THE CORPSE WALKERS

Stories of walking the corpse are popular in both northern and southern China. Most of the time, the tales are so dramatically exaggerated that one has to discard them as fiction. After Li Changgeng, a professional mourner, mentioned corpse walking in a previous interview, many readers wrote asking whether they were expected to believe Li's description of corpse walking. I myself thought it was half truth, half fiction, but recently I heard the following story, which seemed to me quite convincing. On the anniversary of my father's passing I traveled to Lijiaping in Sichuan, where my father was born and where his ashes are buried. After going through the rituals—burning incense, lighting firecrackers, and kowtowing in front of his grave—I paid a visit to Luo Tianwang, a feng shui master, who had selected my father's grave site. Luo is an old family friend, now in his seventies. He looked healthy and energetic; his vision was still keen and his mind sharp, and we spoke for some time.

LIAO YIWU: When I was growing up here, I constantly heard stories about corpse walking from our neighbor, Third Grandma Wang. She told me that people in Sichuan call the practice “yo shi.” While “shi” means “dead body,” the word “yo” is taken from “yo ho, yo ho,” the sounds that corpse walkers chant while they haul the dead body along. Do you think there is any truth to these stories?

LUO TIANWANG: Sure. Corpse walking has never been an officially recognized profession, but the practice had been around since ancient times. When I was young, I had several friends in the business of trading salt. They used to travel by foot on dirt paths to the central provinces of Shaanxi and Henan. By the roadside they would sometimes come upon shops that were closed and empty, with signs up saying “walking corpse across border.” These signs were spooky—blowing in the cold wind on a deserted mountain road. When my friends told me about this, I said: When a person dies, he becomes stiff. How can he manage to cross the border? They didn't know, and it wasn't until a couple of years later that I found out how it was done.

LIAO: Corpses crossing borders? Did that mean the border that separates the worlds of the living and the dead?

LUO: No, it meant literally crossing the province or county borders. As I told you, transportation was not very well developed then. The so-called national highway was a rutted dirt road. When a traveling businessman died of a sudden illness or accident, it was hard to transport the body back to his village to be buried in his native soil. And if a dead person is not returned to his hometown, as custom dictates, he would be called a lonely soul and a homeless ghost. So, since buses or trucks weren't available, if the family could afford it, they hired professional corpse walkers.

LIAO: But how could a corpse walk? Was there magic to it? I've heard that corpse walkers would have a black cat climb over the dead body, generating static electricity that would make the corpse move like a puppet.

LUO: That's nonsense.

LIAO: Have you ever seen someone walk a corpse?

LUO: Yes. In the early 1950s, the new Communist government sent a work team to launch the Land Reform movement, which took land from the rich and gave it to the poor. The work team categorized people according to their wealth and beliefs. Rich landowners and Nationalists were deemed enemies of the people, and many were tortured or executed if they couldn't first escape into the mountains or pay off the triads to protect them. Since three generations of my family had been in the feng shui business, we were considered practitioners of superstition, and I wasn't allowed to participate in the land redistribution activities. I had nothing to do, and one dark and overcast afternoon I was strolling along the village road when a bulky, black object suddenly passed me, sending a chill down my spine. The thing was covered with a huge inky-colored robe. The bottom hem of the robe was splattered with mud, and from time to time a leather shoe poked out below. The footsteps were heavy and made a repetitive, thudding noise, like someone knocking the ground with a block of wood. Just then, my friend Piggy scurried up to me and whispered in my ear: That's a corpse.

Piggy's words spooked me, and I ran around in front of the robe. A man was there, walking a few paces ahead of the corpse, wearing a beige vest and carrying a basket filled with fake paper money. In his other hand, he held a white paper lantern. Every few minutes, he would reach into the basket, grab some money, and toss it high in the air. You know the ritual, don't you? It's called “buying your way into the other world.” People in the countryside still believe that the fake money is used to bribe the corpse's guardian ghosts so they don't block the road to heaven.

