“You can feel the temperature in this area of the park drop right here,” said Daniel Newman, managing director of Newman Tours, as he circled his largest tour group to date under the shadow of a former state-run hotel. “This is the creepiest stop on the tour for me,” he continues. “Three times I’ve had people on this tour capture an image of the ghost girl on their cameras.”
Halloween in China
Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, and I love a good and spooky (not gory) fright. With a rich history in merciless rulers, unscrupulous gangsters and supernatural worship, China makes an impressive backdrop for the holiday. Though not celebrated among ethnic Chinese in the typical fashion, Halloween is a time to remember past loved ones. Families invite those gone before to dinner where a place of honor with food and drink are set out on the table for the departed family member. The family member is then implored to put in a good word with the gods for those still living. In August, the ghost festival is dedicated to the remembrance and honor of departed loved ones. Unlike last year’s Halloween in São Paulo, Halloween in Shanghai is a big deal. Though it’s not traditionally recognized, as one Shanghai businessman put it, “in Shanghai, they don’t need an excuse to party. If anyone in the world is celebrating something, they join in here. This week it’s Halloween; next week it will be something else.” We’ve seen ads for zombie pub crawls, a Disney villain costume party, a Disney trashed-out princess costume party, and all sorts of other Halloween activities. Just one more reason to love this crazy international city.
Chinese ghost stories
What better way to celebrate Halloween than with a ghost tour of our new city? I’ve dragged Chris on ghost tours in Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Savannah, Prague, Edinburgh and more. Always the believer v. skeptic couple of the group, I’m determined to make a believer out of him yet. Shanghai was our first ghost tour in Asia, and it did not disappoint. Newman and Jack Daliday, both from London but with extensive studies in China, awed the group with background information on sites around the city while using props and iPad imagery to bring the stories to life. We especially liked Newman’s vocal impersonations as that certainly kept us guessing. As an added bonus, we also learned some Chinese calligraphy. At the end of the tour, Newman and Daliday used water brushes to teach the group the Chinese characters for scary words like kill, ghost and usurper, reportedly written by a literary figure in the 1400s in his own blood as he died from an execution of being chopped in two. In celebration of my favorite holiday, and to wish all our worktrotters a Happy Halloween, here are my top-pick Chinese ghost stories from Newman Tours’ Shanghai Ghost Tour.
1. The clumsy waitress A decrepit and charred building stands tall and foreboding overlooking a park. Newman warns us before he begins the story that this ghost has been seen on the tour before. He points up to the sole window visible through the trees. “There, that’s where she only appears through the lens of a camera,” he explains. The ghost girl with the burned skin has reportedly been captured in photos staring out of the room she burned to death in. In the 1980s, the building was a grand state-run hotel. One day during the lunch service at the hotel’s restaurant, a young girl waiting tables trips and spills wine on a customer. Enraged by her clumsiness, the manager grabs her by the ear and hauls her upstairs to the second floor. As punishment, he locks her in the staff room, intending to return later to let her out. A fire breaks out a few hour later, though, and in the chaos of getting out of the building, the waitress is forgotten until it’s too late. Today, the building is a shell of its former self, and the lone window, now surrounded by charred burn marks, opens onto a park where dance groups practice in the evening. As you walk along the path through the park, you can feel a distinguishable drop in temperature as you pass beneath the window. Photos of the windows have revealed a shadowy figure of a woman with a burned face. Restoration workers refuse to enter the room. Is the clumsy waitress still waiting to be let out?
2. A watery family grave A seemingly peaceful pond provides a nice scene for walkers and joggers in Jing’an Park. Not so, according to Newman, as those very walkers and joggers could be pulled in to a watery death at any moment. He points to a nearby clutch of reeds. “This is a good spot for a shui gui to grab you and pull you under,” he explains. A shui gui is a ghost that lives in the body of water he drowned in, and the only way he can pass on is to replace his soul with another’s in the water. There once was a nasty abbot of Jing’an Temple that dealt in illegal money laundering and especially liked the ladies. One day he sees the most beautiful young girl, and he insists on having her. When she rebukes his flattery and bribes, he threatens to commit zhū lián jiǔ zú, an ancient form of punishment that kills nine generations of a person’s family before the person is killed. When the young girl still refuses his advances, he rounds up every living member of her family he can find and brings them to the pond. To the horror of the girl, he drowns them all in front of her before she is also murdered. It is believed in Chinese culture that ghosts can only walk in straight lines. To reduce the ability of the shui gui to pull an unsuspecting passerby into the water, today a zigzag boardwalk runs across the surface of the pond. Potted plants underneath the surface sprout tall bamboo trees. As bodies don’t stay underwater for long, it is believed the young girl’s family members were cut into pieces and placed in those very pots. Are their spirits in the trees now growing from those pots? Or are they beneath the surface waiting to snatch their replacements?
3. The taxi dancer The art deco sign for The Paramount lights up the street as the landmark creates an impressive photo op. I’m watching Chris take the photo as I see Daliday slip a gun ever so quickly out of his pocket. “He sneaked into her room, and bang bang shot her right in the chest,” he exclaims as he startles the German man he pulled the trigger of the cap gun on. Workers have reported music playing long after closing time. In the 1930s, The Paramount was the club of choice for the shakers of Shanghai and the gangsters that ran the city. Known for good liquor, the taxi dancers were what really brought the gentlemen in. Like a taxi cab, when a cool cat wanted to dance with one of the ladies, she flipped a meteor on and you danced (or maybe even something a little more) for a by-minute rate. During this era, due to the national unrest between the two nations and invasion of China, Japanese officials were powerful but not well liked by the locals. A Japanese soldier spotted a particularly attractive taxi dancer one night at The Paramount. She refused to dance with anyone of Japanese origin, no matter the rate. After becoming hostile, the soldier was escorted out of the club. Still feeling offended and with liquid courage running through his veins, the soldier decided he would sneak back into The Paramount that night to exact his revenge. As the taxi dancer slept in her quarters, the soldier put a pistol to her chest and fired. As the tables have turned and The Paramount is now a discrete gigolo club for wealthy women, it is reported that the taxi dancer still performs nightly. After closing hours, phantom music has been reported throughout the building and a silhouette of a woman can be seen gliding across the dance floor in the upper levels. Is the taxi dancer waiting for her last dance or is some rich lady getting special after-hours treatment? Happy Halloween! Have some ghost stories of your own? Share them in the comments. -Monica Disclosure: We highly recommend Newman Tours for its Shanghai Ghost Tour, and we even have plans to take the company’s other ghost tour in Beijing during our next visit. We were provided with one free admission to the Shanghai Ghost Tour for mentioning Newman Tours in this blog post. Prices for the company’s many tours are available at its website at www.newmantours.com, and there are discounted rates for students and children.
