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A supposed source of the jiangshi stories came from the folk practice of“transporting a corpse over a thousand li”, where traveling companions or family members who could not afford wagons or had very little money would hire Taoist priests to transport corpses who died far away from home by teaching them to hop on their own feet back to their hometown for proper burial. The priests would transport the corpses only at night and ring bells to notify other pedestrians of their presence because it was considered bad luck for a living person to set eyes upon a jiangshi. This practice Xiangxi ganshi was popular in Xiangxi, where many people left their hometown to work elsewhere. After they died, their corpses were transported back to their rural hometown using long bamboo rods, believing they would be homesick if buried somewhere unfamiliar. When the bamboo flexed up and down, the corpses appeared to be hopping in unison from a distance. Once, it was a myth.
Two oral accounts of transporting corpses are included in Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker. One account describes how corpses would be transported by a two-man team. One would carry the corpse on his back with a large robe covering both of them and a mourning mask on top. The other man would walk ahead with a lantern and warn his companion about obstacles ahead of him. The lantern was used as a visual guide for the corpse carrier to follow since they could not see with the robe covering them. It is speculated in the accounts in the book that corpses would be carried at night to avoid contact with people and the cooler air would be more suitable to transporting bodies.
Some people speculate that the stories about jiangshi were originally made up by smugglers who disguised their illegal activities as corpse transportation and wanted to scare off law enforcement officers.
In China, as early as the late Paleolithic (about 10000 years ago), there has been sprouted a “rest in eternal peace”concept. Up until today, burial is still the most common funeral of our approach. However, for die abroad pioneers, “Falling Leaves”may be just the kinds of luxury.
However, in Hunan, legends have a special way to achieve such a luxury - this is the “Vampire”. Enter “Walking corpses or Vampire” in the search engine and then, most of the search results will point to a specific place names: Xiangxi (west of Hunan), Hunan Vampire legends, and Miao are inseparable.
For a Chinese person, especially one of a traditional cast of mind, being buried away from the home town or village would be a terrible thing. Away from the family, it would be impossible for younger family members to show respect and provide spirit food and drink and burn money for use in the afterlife.
During the seventh month, when hungry ghosts separated from their families return to the earth to seek spiritual sustenance and, perhaps, living blood, then what would become of them? They might be subject to the manipulations of a tricky Taoist priest, clad in yellow robes and armed with inscribed scriptures with which to control the ghosts.
So, there had to be developed a way to return the corpses to their home village and this is the origin of the Corpse Walkers. Two men would act as a team and would take it in turns to mount the corpse on their back to walk across the countryside back to the home village of the deceased. The degree of strength and fitness required for such a job can only be imagined, not to mention the mental fortitude to endure the proximity to the dead for day after day of heavy, sweaty work.
Inevitably, many myths and legends drew up around the work of the Corpse Walkers. Some people believed that they were able to bring the corpse back to some kind of life (or undead) and cause it to walk along under its own power. Others thought they kept the corpse’s joints limber somehow and actually walked them with their legs tied together like wearing a kind of astronaut suit. Most people preferred to stay away from them altogether, since their association with death made them fey and unpopular and, quite possibly, the recipients of some kind of supernatural power.
Corpse Walking was essentially antithetical to Communism and, so after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the livelihoods of the Corpse Walkers became threatened and, in some cases, so too were their lives. Under Communism, family attachments are stripped away and geography should not matter. Indeed, attachment to the dead itself might be considered a bourgeois decadency, especially among the weak and poor. And so the practice disappeared. Might it ever reappear, now that money is available to stimulate people to meet demand for consumer goods and services.