Author manga (behind it is Fang Xiangshi, mount is Shirasawa) manga /Meow 9
After 10 years, the post-80s writer Zhang Yun "caught" 1,080 kinds of monsters from the vast sea of classics and published "Chinese Monster Stories (Complete Collection)". Contrary to the impression that "yokai always do evil," he found that "almost 90% of Chinese yokai are good to people."
Since then, Zhang Yun has successively published two novels, "Monster Qitan" and "Being a Demon", and launched the "Monster Investigation Bureau" for the popularization of youkai culture. "Chinese monster culture has unique characteristics and is a wonderful flower of China's excellent traditional culture." Zhang Yun tried to re-salvage the Chinese yokai culture that had been forgotten for nearly a hundred years.
Recently, Zhang Yun was interviewed by a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily, in which he explained why there are also monster stories in addition to mythology, and also mentioned the subtle influence of monsters on ancient history, "Chinese monsters are rooted in the real life of ordinary people, and its vitality lies in this."
Catch a demon
The story of "salvaging" a monster in Chinese texts
When he finished typing the last word of "Chinese Monster Stories (Complete Collection)", Zhang Yun seemed to hear all the monsters cheering behind him. "For youkai, the name is very important, and if a yokai's name is forgotten, it is completely forgotten."
Bonding with youkai and helping them settle down seems like a kind of summoning in the dark. Growing up in the countryside of northern Anhui, Zhang Yun loved to gather with the villagers under the big locust tree at the mouth of the village to listen to the old man tell strange stories. After going to school and reading, Zhang Yun was quite interested in history, and he found that the zhengshi classics were "not enough to enjoy" and "wrote about the affairs of the emperors and generals, and I wanted to know how the common people at that time lived", so he especially liked to read zhiwei notes and barnyard official history, "It was an interesting world, and from time to time there were monsters that I liked."
At an animation exhibition in 2007, Zhang Yun found that many children dressed up as yokai, such as birds, tengu, gluttony, etc., "almost all of them are yokai created by our ancestors and written in classics." And in their eyes, it's all Japanese." Zhang Yun's heart was stung, yokai science is a prominent science in Japan, but in fact, 70% of the Japanese yokai prototypes are from China, "but Chinese don't know how many kinds of yokai we have, and the work related to yokai science is still blank in China." Since then, Zhang Yun has begun the process of "catching demons" and justifying the name of Chinese monsters.
To sort out Chinese yokai, we first need to solve two problems: the definition of yokai and the classification of yokai. "Japan's definition of yokai has not been satisfactory to China, and China has not always had an accurate definition of yokai." To this end, Zhang Yun spent nearly two years to understand the evolution of China's thousands of years of historical monster evolution. Finally, referring to the Eastern Jin Dynasty scholar Gan Bao's "Search for God", he defines monsters as strange and grotesque things rooted in real life that are beyond people's normal cognition. Therefore, "the Bull Demon King and the White Bone Spirit in Journey to the West are not monsters, and the monsters must come from real life."
On the issue of classification, in the past, Chinese called many yokai, and did not deliberately classify them, such as demons, monsters, spirits, charms, etc., with different connotations. On the basis of clarifying the understanding of the ancient Chinese people for youkai, Zhang Yun re-summarized the Chinese yokai from the perspective of yokai, and divided the Chinese yokai into four categories: Bai Ze and Fang Xiangshi, and "demons, spirits, ghosts, and monsters".
Solving the problem of definition and classification, Zhang Yun spent another seven or eight years salvaging monsters from the vast sea of Chinese texts, finding their origins, recording the stories of monsters, and translating the text into vernacular. "In those years, I went to libraries everywhere, and many times, I couldn't find one for a week or two." In the end, Zhang Yun listed 262 references represented by "Bai Zetu" and "Kizuka Trivia", "In fact, the reference materials read are far more than these."
When encountering inconsistencies in the monster stories recorded in different classics, Zhang Yun will do proofreading work according to the commonalities of the classics, and make trade-offs and classifications. "1080 kinds of monsters, in fact, the number will be more, such as tanuki demons, dozens of stories are more than a few, every dynasty has it." I would write about the 'Tanuki Demon', and the relevant stories would be included in it. For some nameless and nameless monsters because they "don't know what their so-called weirdness is", Zhang Yun can only regretfully give up, "On the whole, he still chooses the monsters with exact names, so that the identity is more clear."
After several efforts, 1,080 kinds of monsters were successfully placed on the "hukou". Zhang Yun said: "I was very scared at the time, because I was worried that some of the monsters were still 'black households'. But basically most of the yokai are in it. I hope this will lay a foundation for the future study of yokai in China. ”
found
Ninety percent of the yokai will not take the initiative to hurt people
Contrary to the impression that "yokai always do evil", after giving 1,080 kinds of yokai a "hukou", Zhang Yun found that "almost 90% of Chinese yokai are good to people, and unless they are provoked, they will not take the initiative to hurt people."
