wealthy cities in most settings). infiltration and surprised attacks are come easy to them will the ability to turn into undiscerning animals, humanoids, or even an unimpressive zombie. As the hoard leaders pick their right targets to get the ball rolling, remembering only deliver the killing blow with drain attacks, avoid Pitched field battles, don't do it near very religious Peaple, and Hope level appropriate PC don't confront it or use a Deus Ex Maguffen.

Warhammer Fantasy

The Jade-Blooded may have been adapted into the Jiangshi Rebels in Total Ear Warhammer 3.

Monstergirls

This article or section is about Monstergirls (or a monster that is frequently depicted as a Monstergirl), something that /tg/ widely considers to be the purest form of awesome. Expect PROMOTIONS! and /d/elight in equal measure, often with drawfaggotry or writefaggotry to match.

Just like their mainstream vampire cousins, jiangshi are not immune to getting the monstergirls treatment. The most famous example of this is the character Hsien-Ko from Capcom's now-forgotten monster-themed beat-em-up "Darkstalkers". Whilst easy to just portray as "ethnic vampires", jiangshi have such a massive library of traits and quirks that making them distinctive from the ordinary vampire is really easy. The highly distinctive outfits, representing ancient Chinese imperial officers over the stereotypical Gothic capes & suits or Punk leather and chains, certainly adds to their appeal.

In the Monster Girl Encyclopedia, the jiangshi is a branch of the zombie family tree from the Mist Continent. Superhumanly strong and tough, they are often master martial artists and/or mages. Their claws secrete a demonic energy toxin, which allows them to transform other women into new jiangshi by touching them. They suffer from rigor mortis, giving them stiff joints that often compels them to hop around; part of their reason for hunting human lovers so fervently is that a healthy dose of a man's stiffness cures their own for a while.

In the Life With Monstergirls universe, the jiangshi is, again, a unique strain of zombie monstergirl most characterized by chronic rigor mortis in the limbs, forcing them to practice tai chi or other exercises to limber up each morning.

Gallery

Jiang-shi

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Hsien-ko

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Monstergirls

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