LIAO: So people used to think the world of the dead was equally corrupt. But why the lantern in broad daylight?

LUO: To light the way to heaven. And the white lantern, the fake money, and the black robe helped create an atmosphere of mourning. The lantern also served a practical purpose—but let me finish my story. Piggy and I decided to keep following the corpse walker. The corpse looked a head taller than an ordinary person and wore a big straw hat. Beneath the hat was a white paper mask—one of those sad-looking masks like they wear in operas. The guy at the front would chant, “Yo ho, yo ho,” and strangely enough the corpse would cooperate just like a well-trained soldier. He followed the guide with great precision. For example, when the guide and the corpse were climbing some stone steps on the street, the guide said, “Yo ho, yo ho, steps ahead.” The corpse paused for a second, then moved up the stairway, step by step, with its body tilting back stiffly. Piggy and I followed the pair for about six or seven kilometers, all the way to a small inn on a quiet side street. While the corpse waited at the entrance, the guide walked into the lobby, tapped on the counter, and said in a low voice: The god of happiness is here.

LIAO: What does that mean?

LUO: Apparently it was a code phrase, because the innkeeper nodded and smiled and stepped out from behind the counter. He bowed to the guide and led him and the corpse to the back of the inn. We snuck into the backyard and found the corpse walker's room because the guide had left the white lantern in front of the door. We tried to get closer but heard an angry shout from the innkeeper. He grabbed my coat sleeve and snarled: Get away, you little bastards. Don't you dare tell anyone, got it?

LIAO: Wasn't the innkeeper afraid of getting bad luck from accommodating a corpse?

LUO: Because the corpse was wrapped up in a robe, no other customers would even suspect anything, and the local people actually considered corpse walkers auspicious, because death is the beginning of life in another world. I later found out that's why a walking corpse was referred to as the god of happiness. There was even a saying: If the god of happiness comes to your inn, good fortune will follow. Of course, an innkeeper could charge three times as much for providing accommodation to corpse walkers.

Anyway, despite the scolding from the innkeeper, Piggy and I didn't want to leave. We hung around in the lobby. Soon the innkeeper returned from the back with a shiny silver dollar in his hand. That was a lot of money in those days—he couldn't contain his excitement.

When he noticed us, he called us over, handed us some small change, and told us to run to a restaurant down the street to get fried peanuts, cooked pig ears, pig tongues, and some hard liquor. We were also told to buy candles and fake paper money from a funeral-supply store. The innkeeper said the corpse walker needed to replenish his supplies for the next day's trip. Strangely enough, the innkeeper specifically asked us to get two sets of bowls and chopsticks from the restaurant. He said one set was for the god of happiness.

We ran our errands quickly, and the innkeeper thanked us profusely. He tipped us a couple of coins and invited us to sit down with him for tea. He told us that over the past twenty years, he had accommodated over ten corpse walkers who were passing through the region. We peppered him with questions. He lowered his voice to a whisper: It's not the corpse that does the walking—it's the living. Piggy and I didn't understand. The innkeeper said the magic lies inside that black robe. But he wouldn't say anything else. Piggy said: We live in a new Communist era now. Corpse walking is a practice from the old society. It is now considered superstitious and illegal. There's no need to keep it a secret from us. We won't tell anyone. But if you don't tell us, we'll report you to the officials for renting rooms to corpse walkers. After our begging, then our threatening, the innkeeper told us.

LIAO: What's the secret?

LUO: Inside the black robe, there are two bodies: the corpse and a living person who carries the dead one on his back. During the trip, the person who carries the corpse has to use two hands to secure the body so it doesn't slide off. As you probably know, the body of a dead person becomes as stiff and as heavy as a stone. It takes eight people to carry a coffin. Imagine how tough it would be for one person, wrapped up in a large black robe, to walk hundreds of miles with a dead body on his back. Since it is hard for him to bend his knees, each move must be very stiff and awkward. On top of that, the black robe prevents him from being able to see what is ahead of him. Remember the white lantern that we talked about earlier? The light from the lantern is used to guide the corpse carrier.

