Sixty Common Ghostly Words and Expressions 扮鬼臉、魔鬼 、冒失鬼、搗蛋鬼、搗鬼、膽小鬼、短命鬼、替死鬼、牛鬼蛇神、厲鬼、各懷鬼胎、搞鬼、孤魂野鬼、鬼、鬼把戲、鬼魅、鬼門關、鬼迷心竅、鬼斧神工、鬼胎、鬼頭鬼腦、鬼臉、鬼靈精、鬼鬼祟祟、鬼哭狼嚎、鬼哭神號、鬼話、鬼話連篇、鬼畫符、鬼火、鬼魂、鬼混、鬼計多端、鬼見愁、鬼主意、鬼使神差、鬼子、鬼才、鬼祟、活見鬼、攪鬼、酒鬼、見鬼、泣鬼神、吸血鬼、小鬼、心懷鬼胎、裝神弄鬼、神不知鬼不覺、神差鬼使、神出鬼沒、水鬼、人不知，鬼不覺、人小鬼大、死鬼、餓鬼、疑神疑鬼、妖魔鬼怪、有錢能使鬼推磨、東洋鬼子。 *** Ghosts in What Classic? In What Classic? 何典, a novel discussed at length by Christopher Rea in An Age of Irreverence, numerous ghosts/ gui are named.… Read

The following interview, conducted by Sang Ye 桑曄, first appeared in China Candid: the people on the People’s Republic, edited by Geremie R. Barmé with Miriam Lang, University of California Press, 2004.… Read

The long, ornate, rhapsodic fu 賦, in so far as it had an ancestor, derived from the shaman-chants of the South. Its lexical richness, euphuism and hyperbole suited an expansive, adventurous age in which Chinese armies penetrated deep into Central Asia and Chinese merchandise regularly found its way into European markets, but were deeply disturbing to right-minded Confucians, and therefore, ultimately, to the writers themselves; so that, amidst all the self-confident exuberance, a note of guilt and unease kept stealing in.… Read

From the ‘Nine Songs’ in The Songs of the South 楚辭九歌國殤, translated by David Hawkes, who says this ‘is surely one of the most beautiful laments for fallen soldiers in any language.’… Read

The two 1966 editorials from the People’s Daily reprinted here relate to the themes touched on in our discussion of the Ghost Festival. In the first, ‘Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons’, published on 1 June 1966, in effect declares all enemies of the Communist Party and its enterprise, including those who have survived from the days before 1949 living in the People’s Republic of China, to be little more than subhumans.… Read

This section starts with two passages from the writer Lu Xun (魯迅, 1881-1936) on the subject of ghosts, death and revenge. Gloria Davies has kindly given permission for us to reproduce here her discussion of Lu Xun’s essay-memoirs ‘Wu Chang or Life-is-Transient’ 無常 (1926) and ‘The Hanged Woman’ 女吊 (1936) from her Lu Xun’s Revolution: Writing in a Time of Violence, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.… Read