The treasure author that Ah Xin wants to recommend to you today is a youkai who has been addicted to various yokai stories since he was a child, and he spent 10 years sorting out 1080 kinds of yokai and their stories from nearly 300 classic documents, and sorting them according to the four categories of goblins, goblins, ghosts, and monsters, salvaging forgotten yokai from traditional culture, and assembling them into "Chinese Yokai Stories (Complete Collection)", which can be called a Chinese yokai encyclopedia-style work.
Since then, the author Zhang Yun has also been affectionately known as "the person who gave 1,080 kinds of Chinese monsters a hukou".
Out of his extreme obsession with youkai culture, Zhang Yun also tried to write a book and biography for each youkai, creating a lot of Chinese zhiwei stories that were warm or witty.
Not long ago, his monster mystery novel "Cat Monster: Chang'an Monster Chronicle" was released on the market, interpreting a thrilling story of "Wu Zetian Cat Ghost Case".
The demon hunter Zhang Yun registered 1,080 kinds of monsters
Zhang Yun's study of Chinese monsters has undergone a conscious transformation from unconscious.
Born in the early 1980s, Zhang Yun grew up in the countryside of northern Anhui.
Grandma's monster story, the folklore and strange stories that the old people at the end of the village heard from their elders, were his earliest enlightenment about youkai.
As he grew older, in addition to reading, he especially liked to collect wild history strange talks and Zhiwei notes, and he also found more monsters from them, he saw them with relish, and he was also proud of the long history of Chinese monster culture. And this is only out of personal interests.
Zhang Yun
Zhang Yun really began to consciously collect and sort out Chinese monsters, starting from a comic exhibition experience many years ago.
At that time, he went to visit a comic exhibition and found many children dressed up as various yokai, out of curiosity, he asked a child if he knew what kind of yokai he was playing, but the child replied: "Of course, I know, this is a Japanese yokai, called a bird." We are dressed up as Japanese monsters. ”
It was at that moment that he felt a great shock and heartache. Zhang Yun said in an interview with The Paper: "Yokaiology is an outstanding science in Japan, and through the efforts of many people, it has become a business card of Japanese culture and has also influenced China. And this yokai fashion, which is popular in Japan, has been lost in its "place of origin" China.
Pictured: Japanese Yokai
According to statistics, 70% of Japanese yokai actually come from China, 20% are from India, and the remaining 10% are japanese yokai.
It was also from then on that he began to consciously collect monster stories.
In order to find each yokai, he traveled to various libraries, and it took seven or eight years just to collect the yokai, and then he spent two or three years translating the text into the vernacular and sorting it out.
In the past ten years, Zhang Yun collected 1,080 monsters from more than 300 ancient classics such as "Bai Zetu", "Shan Hai Jing", "Search for God", "Natural History" and so on, divided into five categories: "Commander", "Demon", "Jing", "Ghost" and "Strange", and finally gave China's monsters a hukou.
Zhang Yun said:
The history of monsters in China is actually very long. From the early human archaeology and cultural relics, such as the Hongshan culture, liangzhu culture, etc. have unearthed very mature monster images, such as the jade pig dragon of the Hongshan culture: it has a pig's mouth, a snake's body, a horse's mane and the overall form of a dragon.
Jade Pig Dragon
Earlier, some petroglyphs in the north date back to 10,000 or 20,000 or tens of thousands of years ago, and they use some paint to carve a rich image of a monster on the rock wall. Monsters are not things that are far away from us, and all the dynasties have been integrated into the lives of the people at that time.
Monsters are like a mirror, human history, people's lives and psychological cognition at that time can be illuminated, there are many ethnological, cultural, anthropological, textual traditions, we say there may be some bad things in it, but can not deny the whole it is an important part of a good Chinese culture.
Cat Monster: The only monster in China that is recorded in the national code
The new book" Cat Monster: Chronicles of Chang'an Monsters, as the name suggests, tells the story of cat demons.
In the book, Zhang Yun uses his strange and magnificent imagination to write more than 20 kinds of strange stories about cats and ghosts in the Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty, and unveils a shocking case in the process of the protagonist and his party "catching demons" to solve the case.
The cat monster, also known as the cat ghost, is a kind of monster that prevailed in the Sui and Tang dynasties.
The Tang Dynasty's "Chao Ye You Zai" recorded: "In the season of the Sui Dynasty, cats and ghosts began to cause trouble, and the family pension cats were disgusted with charm and quite gods. Thousands of people were accused of murder in Kyoto and counties. ”
It is said that cats will become cat ghosts after death. Legend has it that the person who keeps the cat ghost first goes through a set of rituals and then kills the cat prepared in advance, and the longer the number of cats killed, the better.