LIAO: When does a corpse walker eat?

LUO: Under normal circumstances, corpse walkers only eat one meal a day, and they travel ten to twelve hours without any rest. Since they work in pairs, they alternate days carrying the body. Sometimes a corpse walker's journey can take over a month. With such a long travel time, it is impossible to make the trip during the warm months because the corpse would decay in the heat. Even in winter, corpse walkers have to inject mercury and other anti-decaying solutions into the body. Since clients know how tough the business is, they're willing to pay big money for the service. The innkeeper said people in the profession had to go through years of specialized physical training. They often had good kung fu skills and could defend themselves against roadside robbers.

Piggy and I were amazed when we heard all this. Piggy wanted to go to the backyard to check it out. The innkeeper stopped him, saying the door was locked. I said: We can put our ears to the door and listen. The innkeeper pinched my ear: If they catch you, they will chop off your ear and serve it as cold cuts with their drinks. Corpse walkers are very private people. Once they get in the room, they never come out again till early in the morning when they set off. It was a slow night for the innkeeper, so we ended up chatting for quite a while. It was pitch-black outside when we finally left. He gave us a couple more coins and made us promise not to tell anyone what we'd seen. He said that if officials knew that he was renting them a room, his business would be closed down.

LIAO: That was it?

LUO: Be patient! I'm not finished. After I got home, I couldn't get to sleep. I was still haunted by images of the corpse walkers. The next morning, I was awakened by the sound of the village chief walking up and down the street banging a gong. He was calling an important meeting for the whole village. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my coat, and ran out into the drizzling rain, skipping breakfast. From all directions neighbors were coming out of their houses.

As I got closer to the village square, I spotted Piggy. He pulled me aside and said in a muffled tone of voice: I have to tell you something. After we split up last night, I kept thinking about the stories the innkeeper told us. Something felt wrong to me. Chairman Mao told us to smash all superstitious practices. Well, those corpse walkers are engaging in superstitious activities—they're counterrevolutionaries! I couldn't let Chairman Mao down. I had to do something—otherwise, I'd be an accomplice. So I got up in the middle of the night, walked several miles to the county offices, and reported the corpse walkers to members of the Land Reform work team. They immediately contacted a unit of the People's Liberation Army stationed nearby. I led the soldiers and members of the work team to the inn.

Piggy's words made me really mad. I slapped him: You weren't supposed to do that. Didn't we promise the innkeeper to keep quiet? Piggy gave me a nasty look: What, you think I'd keep my mouth shut for just a couple of measly coins?

LIAO: So much for the noble revolutionary reasons. It was all about money, wasn't it?

LUO: Not quite. In that era everyone wanted to gain favor with the new government. Piggy was just trying to be part of the group. With Piggy's help, soldiers armed with rifles burst into the inn and rounded up the innkeeper and his staff. They moved silently into the backyard, stopped in front of the corpse walkers' room, and knocked on the door. There was no response. The soldiers had to bang on the door violently before they heard some rustling sounds from inside the room. Who is it? someone asked. That infuriated the soldiers and they broke down the door with their rifle butts. The soldiers jumped inside, waving their flashlights around the room. Piggy, who had witnessed the whole thing, told me that the two corpse walkers were standing in their underwear by the bed, shaking. The corpse, still covered in the black robe, was leaning against a wall. One soldier pulled up the robe and saw that it was the body of a woman, a rich lady—she had permed hair and heavy makeup, and she was dressed in an expensive, green silk cheongsam. Neither the village folks nor the soldiers had ever been that close to a rich lady before. Out of curiosity, some poked at her face, while others fingered the material of the dress. Her nose, ears, and mouth were filled with mercury and some kind of smelly liquid, but that didn't stop them from probing.

The two corpse walkers raised their hands over their heads. The soldiers ordered them and the innkeeper to stand along the wall, side by side with the dead body. Since there was no electricity in those days, the soldiers lit the corpse walkers' white paper lantern and began to ask them questions right there on the spot. Piggy said that the whole thing was pretty weird with the room lit so dimly.

