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Short Stuff: China's Corpse Walkers · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck. It's just us, but Jerry and Dave are
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: here in spirit. And speaking of spirits, we've got a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: pretty spooky, real life Halloween adjacent episode even though it's
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: a real deal custom over in China.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: That's right, because Spooky Month continues. It's stuff you should know.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're gonna go Chuck today to the Xiangxi region.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: There's no way you can't see a region like that.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I know of Hunan Province.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're doing great.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: That's in south central China. And if you go there,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: local custom will tell you that if somebody dies is
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: if someone dies away from their home, especially their birthplace,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: they have to return back to it to be buried,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: because if they don't, they will have a restless spirit
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: that vexes the living, maybe even possessing them. The thing is,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: sometimes people do die away from home, and there's a
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: remedy for this that the people in Hunan Province have
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: come up with, and that is to walk the corpse
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: back home to be buried.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: That's right, And if not, then you're just going to
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: be cursed to wander the earth. Pretty upset, harassing people,
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: possessing people. And here's the thing. If you lived in
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: rural China back then, and you were a rural peasant,
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: you probably died pretty close to home because you didn't
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: travel that much, so it wasn't that big of a deal.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: But occasionally you might find yourself away from home and
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: you need to get walked backed. And this is a
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: tradition that dates back to sixteen sixteen and continued into
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: the twentieth century.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Qing dynasty apparently is where it finds its roots,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and the idea that they were doing this in the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: sixties potentially even pretty interesting.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Apparently it was Mao who stamped it out because it
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: was superstitious and therefore counter revolutionary. I don't know if
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: it still goes on in little random pockets, although it's
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: much easier to get a corpse back home these days.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, traditionally used to be, and you never.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Know, maybe maybe so. But traditionally, speaking of tradition, it
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: was the Taoist priests who were responsible for walking corpses
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: back home. And to do this, Chuck, They basically had
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: two options available. One was much more efficient than the other.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: The first one was corpse walking, which is essentially what
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: it sounds like. The thing is. We should say this here, like,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we've emphasized this enough. This was
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a magical event, yeah, where a Taoist priest basically reanimated
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a corpse enough to have it walk behind him to
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: be led by the Taois priest back home to be buried.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: This dead person would walk back home with the Taoist priest.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: That's corpse walking, Yeah, for days, weeks, months, depending on
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: how far away they were from home. The priest would
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: carry a lantern that was a light both day and night,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: although they would usually do this at night because as
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: we'll see, it was very bad luck for residents of
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: villages that they would go through to see this kind
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: of thing happening. So eventually they would have people runners
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: out in front even saying like hey, we got a
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: corpse coming. I think they were banging a gong to
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: kind of warn everybody. The corpse is behind the priest,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: like we said, very very tall, dressed in a black
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: robe and just following the directions of the priest saying yoho, yoho.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: You know, it's just so the corpse knew which way
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: to go go right.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: They would be like, yoho, yoho, we got a pothole
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: coming up on the right, right, and the corpse would
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: kind of like walk around the pothole right. And there
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: was one other thing you would see. In addition to
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: this priest leading this tall corpse dressed in a black
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: robe back home, you would probably see a black cat
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: running along with them. Of course, they essentially did not
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: ever travel without a black cat, because this is how
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the corpse was reanimated. Every day, or I should say
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: every night, when the priest and the corpse took their
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: journey back up, the black cat would rub itself all
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: over the corpse several times. And the idea was the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: static electricity from the cat's fur was what reanimated the
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: corpse to move again.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I'm going to take a quick moment since you mentioned
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: cat to tell people who have not yet seen that
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: I have a new kitten that I think we're going
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: to keep now. And it's all on my Instagram at
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Chuck the podcast or the story of Olivia being rescued
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: from the undercarriage of a car Wow and very sick
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: with worms and bacterium and seemingly near death and had
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: her little butttholest it shut and then unstitched. It was
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: quite a ride. We thought we were gonna lose her,
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: then we nursed her back to health. We thought there's
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: no way we can keep her because our dog Gibson
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: has no chill.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: And it turns out they are in love.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Chuck, that is a wonderful story.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: It's wonderful so that the other two cats are gonna
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: hate this, but as I said on Instagram, they can
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: get bent because I think Olivia is staying and she's
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: very cute. And you can go check out the story.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: It's been wildly popular on my Instagram.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Well, welcome to the family, Olivia.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: That's right, But Olivia was not a black cat.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: And since I took so much time with that story,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: maybe we should take a break and finish up with
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: corpse walkers.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do that. So, Chuck, I said that there
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: were two ways for a Dallas priest to lead a
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: corpse back home. The first one was corpse walking, which
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: we just talked about. It was a priest and a corpse.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: The much more efficient version is corpse herding, and it's
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: very much like how today, if somebody's transporting a car
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: for an owner, they're gonna transport more than one at
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: a time, and they're gonna group the cars together on
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the back of a truck by the region that they're
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: all going to. This was basically the concept behind corpse herding.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there were more priests involved because there were more corpses,
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: so you'd had like, you know, a priest upfront, priest
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: in the back, maybe a couple of priests.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: On the sides. I think this is when.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: We talk about the runner being out front. I think
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: this is when they had their runners, yep, that would
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: warn the townsfolk that they were coming.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: And the way it's described sounds to me like have you.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: Ever seen a at a like an NBA game. They'll have
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: somebody come out at halftime, and it's like a guy
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: that's dancing like like you know, some popular performer, but
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: he's got like a curtain rod running through his outfit
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: on the top and attached them at the bottom, and
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: there are fake, you know, dummies of people, and every
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: movement he's making with the rods, they're making an exact
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: same time, so it appears as if there's like five
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: people dancing in synchronicity.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: There's essentially nothing more hilarious that you can see than that.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: See you know what I'm talking about?
