Hopping corpses: In popular Chinese mythology, hopping corpses, are corpses whose touch can kill a living person instantly. They are said to be created when a person's soul fails to leave the deceased's body. It came from the myth of "The Corpses who Travel a Thousand Li", which describes wizards who transport corpses over long distances. Once the wizard's spell over a corpse is no more, the corpses hop on their own feet back to their hometown for proper burial. Some people speculate that hopping corpses were originally smugglers in disguise who wanted to scare off law enforcement officers.
Jiangshi is also pronounced Geung si, which is the Cantonese name for vampire (translated as "blood-sucking ghost" in Mandarin). Hence, a hopping corpse is also called a Chinese vampire. Chinese vampires were a popular subject in movies. In the movies, hopping corpses can be put to sleep by putting on their foreheads a piece of yellow paper with a spell written on it. Generally in the movies the hopping corpses are dressed in imperial Qing Dynasty clothes, their arms permanently outstretched to catch and strangle victims. They tend to appear with an outrageously long tongue and long fingernails. They can be evaded by holding one's breath, as they track living creatures by detecting their breathing. Their visual depiction as horrific Qing Dynasty officials reflects a common stereotype among the Han Chinese of the foreign Manchu people, who founded the much-despised dynasty, as bloodthirsty creatures with little regard for humanity.
It is also conventional wisdom of Feng Shui in Chinese architecture that a threshold, a piece of wood approximately six inches high, be installed along the width of the door to prevent a hopping corpse from entering the household.