This kind of sacrifice is usually carried out at midnight, and the genus of the "son" is a rat, which means "offering the mouse to the cat" and cannot be interrupted, otherwise it will be eaten back.
It is said that the victim of the murdered cat ghost first has pain in his limbs like needle, and this symptom gradually spreads throughout the body, and finally reaches the heart, when the heart has a pinprick sensation, the victim will vomit blood and die, and the victim's property will be magically transferred to the home of the person who has it.
The cat monster is also the only monster in China that has been recorded in the national code.
According to the Book of Sui and the Zizhi Tongjian, in the eighteenth year of the Sui Kai Emperor, that is, in 599 AD, the Sui Dynasty's mother, the Dugu Empress, suddenly suffered from a tingling sensation all over her body and fell ill in bed, suffering from the "disease of cats and ghosts". History calls it the "Dugu Tuo Incident".
In the revised and promulgated "Great Tang Shu Discussion" during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, article 262 of the "Tang Shu Discussion" stipulates: "Whoever prepares cat ghosts and teaches the law of cat ghosts shall be hanged; Family members or those who know but do not report it, all flow three thousand miles. “
It is said that Xiao Shufei cursed Wu Zetian before she died: "May I be a cat in the next life, and Awu a rat, and the world will devour his throat." ”
Since then, Wu Zetian has often been disturbed by nightmares, and he has also changed his former love for cats, and is extremely taboo about cats.
The book "Cat Monster" is set against the background of "Wu Zetian Cat Ghost Case", which opens a wonderful story of twists and turns.
Whether it is a cat or a ghost, the human heart is even dirtier than the ghost after all!
Chang'an City is bustling during the day, and at night it is the time when hundreds of ghosts walk at night.
Woohoo! Wizards put on robes, cat face masks, blow human bone flutes, and summon gods and ghosts from all sides.
The cat that escorts the silver cart, the cat that spits out people's words, the cat that worships the moon with skeletons, the cat that bleeds in the palace...
20 bizarre cases related to cat ghosts, interpreting the beginning and end of the Wu Zetian cat ghost case.
One of China's most famous zhiwei people, Zhang Que, the author of "Chao Ye You Zai", Di Renjie's grandson Di Qianli jointly investigated the case, and there was also a "National Style Illustrator" to draw the cover and present a beautiful ghost illustration.
The story is set in Chang'an City in the late reign of Wu Zetian, and Zhang Yun uses his strange and magnificent imagination to write more than 20 kinds of strange stories about cats and ghosts in the Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty.
In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Que's notebook novel "ChaoYe You Zai" once recorded that the turmoil caused by the cat ghost case ended as "passing false accusations, and more than a thousand families of the Beijing division and counties were killed".
In the book, Zhang Yun wrote about the events of gods and monsters such as Ga Rang, cat ghosts, and Dina gods, and also recounted the cat ghost case in Chang'an during the journey of catching demons and detectives.
At that time, the jealousy of cats and ghosts made the people panic, and the dispute over the crown prince caused an undercurrent to surge above the court.
On the seventh night of the first month of November, a group of cats and ghosts, singing and dancing, hijacked the vehicle carrying 100,000 gong silver and disappeared; The puppet master Camel saw another self eerily in the night...
Kurita Makoto, who came from the east of Japan, brought a black cat to set off the Chang'an storm, li Zuo, the general of The Great Shun, lost the 100,000 tribute silver used to print the "Great Cloud Sutra" and build the Dayun Temple, and the words appeared on the wall of Wu Zetian's temple, and the cat ghost spat out the words "Ru is a mouse, I am a cat ghost!" "And threatened revenge ...
As Zhang and Di Qianli began to investigate these serial cases, the truth became more and more bizarre. Did Chang'an City really come to the cat ghost?
Is all this the work of cats and ghosts? Or maybe there's a dark human heart behind it.
Some things, without knowing the truth, are better.
In order not to spoil, the introduction of the story Ah Xin is here, the truth is what, you need to look for it in the book.
In short, the suspense of the spirit monster in the book is closely integrated with the history of the Tang Dynasty: Wu Zetian, Princess Taiping, Wu Sansi, The Demon Monk of the Western Regions, the Japanese Envoy to the Tang Dynasty, the Puppet Master, the Xiaowu Marquis, the Peddler Pawn... All kinds of people appeared on the scene, deducing a vast picture of Chang'an.
Elements such as the wonders of the Tang Dynasty, the strangeness of the legend of cats and ghosts, and the suspense of detectives are all vividly displayed in this "Cat Monster: Chronicles of Chang'an Monsters".