Revenants in China

The Ghosts by Luo Pin in 1771
On the right are three out of eight paintings by Lou Pin. The first drew a male ghost, a female ghost, and an officer of the Underground world. Two ghosts have to leave each other and may never see the other again. This painting emphasizes the touching love between the two ghosts. In the fourth painting, a dumpy short man is holding a cane and a servant is holding a wine bowl for him. This painting aims to satire people who are greedy, lazy, and unambitious hedonists and is a walking corpse indeed. In the third picture, two skeletons stand opposite in the woods, having a conversation and saying, “Though your life was so glorious, after death everything will be nothing more than dust. It would be nice to be a ghost since they do not have to suffer and bother by numerous miseries in the real world.” This concept is very similar to the Danse Macabre in Europe. One similarity between the paintings of skeletons in both Europe and China is that they were significantly influenced by religion. The idea of Skeleton Paintings in China comes from Chuang-tzu, who is a representative thinker in Taoism. Skeletons in Western paintings of the Danse Macabre are closely related to the manuscripts of Christian doctrine. Thus, religious factors play a role in the development of painting about skeletons in both parts of the world. Despite the similarities, there is a huge difference in people’s attitudes towards death illustrated by paintings in Europe and China. As influenced by Chuang-tzu, the Chinese attitude is very simple. Since everything is meaningless when facing death, why should people be afraid of death? People will always be reborn to the next life, what people should do is stay calm and be ready to die whenever death attacks. However, in the Danse Macabre, though it presents the same idea that wealth and reputation do no good when facing death, and emphasizes the equality of death, people were still frightened and regretful when dying. The Danse Macabre worked as a kind of placebo, telling people though they faced inequality in the real life, they should not be angry because death eventually brings equality.

Exorcism in China
In Chinese belief, most revenants are evil because Chinese believe that there exists an underground world where people should go after death. If one does not go to that world, it is because he had resent to the normal world where human lives and wanted to revenge. If people want to get rid of the evil revenants, they ask the local religion for help. Thus, exorcism in China is related to Buddhism and Taoism. If one meets superstition in real life, the Buddhist will simply chant for you because they believe that chanting can let Buddha give bless to you so that you can eliminate your negative feelings and the revenants will escape away from you. Buddhist exorcism chant Compared to Buddhism, Taoism had more procedures since when necromancy developed in ancient China, as the religion originated in China, Taoism naturally absorbed the ancient methods of them. To exorcise, Taoists will bring a peach sword or a sword made of the timber hitter by the thunder because they believe both timber and thunder have a power of Yang(representing the strength of the sun) which the ghost is extremely afraid of. Besides, the charms with spells are also effective. The Taoist first uses his swords and fights with the demon. When the demon gets hurt, he will take the charms out and put them on the head of the demon, saying imprecations like “Ji Ji Ru Lu Ling” to eliminate the demon. Taoist exorcism