This is very different from the Japanese yokai, in Zhang Yun's feelings, many of the Japanese yokai are cold and resentful, such as Yukio Mishima's "The Tale of the God of Fu", which tells the story of a bunch of old artifacts that were swept out of the house and transformed into essences to find revenge on humans. In contrast, Zhang Yun's favorite youkai named "Lantern Boy" recorded in the Ming Dynasty's "Ear New Volume Seven" is a family's worn-out broom into a boy carrying a lantern to take the old man home. "Many of China's monster stories are full of warmth, and youkai often stand outside the crowd and want to have a relationship with people. This reflects the values of Chinese, not aggressive, but valued, kind, and eager to communicate. ”
"The character of the monster is the character of a person, and it is also the character of an era." The monster stories of different eras reflect the fireworks, social conditions and human psychology of different eras. Zhang Yun introduced that the monsters in the pre-Qin period were mostly full of majestic romantic atmosphere and magnificent; the Wei and Jin dynasties paid attention to the wind and bones, and the monsters also dared to love and dare to hate; the culture of the Tang Dynasty was diverse and inclusive, and the monsters had many forms, and there were many stories about love, and a large number of fox spirits and flower essences appeared; and in the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, the subtleties were in line with the social values of the time, and the monsters also became subtle.
Zhang Yun also found that Zhiwei novels are often intertwined with historical records, and monster narratives will not only affect people's daily lives, but also subtly affect the development of history.
"Flower Moon Essence" is recorded in the Tang Dynasty's "Ballad of Ganze". After Wu Zetian seized power, he hesitated to choose his nephew Wu Sansi or his son as heir. Wu Sansijia Yige Ji is named Su'e and dances beautifully. Once Wu Sansi invited Di Renjie to a banquet and wanted to invite Su'e to come out to perform, but unexpectedly, Su'e hid in the house and cried, saying that she was the essence of the flower moon, and the Emperor of Heaven sent her to shake Wu Sansi's heart and want to revitalize the Li family. Di Renjie was a righteous man, and she did not dare to see it, so she disappeared when she said it. The next day, Wu Sansi secretly explained the matter to Wu Zetian, and Wu Zetian sighed: "It seems that Li Tang dangxing, this is the arrangement of heaven", and finally gave way to his son and returned to Li Tang. "This story reflects the thinking of the common people at that time, who still miss the Tang Dynasty emotionally." Zhang Yun said.
Explanation
Chinese talk about the gods
Why create monsters
Over the years, Zhang Yun has been working hard for the establishment and promotion of Chinese yokai. In the process of promoting Chinese yokai, Zhang Yun encountered many questions, one of which was that Chinese talk about gods, why should he create yokai? What's the point of us talking about monsters now?
In this regard, Zhang Yun explained that the origin of monsters and gods is the same, "human beings are very small when they first want to conquer and transform nature, and many things cannot be explained, so they create myths, monsters, etc. for sacrifice and witchcraft", monsters and myths and stories are bridges between people and unknown worlds such as nature, and they are entangled with the root system of civilization.
When the degree of human civilization is getting higher and higher, the gods and monsters have diverged, and they have several differences: first, people's attitudes, for the gods, from rulers to academic literati are very revered, the status is very high, while the monster stands on the opposite side of the social value standard, for Confucianism, the monster is a "deviant" existence; the second is that the narrative discourse of the two is different, the myth is mostly for the pangu to open up the world, such a grand theme of the world, and the monster is "very reckless, subtle", closer to daily life. At the same time, the yokai and the gods are not completely separated, but also intertwined, "there are some yokai, such as the Wong Tai Sin in the northeast, because they can bring wealth and luck to the common people, and slowly become the gods who are sacrificed."
Zhang Yun mentioned that there is a saying in China called "demons are rejuvenated by people", and the story of demons is a mirror that reflects the hearts, desires and expressions of the people at that time from another side. There are particularly many stories of youkai in China with enlightening significance, which is the embodiment of Confucian values. "We cannot ignore the study of Chinese yokai culture, which, like Chinese mythology, is an important part of folklore."
In the process of promoting Chinese yokai, Zhang Yun also found that the most difficult thing is to change people's concepts, "Everyone thinks that they are feudal superstitions when they hear youkai, but in fact, this is not the case, and they should be viewed dialectically from the perspective of culture, sociology, history, and ethnology." Monster stories have great cultural value and are an incision to understanding where Chinese came from and how Chinese society is changing. ”
In August 2021, Zhang Yun successively launched two novels that tell the story of monsters - "Monster Strange Tan" and "Being a Demon". Different from the critical satire of Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi", he used the Republic of China and the Tang Dynasty as the background to construct two "paradises" full of warmth, where people and demons coexist in harmony.
The original intention of writing these two novels, Zhang Yun is to let more young people accept Chinese monsters, ""Chinese Monster Stories (Complete Collection)" is the narration of the ancients, young people may not accept. "Monster Strange Tan" and "Being a Demon" use the way of novels to reinterpret the story of monsters according to historical materials, which can make everyone more acceptable and allow more people to experience the wonderful Chinese monsters. ”
In the future, Zhang Yun will continue to carry out research on Chinese monster culture and launch related works. Zhang Yun pointed out that Chinese yokai science is "now in a state of just germination", after all, "Chinese yokai culture has been passed down for a long time and has not disappeared so far, and the yokai in Chinese cultural history are rooted in the lives of ordinary people, and its vitality lies in this."
Article/Reporter Zhang Enjie Intern Li Tong
Co-ordinator/Liu Jianghua