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Jiang Shi

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30 DAY MONSTER GIRL CHALLENGE
day 30 - Celebrate Monster Girls! (Jiang Shi)

I know, i didn´t finished the challenge in 30 days, but still i finished it!!!!! and for the grand finale i´ve choose the Jiang Shi, funny thing is that are like stiff corpses, yet my Jiang Shi Rock their bodies.

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A jiāng shī (僵尸), also spelled jiangshi or chiang-shih (in Wade-Giles), and also known as a Chinese "hopping" vampire or zombie, is a type of reanimated corpse in Chinese legends and folklore. "jiang shi" is read as Geongsi in Cantonese, Gangshi in Korean and Kyonshī in Japanese. According to legend, in the day, the jiang shi rests in a coffin or hides in dark places such as caves. At night, it moves around by hopping, with its arms outstretched. It kills living creatures to absorb their qi (life essence).

Generally, a jiang shi's appearance can range from unremarkable (as in the case of a recently deceased person) to horrifying (rotting flesh, rigor mortis, as with corpses that have been in a state of decay over a period of time). The Chinese character for "jiang" (僵) in "jiang shi" literally means "hard" or "stiff". It is believed that the jiang shi is so stiff that that it cannot bend its limbs and body, so it has to move around by hopping while keeping its arms stretched out for mobility. A peculiar feature is its greenish-white skin; one theory is that this is derived from fungus or mold growing on corpses. It is said to have long white hair all over its head and may behave like animals. The influence of Western vampire stories brought the blood-sucking aspect to the Chinese myth in more modern times in combination with the concept of the hungry ghost, though traditionally they act more like western zombies.

A supposed source of the jiang shi stories came from the folk practice of "transporting a corpse over a thousand li" (Chinese: 千里行屍), 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 jiang shi. This practice Xiangxi ganshi (Chinese: 湘西趕屍; literally "driving corpses in Xiangxi") 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.

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 jiang shi were originally made up by smugglers who disguised their illegal activities as corpse transportation and wanted to scare off law enforcement officers.
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