Zombi

Today I'm going to talk about the difference between western culture’s zombies and Asian zombies. In western culture zombies are consider dead people but their bodies are still moving as a human.  The idea of physical zombie-like creatures is present in some South African cultures, where they are called voodoo. Voodoo can make a person’s physiological phenomena close to dead.  Zombies actually originated in The Congo indigenous languages in West Africa, along with the slave trade and the spread to the Caribbean. Zombies, a voodoo affected by those resurrected. Zombies are remorseless and insensate. And unlike some monsters they cannot feel pain. The origin of zombie plagues is rarely explained in the genre; they simply begin. Somewhere the virus is born and it spreads until the whole world must confront it. They move slow, they’re scarier when they’re slow because even though you can out-maneuver them in the short term, they just keep coming for you. Eventually, it isn’t their speed that overwhelms, it is their mass. One zombie is of little  threat, one thousand are. Zombies are hungry, possessing a ravening, insatiable need to feed. And what they seek to consume is us, you and I.

But in Asia, zombies are not that easy as in the west. Today I'm only focusing on Chinese zombies. In China zombies are considered as a strange species between humans and ghosts. Zombies( jiang shi), are  also known as ‘dead jump’.  The name is derived from the Chinese Ming folklore a resurrection of dead bodies, body stiff, sharp nails black, have sharp canine teeth, fear the sun during the day and hide in a coffins, damp, dark caves and other places at night after hunting to suck human blood or animals.  There is a conscious move forward towards population centers, attacks on living creatures is strong and mighty, jumping forward with both hands stretched forward. There are  levels for zombies in China. White zombies, black zombies, jump zombies, flying zombie and god zombies. For example, flying zombie the successful practice of the millennium zombie. In legend zombies can become demons after thousand years, the demon will be able to fly after. For myself I'm more afraid of Chinese zombies, because you can run away for the western zone but you cannot run away from the Chinese one. The differences between those two zombies are generally zombies is not intelligence, and this is the most obvious difference between Chinese zombie( jiang shi), which may have  human intelligence. Chinese Zombies are often reinforced steel frame, bulletproof, fire and water is difficult to invade, immune to all physical attacks, only with Taomu Jian, rice, dog blood, spells and other things in order to kill it. So that is why I'm more affair of Chinese zombies.   It is easy to kill a zombie but not a zombie( jiang shi).

The Black Cat

     In western culture black cats were considered  bad luck. People believed that meeting a black cat early in the morning or having a black cat turn its back on you and scaring or driving away a black cat from your property would bring bad luck to you. I found the origin of superstitions surrounding black cats being considered bad luck. The middle-ages in Europe that the black cat began to be associated with so-called witches. This belief was taken up a notch when  folklore involving a father and son in Lincolnshire in the 1560’s started making the rounds. The pair were said to have been traveling one moonless night when a black cat crossed their path and dove into a crawl space. Naturally, they did what any guys would do, they threw rocks at the furry feline until the helpless injured creature scurried out into a woman’s house, who at the time was suspected of being a witch.  The next day, the father and son came across the same woman and noticed she was limping and bruised and believed that to be more than just a coincidence. From that day on in Lincolnshire, it was thought that witches could turn into black cats at night. The belief of witches transforming themselves into black cats in order to prowl streets unobserved became a central belief in America during the Salem witch hunts. 

In many Asian countries, owing a black cat today is considered good luck. Specially in China, people believe  that a black cat can stabilize a house and avoid evil spirits. So a lot of people now start to have a black cat as a pet. When I was 10, my grandma used to tell me about the legend of the black cats. She said black cats are full of spirituality if you treat it good it will treat you the same way, if not you can wait to be full on evil day. As we know there are a big different between western culture’s zombie and Chinese’s zombie. There was a legend about if the black cat jump over some dead people’s body, they will come back as zombie. Because black cats eat ghost as food so if it close by the dead people, the black cats will bring this person’s ghost back and try to eat it. The black cats will take the initiative to avoid evil spirits, so if there are some very evil stuff where there a always black cat, people will mistakenly think that  the black cat bring  bad luck.

The Number Of Unlucky

    The number 4 is considered an unlucky number in Chinese culture because it is nearly homophonous to the word "death" (死 pinyin sǐ). In Asia, the number 4 is considered ghastly unlucky because its sound byte is almost identical to that for the word "death". Phones in China do not have a series beginning with the 4. People in China don't want to use the number that has a lot of 4s, because of that the phone number has less than four 4s or doesn’t have 4s because the number is very expensive.  Some high-rise buildings lack a fourth floor. 

   While the focus on unlucky numbers, there are certain numbers that are considered unlucky in Western culture, where the 13th floor is occasionally missing from a tall building. There are so many reasons why people think  the number is unlucky. The most famous origin involves Judas Iscariot, the so-called traitor apostle, who was the 13th man at the Last Supper. Jesus was crucified on Friday, which caused the number 13 for a day of unholy luck. Friday the 13th also marked the mass execution of the medieval Knights Templar.