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, is that what this is sort of like,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: because that's how I pictured it.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Sort of This was instead of them being on either
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: side of the priest, they would be in a single
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: file line, all following behind the lead priest. Oh okay,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and then there'd be priests on either side kind of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: corralling them in because you didn't want walking corpses kind
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: of wander off and you know, try to possess somebody
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: or steel their cheek. And it did bear some similarities
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to what you're talking about. We'll see that in a second.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: But I want to talk about a Chinese American writer
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: named Louise Hung who wrote an account, a really interesting
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: account of her grandfather's experience way back in the day
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: when he was a young boy. She posted it on
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the Order of the Good Death website, which we've talked
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: about them a million times over the years, but just
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: to kind of summarize, if I may please, her grandfather
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and his brother lived in a town where a corpse
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: procession walked through and they heard the gong coming and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: they were hiding with everybody else in town, just keeping
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: out of sight, but they were brave enough to kind
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of peek out, and they saw, she says, a line
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: of corpses lurching, hopping, swaying through the streets to the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: beat of the gong. They saw white cloths covering the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: heads of the dead faces positioned up and forward, supposedly
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: looking toward their final resting place. Yeah, and so like
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: this happened, like this is not like this, like there
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: weren't like legends of corpse walking, right, these happened in
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: real life. And if you say, I don't really believe
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: in magic, Daoist or otherwise, I don't really think a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: black cat's static electricity could reanimated corpse if this actually happened, guys, guys,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: what was going on? Guys?
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a cat would be more likely to eat the
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: nose off of that person.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, which is probably something you had to watch
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: out for.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what really was going on and it was really
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: going on?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Like you said, is that was a Dallas priest.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: And Louise Hung even said, Hey, I'm not even sure
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: all these people were Dallas priests. I think they might
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: have just been doing the job and kind of saying that.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: But in the case of the solo corpse walker, it
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: would be a Dallas priest carrying a corpse on their
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: back with a bamboo pole stuck up the back to
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: hold them upright as if they were alive, and a
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: big black robe draped over both of them, kind of
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: like the old bits with someone on your shoulders in
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: a big long trench coat exactly.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: That's why the corpses that were in a single corpse
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: walking procession always were very tall, that's right, because they
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: were on the back of another priest who was hiding.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And just to be clear, they didn't like impale the
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: dead person on the bamboo pole. It was like tied
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: to them. Yeah. So they The way that they did
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: this was they could see kind of through the black robe.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: They could see the lantern enough to be led. And
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: remember the priests in front would be like, there's a
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: pothole coming up on the right, Yoho, yoho. So they
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: would do this and then obviously they would switch off
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: night tonight who would carry the corpse and who would
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: do the processing. That was how corpse walking worked. Corpse
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: herding also used bamboo poles, but they used them horizontally,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: kind of like you were talking about with the basketball
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: halftime guy.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Okay, well, I'm glad it didn't spoil that because people
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: are probably just very confused about what I was talking about.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it sounds like they are all tied to
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: the pole and the pole kind of runs under their arms,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: and that's what kind of made me think of the dancer.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I should get one of those systems. I'm sure you
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: can buy those.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Right, surely they can't. I'll be homemade, yeah, or make one.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: How hard could that be?
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a halftime basketball dancer being like, yeah,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you'll find out, pal, it's really hard.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: That'd be a fun Yeah, that'd be a fun Halloween
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: get up. I already have my or I don't have
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: the outfit, but I have my idea this year. So
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: I can't do it this year. I'll pri to you
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: it next year.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Can you reveal your idea on this episode?
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: If you saw the Righteous Gemstones, I'm going to be
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: baby Billy Walton Goggins, brilliant character.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, awesome. Oh so wait, hold on one second. About
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: the bamboo poles. Yeah, there would be two of them,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: one running under each arm of the corpses. So basically
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: they were hanging the corpses by their arms by bamboo poles.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Then the poles would be the ends of poles would
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: be carried by a priest in front and back on
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: their shoulders, and the way that those two priests would
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: walk it would get telegraphed through the bamboo poles, which
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: would make the corpses look like they were just kind
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: of bouncing around. Their feet would probably hit the ground
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and touch it here or there, so it looked like
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: they were walking in line behind the Dallist priests.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: That's that nuts, and they would say, NBA, it's fantastic.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: That's right. I don't think there's anything that could top
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that chuck. So I say short stuff is out.
• 12:33
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• 12:36
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• 12:40
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