10,000 Years of Strangeness: A Paranormal Primer for Ancient and Modern China

Part II: True Tales from the Locals

Chapter 9a: Chinless—无下巴

Previous Chapters 前章: Part 1: Chapter 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5-1, Ch 5-2, Ch 5-3, Ch. 6

Previous Chapters 前章: Part 2: Chapter 7, Ch 8-1, Ch 8-2, Ch 8-3, Ch 8-4, Ch 8-5, Ch 9

Previous Chapters 前章: Part 3: Chapter 10, Chapter 11-1, Chapter 11-2

Apologies for posting this chapter out of order. It belonged in Part II and I somehow skipped it in going through my notes. Enjoy it anyway. It's "bone chinning."

Having been in China for so many years, I’ve done business with a lot of people and made a lot of friends from among them. A good friend I made here is “Eleanor”. Eleanor was the bill payer at a company where I ran several English classes over the course of a few years. It’s a huge multinational. It’s like one of those Blofeld-associated conglomerates you see in James Bond movies that is into everything and inescapable, though I by no means mean to imply that its scruples or ethics were at all Blofeld-like. That company is so huge that I had a classmate from high school and my cousin working for it at the same time I was teaching hundreds of its employees in China.

Incidentally, it was one of the HR personnel from this company that went on to Tencent and recommended me to one of the secretaries for my first gig there. She was a tall attractive girl from northern China, very nice too with a great sense of humor. From that job I was selected to teach English at almost every office in Shenzhen where they had set up shop. It seemed like literally dozens of Chinese companies that were in construction, urban design, architecture, landscape design, drafting, you name it, were being bought up by this large conglomerate and, in the process, creating teaching jobs for yours truly.

One of the two most beautiful girls I’ve seen in China also worked at that company. Perhaps not surprisingly the other is at our old friend Tencent.

But let’s get back to Eleanor. She became a close friend, and later what you’d call a friend of the family. Her daughters attended some kind of English program in Washington, DC, one summer and they all lodged at my mother’s house just outside the city. She and my mom became close friends as well. To this day they still correspond and send little gifts back and forth on Chinese and American holidays (usually me acting as courier during trips home). The one daughter I’ve met is particularly artistic and loves making craft projects to send “Grandmom.”

Horsing around with Eleanor & friends at Christmastime.

So why am I telling you all this? So you know that my friend Eleanor isn’t just making some crap up about ghost stories in China to put one over on a foreigner. She is a friend who is merely sharing a family story just like my family has shared them with her.

Around 10 years ago, a colleague of her mother-in-law’s went out to the local watering hole to down a few after work Suizhou, Hubei (湖北随州).

Suizhou around Halloween time.

That night he decided to walk back home by himself. At that time, her mother-in-law’s hometown was a remote and desolate place without many people around. If the picture above is any indication, it's pretty rural.

This colleague of hers had walked a few miles along the moonlit country lane when he spied three people playing poker at the side of the road.

They invited the man to play cards with them. So he sat and played, but he lost every hand. Now in China, when someone has a run of bad luck they say “Have I run into ghosts? (撞上鬼了?)” So he says to himself, “What the hell is going on tonight? Did I run into ghosts or what? Is that why I’ve lost every hand?”

“Have you ever seen a ghost?” one of the three guys asks.

“No, I haven’t. But people say ghosts don’t have chins.”

As soon as he’d said that, he looked around and noticed to his horror that none of these three men had chins!

“Oh my God!” He screamed, took to his heels, and ran all the way to home, leaving all his money behind.

That night he was sleepless. The next day his family accompanied him back to the place where he played cards with the alleged ghosts the night before to try and retrieve his money. To their surprise, his money was still there! But the money from the three guys was all Hell money (地狱的钱), fake money printed and used to appease the dead. It had all been burned as an offering to the dead!

Images: 1-3-4-5-6, rest mine.