Stories of spirits are commonplace in Chinese American culture, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that ghost stories abound in America’s Chinatowns. Furthermore, there are regular ceremonies in such communities to appease the denizens of the spirit world, such as fireworks at Chinese New Year celebrations and “spirit money” and effigy paper goods to provide for a departed loved one’s needs in the afterlife. Chinatown funerals sometimes involve a marching band that leads a procession. In the casket accompanied by such a cortege one might find daily necessities or favored possessions in the company of the body of the deceased, and a giant portrait of the dead person is often placed atop the coffin as the mourners and their late, lamented loved one make their way one last time to various favorite locations interspersed along the funeral route.
Such traditions stem ultimately from Chinese folkloric veneration of ancestors. In simplest terms, many Chinese American rites and rituals concerning funerals and the afterlife have developed over the generations as a way of showing proper respect by descendants to the spirits of their departed family members. Spirits properly propitiated in this way ascend into the ranks of the demigods in the otherworld, while those who die untimely or violent deaths—and most especially those whose line has ended or whose descendants ignore them—roam this world as restless and resentful ghosts. While evil or forgotten spirits may well do harm to the living, properly revered ancestors conversely may be called upon for blessings or for favor in time of need. Hence funeral and remembrance rituals for the ancestors are in a way the flip side of the coin of cautionary Chinatown ghost stories.
Set in the eponymous districts of American cities from which they take their name, Chinatown ghost stories are firmly grounded in the geographical and historical context that gave them birth and which they appropriate and explore in elements of their setting and plot details. Ghost stories are in general oral, folkloric ways in which both the history and mores of a traditional culture may be transmitted to new generations, and in exactly such a manner Chinatown ghost stories act as a conduit through which lessons may be taught in an exhilarating, entertaining, and memorable way. These lessons generally include the rewarding of the upholding of cultural standards and/or the condemnation of rule-breaking by young protagonists; not incidentally, Chinatown ghost stories shroud such didacticism in telling and evocative details of the Chinese American immigrant experience in general and the neighborhood lore and legend of a given Chinese American community in particular.
Two well-known cautionary Chinatown ghost stories explore areas of friction between parents with traditional values and children who want to fit in with the perceived behaviors and values of their Anglo-American peers. One concerns the perils of submitting to peer pressure by skipping school to go to the movies, while the other involves the even more dangerous practice of breaking into swimming pools after hours. Both situations evoke adolescent practices common enough to give the stories the veneer of truth associated with the genre of the urban legend, and both bespeak anxieties of an older immigrant generation concerned that its children not be corrupted by the influence of the perceived excesses and licentiousness of the larger American culture. The cinema story recounts a haunting by a mysterious woman who “scares straight” a young protagonist skipping school to catch a movie. After his terrifying encounter with a spectral lady in the darkened theater, however, he resolves never to play hooky again, as well as to seek more trustworthy companions in the future. The pool story is starker, and its more serious breach leads to more dire consequences: one of the boys involved drowns, becoming at a stroke both an example of what happens to rule-breakers and a bogeyman whose ghostly hands ever after are said to snatch at unwary swimmers in the pool.
Stories such as these are often associated with specific locations within a particular community, and in such a context it would be surprising indeed if in San Francisco an industry of ghost tourism had not developed in the picturesque and evocative neighborhoods in and around one of the oldest, biggest, and most well-known Chinatowns in America. Such tours focus on the history and culture of the Chinese American community in the Bay Area, spiced up with a healthy dollop of accounts of the supernatural, the macabre, and the sentimental associated with various streets, back alleys, and buildings. Stories of painted women, broken hearts, ghostly perfume, and demonic alley cats enliven walking tours of Chinatown, although the connections between these ghost tours and the folkloric tradition of Chinatown ghost stories seem to be tenuous, at best. In any case, the existence and popularity of such nighttime forays through Chinatown speak both to the mainstream American popular fascination with Chinese American traditions and beliefs, as well as to the general cultural fascination with the spirit world and the occult evidenced by the whole “ghost tour” phenomenon, not to mention pop culture franchises on such themes, which range from the blockbuster Ghostbusters movies of the 1980s to the popular current Syfy Network Ghost Hunters series. It is perhaps also notable that another Syfy program, Close Up Kings, featured the San Francisco Chinatown tour circuit in a recent episode.
Moreover, the endemic belief in the power and perils of the spirits around us has spilled over from Chinatowns into the larger American culture, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that numerous professional practitioners of feng shui—as well as innumerable self-help websites dedicated to the ancient practice—offer advice on how to avoid and deflect spirits of ill-will, for example through the employment of a ba gua (or pa kua) mirror, comprised of a round reflective surface surrounded by an octagonal frame painted in specific colors. One of the uses of such a mirror might involve placing it over a doorway to protect against dangerous spirits.
Perhaps one of the most telling—if perhaps the most cheesy—indications that Chinatown ghost stories have entered the mainstream American popular consciousness, however, is the fact that a recent episode of the hugely popular and abiding Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise was entitled A Chinatown Ghost Story. Although this episode is mostly a retelling of the 1980s cinematic cult classic Big Trouble in Little China, and despite the fact that it has been criticized both for racist content and a somewhat uninspired story line, this episode is in any case undoubtedly a sign of the enduring allure of the popular commodification of stereotypical Chinese American mysticism and supernatural elements, however unmoored from actual folkloric beliefs and practices such pop culture by-products may be.
C. Fee
Ghost Tours
From Colonial Williamsburg to the Ghosts of Gettysburg, from spectral San Francisco to the Salem Witch Walk, America is haunted from sea to screaming sea, and guided ghost tours are available to indoctrinate visitors in the haunted history of all major tourist destinations. Ranging from the chilling to the silly, online rankings help tourists to get the most “Boo!” for their buck.
C. Fee
See also Chinese American Mythological and Legendary Deities; Legend Tripping; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Bloomfield, Frena. 1989. The Book of Chinese Beliefs. New York: Ballantine Books.
Chen, Lianshan. 2011. Chinese Myths & Legends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hearn, Lafcadio. 1968. Some Chinese Ghosts: The American Short Story Series. New York: Garrett Press.
Jordan, David K. 1973. Gods, Ghosts, & Ancestors: Folk Religion in a Taiwanese Village. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. 2010. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York: Knopf Doubleday.