Emperor Jiangshi

This superior form of the jiangshi develops, within the Chinese imaginary of the reanimated dead, the figure of a corpse of the highest rank: that of a sovereign or high dignitary who, buried without the appropriate rites or whose tomb was profaned, rises as a jiangshi of exceptional power. Tradition attributes to powerful deceased an especially intense qi, and on that basis folklore and later fiction imagined imperial dead capable of dominating other corpses. It is associated with the great Chinese mausoleums, such as that of Qin Shi Huang in Xi'an, scenarios where the wealth of the tombs and the fear of their profanation fueled legends of undead guardians.

The imperial jiangshi retains part of the memory of its identity and exercises command over the lesser jiangshi, which it directs like an army of corpses. Unlike the common forms, more instinctive, it maintains a notable will and cunning. It drains the vital energy of its victims and, in versions influenced by modern vampirism, also their blood, although the traditional foundation of the jiangshi is the absorption of qi. It possesses strength far superior to human and resists lesser Taoist seals, so that only the most powerful rites and talismans manage to subdue it. Its condition as sovereign dead makes it the apex of the hierarchy of reanimated corpses.

Its symbology combines the emblems of Chinese royalty with the signs of death and corruption: the courtly garments, the seal and the insignia of power, blackened or profaned. It embodies a disturbing inversion of the Confucian order, in which the sovereign, who was to guarantee harmony and receive the cult of his descendants, transforms into a predator of his own people. It is conceptually opposed to the celestial fox (huli-jing) that ascends through Taoist cultivation, for it represents the contrary path: that of earthly power that corrupts in non-death. As the cusp of the jiangshi cycle, it expresses the fear that not even the greatest escape a «badly closed» death.