A reanimated corpse in Chinese folklore, stiff with death and commonly depicted moving in short hops with its arms extended. The familiar paper talisman fixed to the forehead belongs especially to later ritual and popular representations. Earlier accounts are less standardized: some corpses walk, some fly, and some change as they age.
A jiangshi is said to drain life-energy rather than blood. The figure gathers several historical anxieties into one body ? improper burial, death far from home, transport of remains, and failed obligations between descendants and ancestors. Twentieth-century opera and Hong Kong cinema made it a horror icon; the archive separates that cinematic vocabulary from the varied record beneath it.