LIAO: Who were the corpse walkers?

LUO: They were brothers from Shaanxi Province. The older one was thirty-five, stocky and very muscular. The younger was thirty-one, thinner and taller. Their father had been in the profession for many years and was known in the region as Guijianchou—warrior that scares the ghost. The two brothers inherited the profession from him at an early age. They said they had tried to be farmers but gave it up because they couldn't make ends meet. When the soldiers pressed them for information regarding the dead woman, the two brothers looked at each other, shook their heads, and said it was a violation of their professional code to disclose information about the dead. The soldiers slapped their faces and pointed their rifles at their heads, shouting: Chairman Mao teaches us, leniency toward those who confess and severe punishment for those who refuse to cooperate. Scared shitless, the brothers both fell to the floor and confessed everything.

LIAO: Who was she?

LUO: The deceased was the wife of an officer in the Nationalist army. When the Nationalists were defeated, the officer and his wife ended up wandering from place to place. It was wintertime, and the wife caught pneumonia. On her deathbed she made her husband promise to return her body to her hometown for burial. He bought a wheelbarrow, put his wife's body and two suitcases in it, and began pushing it along the winding mountain roads of Xishenba, where he met the two brothers. The weary officer promised to pay them a large sum of money if they would deliver his deceased wife to her native village. They accepted the deal and carried the woman for two months over the treacherous terrain. When Piggy and I saw them, they were only sixteen kilometers from their final destination.

LIAO: What happened to them?

LUO: The soldiers made the two brothers carry the corpse to the county government building. They were locked in a dark room, together with the corpse.

LIAO: Those poor guys. Corpse walking was quite labor-intensive, much harder than farming. They were not exploiters, but working-class people—the allies of Communism.

LUO: I agree that corpse walkers were working-class, and if the corpse had been, say, a poor peasant girl, those two would have gotten off easy. But they had committed a double crime: first, they engaged in a business connected with tradition and superstition; second, they were employed by a Nationalist officer. It was considered quite a serious crime to cooperate with an enemy.

Anyway, in the 1950s, it was not uncommon to see people executed after being denounced at a “speak bitterness” session. So after Piggy told me what he'd done to those corpse walkers, fear took hold of me. Soon the village square was packed with gawking spectators. I could see people's heads moving in the slight drizzle. Loud drums and gongs drowned out the chatter of the crowd. Some who couldn't get in climbed up onto the roof of the grain collection station. Country folk seldom got to visit the city and had no access to entertainment all year long. Public denunciation meetings offered free drama for many onlookers. None of them wanted to miss it.

A makeshift stage had been set up next to the grain warehouse. The newly appointed county chief sat behind a long table in the middle wearing a gray suit like Mao's. Next to him were the head of the government Land Reform work team and three soldiers. About a dozen wooden chairs and stools were placed in the front row. They were reserved for the head of the village militia, the chairman of the newly formed Poor Peasant Revolutionary Committee, and several peasant activists. Soon the loud gongs and drums stopped. The county chief grabbed a microphone that occasionally blasted out piercing squeals. He moved his mouth closer: Let's first bring Zhang Kan, the evil landlord, Liu Chan, the notorious bandit leader, and their lackeys out on stage.

I felt somewhat relieved that the corpse walkers were not called. People standing near the stage shuffled around to make way for the criminals: More than ten people were pushed onto the stage. They were wearing tall dunce caps, their hands were tied to their backs, black cartoon boards hung in front of their chests with characters such as evil landlord Zhang Kan, et cetera. Then the county chief raised his right arm and shouted, “Down with the exploiting class and kill the evil landlords and the bandits!” As if on cue, people all raised their right arms and shouted in agreement. After the slogan shouting died down, some poor peasant activists stood up and began to tell dreadful stories about how badly they had been treated and exploited by those landlords before the Communists came. Their testimonies were followed by another round of slogan shouting. Then the soldiers escorted the pair of them and their lackeys out to an open field nearby, and the whole bunch was shot dead on the spot.

