Editing Jiangshi (section)

==Origin stories==
=== Taboos regarding unburied dead ===
De Groot observes that unburied corpses studded the landscape of imperial China, causing great fear and nourishing "an inveterate belief in these specters". Furthermore, it was supposed that corpses, if left unburied and exposed to the sun and moon so as to absorb the vital energy permeating the universe, could reanimate as ravening jiangshi. The notion that corpses are prone to becoming jiangshi when their burial is long-postponed would have motivated the populace to quickly bury the dead in their midst.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=De Groot |title=Religious System of China, Volume 5 |pages=744}}</ref>

=== Corpse-driving in Western Hunan ===
A supposed source of the jiangshi stories came from the folk practice of "transporting a corpse over a thousand ''[[li (unit)|li]]''" ({{zhi|t=千里行屍|s=千里行尸|p=qiān lǐ xíng shī|first=t}}). This was also known as "driving corpses in Xiangxi" ({{zhi|t=湘西趕屍|s=湘西赶尸|p=Xiāngxī gǎn shī|l=|first=t}}).

During the Qing dynasty, laborers from all over China often engaged in difficult construction work in the backwaters of western Hunan ([[Xiangxi]]), and the mortality rates were high.<ref>{{cite web |date=February 26, 2004 |script-title=zh:湘西"赶尸"习俗 |url=http://www.zjol.com.cn/05gotrip/system/2004/02/26/006054504.shtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120227033525/http://www.zjol.com.cn/05gotrip/system/2004/02/26/006054504.shtml |archive-date=2012-02-27 |access-date=2021-04-02}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=2004-10-22 |script-title=zh:神秘骇人的湘西"赶尸"揭秘(图) |url=http://read.anhuinews.com/system/2004/10/22/001023100.shtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514193844/http://read.anhuinews.com/system/2004/10/22/001023100.shtml |archive-date=2008-05-14 |access-date=2021-04-02}}</ref> The Chinese preferred to be buried alongside family, partly due to the belief that their souls might feel homesick if they were buried far from home, so an industry for the transportation of these corpses to their native villages, often across thousands of miles, soon developed. The corpses would be arranged upright in single file and be tied to long bamboo rods on the sides, while two men (one at the front and one at the back) would carry the ends of the rods on their shoulders and walk. When the bamboo flexed up and down, the corpses appeared to be "hopping" in unison when viewed from a distance away.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.zaobao.com/special/newspapers/2004/10/others221004.html |script-title=zh:湘西赶尸骗局被揭穿 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120305093512/http://www.zaobao.com/special/newspapers/2004/10/others221004.html |archive-date=2012-03-05 |lang=zh}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=September 14, 2009 |script-title=zh:湘西"赶尸匠"后人揭秘真相 (图) |url=http://travel.sohu.com/20090914/n266715927.shtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180109180950/http://travel.sohu.com/20090914/n266715927.shtml |archive-date=2018-01-09 |access-date=2021-04-02}}</ref>

Two oral accounts of transporting corpses are included in [[Liao Yiwu]]'s ''The Corpse Walker''. One account describes how corpses would be transported by a two-man team. One would carry the corpse on his back with a large robe covering both of them and a mourning mask on top. The other man would walk ahead with a lantern and warn his companion about obstacles ahead of him. The lantern was used as a visual guide for the corpse carrier to follow since they could not see with the robe covering them. It is speculated in the accounts in the book that corpses would be carried at night to avoid contact with people and the cooler air would be more suitable to transporting bodies.<ref>Liao, Yiwu. ''The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up''. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. {{oclc|233578030}}.</ref>

=== Myth and legend ===
Actual corpse-driving using manual labor gave rise to legends and rumors of the use of Taoist sorcery to transport dead bodies. According to these tales, the relatives of a person who died far away from home could not afford vehicles to have the deceased person's body transported home for burial, so they would hire a Taoist priest to conduct a ritual to reanimate the dead person and teach him/her to "hop" their way home. The priests would transport the corpses only at night and would ring bells to notify others in the vicinity of their presence because it was considered bad luck for a living person to set eyes upon a ''jiang shi''.

Some<ref>{{Cite web |script-title=zh:湘西趕屍 |url=https://liubowen.tripod.com/history/t-cadaver.htm |access-date=2024-03-30 |website=liubowen.tripod.com}}</ref> speculate that the stories about ''jiang shi'' were originally made up by smugglers who disguised their illegal activities as corpse transportation and wanted to scare off law enforcement officers.