A subtle yet persistent line divides China’s ancient mythological fictions of the strange and the unexplained between the literature traditions of its northern and southern regions. Most notably, with particular social developments since the Southern Song dynasty, southern China has cultivated a diverse landscape of demons, ghosts, and monsters uniquely its own. While northern tales are populated by fox spirits, the south showcases a pronounced presence of wutong spirits, alongside goblins and mythological beings transformed from snakes, frogs and other animals. The south also displays a rich tradition of gu arts, which especially flourished in the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou. Multiple factors have contributed to this regional and cultural dichotomy: the divergent paths of socio-economic development, as well as the dissonance between the culture in Central Plains area and the ethnical, customary, and social fabrics in the south, a tension that is still prominent today. Since the modern era, western technological influences have significantly transformed these literary traditions of the supernatural and the fantastic along China’s southern coast. It is also precisely here, in the south, where disenchantment (Entzauberung) in the context of modernity first began to emerge. The VORTEX will narrate, in a gentle and evocative manner, the many strange spectacles of ancient southern China.

About the Speaker: Youguijun

Youguijun is an enthusiast of Chinese tales of the strange and the unexplained. He has published several books, including Seeing the Ghost: Reading Notes on Ancient Chinese Records of Anomalies and No Ghost Under the Sun: Ghosts, Goblins, and Monsters in Ancient Chinese Records of Anomalies.