LIAO: What about the corpse walkers?

LUO: After the county chief announced the execution, people started getting restless and asked: I heard some corpse walkers were arrested last night. Where are they? The county chief wasn't about to let them down. About half an hour later, the corpse walkers were paraded onto the stage. People immediately pushed toward the front, trying to take a good look at these people who were supposed to possess legendary powers that could make a corpse walk. The gathering became quite chaotic and several kids were trampled in the crush. The soldiers on the stage stood up and jumped down into the crowd to help maintain order. They tried to push the crowd back from the stage. The county chief screamed on the microphone: Order, order, don't push. Chaos will create opportunities for our class enemies to stir up trouble.

But the people wouldn't back down. Who could blame them? The older brother and the cheongsam-wearing corpse had been tied together, back-to-back. The younger brother was forced to put on the black robe and carry the white lantern and the basket with fake paper money. The scary mask was tied to the back of his head. The older brother had a black sign hung around his neck that said “The Lackey of the Counterrevolutionary Corpse.” When a soldier pushed the elder brother's head down to show regret, the head of the corpse, tied to his back, appeared to look up. We could see her permed hair and makeup. It was quite a frightening but comical scene. People began to ooh and ahh. A woman in the audience screamed: She is an evil fox!

LIAO: Isn't it taboo to insult a corpse? Didn't people worry about retribution for blaspheming the dead?

LUO: People were so caught up in the moment that traditions and taboos went totally out the door. It was like a circus. The crowd kept getting rowdier. The excitement was quite contagious. Some younger guys tried to climb onto the stage to touch the corpse. The soldiers wrestled with them, attempting to push them down. It was a real mob scene. Then suddenly we heard a loud crash: the stage had collapsed. People were screaming and falling over one another. One soldier raised his gun and fired at the sky several times before the crowd became silent and under control.

Luckily for the two brothers, their kung fu skills came in handy. They were able to dodge the attacks from the mob and survived with some minor injuries. The soldiers then untied the corpse from the elder brother's back and sent both of them back to the dark room. That night the two brothers broke a window and escaped. They were soon discovered by soldiers on patrol, who chased after them for several kilometers. The elder brother, though shot in the leg, didn't want to surrender. As he stumbled forward up on the mountain, he accidentally stepped on a loose stone and fell into a ravine. After that the younger one was caught without any resistance.

LIAO: Was he executed?

LUO: The younger one was allowed to wrap the bodies of his brother and the army officer's wife in straw mats, and he dug a grave and buried them together outside the village. Then he was deported back to his local village with the death certificate of his brother. I heard later that the government charged the elder brother posthumously with “refusing to admit crimes and committing a sacrificial suicide to honor a counterrevolutionary.”

LIAO: What an ending.

LUO: But that wasn't the end. Several days later, the village officials had some unexpected guests: the relatives of the Nationalist officer's wife. They had received a letter from the officer telling them to welcome home the body, and they had set up an altar and were prepared to hold a wake. They waited and waited, but the corpse walkers never showed up, and eventually they got word of what had happened at the public denunciation meeting.

LIAO: What could they do? She had already been buried.

LUO: The relatives cried and screamed and went all the way to the county chief's office. They begged him to give the body back. Normally, the county chief wouldn't dare meet such a request for a Nationalist officer's wife. But the fiasco at the public denunciation meeting plus the killing of a corpse walker, who was considered a member of the working class, had made him nervous.

He was afraid that the relatives of the dead woman could take the issue to a higher level of government and get him into trouble. So he let them dig up the body. The relatives then hired some professional mourners, who carried the body home. It was quite a procession in the old-fashioned style, which the county officials pretended they didn't see.

It had been a long journey home for that woman. As for the elder brother, it was really sad that someone who had spent his whole life returning the dead to their ancestral homes should end up getting buried in a place far away from his own home.