Procursus:

Reanimated corpses —“zombies”— are dangerous in Chinese folklore not only to people but even to divinities. The following brief tale is from a collection by Yuán Méi 袁枚, an eighteenth-century literatus strongly interested in reports of supernatural phenomena.

Such zombies are typically mindlessly destructive, and the one here is no exception. What is perhaps of more interest in the present story is that the corpse, seeking to attack the living protagonist, LǏ Jiǔ 李九, is not deterred by the sanctity or the magical power of the Buddhist sanctuary and the statue of a powerful guardian bodhisattva, but only by the physical violence inflicted on it when that statue comes to life.

The Bodhisattva Wéituó 韦驮 is a very common statue in Buddhist temples, always represented carrying a sword and guarding the premises. He is especially associated with Guānyīn 观音, as reflected in the story “Thousand Armed Guānyīn” elsewhere on this web site (link). See also “A Brief Note on Chinese ‘Zombies’”(link).

DKJ