Sinophagia: A Celebration of Chinese Horror 2024

This was an outstanding recommendation that led me to Xueting Christine Ni work. On my engagement with Sinophagia I immediately bought Sinopticon her anthology Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction.

As with the best anthologies Sinophagia provides an introduction and content warnings for each story, then offers fourteen stories ranging greatly in length and theme. The stories span from the earliest 2002 (“Immortal Beauty” by Chu Xidao), to (“Night Climb” by Chi Hui). At the end of each piece, Ni has included thoughtful notes about both story and author and track the different sub genre's of horror covered in these stories, some common to western horror and others more unique to Chinese and Asian stories.

I have picked a few stories that really stuck with me, but I really could have chosen any of these stories and their excellent supporting notes by Ni.

The collection begins with The Girl in the Rain” by Hong Niangzi feeling like a western urban legend horror surrounding a university campus, and then getting into a blood-soaked narrative. Central is the three-person friendship between Jiang Ruohan, Luo Xi, and Shen Jie. Two of the three are in a romantic relationship, and things eventually take horrific turns—those turns being tied closely to the legends established at the outset. The notes describe it as Xiaoyuan Jingson (college horror) and it clearly reflects the stresses of university life, including the social elements.

“The Waking Dream” by Fan Zhou is a science fiction horror story in which technology has been developed to allow people to perform as part of a workforce in a virtual workplace while their bodies are sleeping. Shen Yue is one such worker, but in her case, the shared virtual workplace is littered with what seem to me very Chinese/Asian style monsters. As the story progresses, we learn more about the cost these work practices take and the what or more how she is seeing these. In the notes I discovered the author Fan Zhou writes under pseudonym and keeps her identity behind avatars which makes the story she tells even more impactful.

And due to my love of spicy food I couldn't neglect the Chuan Ge's the Ying Yang pot with its focus on hot pot and traditional magic which is used to trap a thoughtless male who wanted to take advantage. How one can find them­selves “locked” in marriage to the dead through the very act of dining – which food is consumed and how – leading to an unplanned ghost wedding inside a hotpot restaurant ensconced in a dimly lit street. Our protagonist discovers a dish that breaks the boundaries between the living and dead in a story full of food culture and twists. Try to read this one when you are about to go to lunch, preferably Sichuan hotpot.

“The Shanxiao” by Goodnight, Xiaoqing. In this odd story, it’s the damsel who saves the young man in distress, but all is not as it seems in this meta­fictional story with its readerly address: “What? You’re laughing at this tired old plot… yes, a lot of books tell this sort of story.” It disentangles embedded stories in reimagined tales.

Another enjoyable albeit haunting story is Zhou Dedong’s “Have You Heard of Ancient Glory”, which is a social horror about a haunted suburb. In varied perspectives, the narrative cleverly ex­plores the shifting burial practices in a crowded landscape.

She Cong Ge’s “Those Who Walk at Night, Walk with Ghosts” offers stories-within-a-story in a novelette-length tale that captures folklore and haunting across night walks in remote villages. Yimei Tangguo’s “The Ghost Wedding” spotlights the tragic custom of stolen brides and draws atten­tion to sexual abuse, imprisonment and poverty, while Su Min’s “Ti’Naang” is a Frankenstein-type story with a twist.

Cai Jun’s “Huangcun” is another novella that unfolds a pleasant yet ominous tale. It’s immersive in first-person voice, where an encounter with a strange girl on a cold, Shanghai night leads to a visit to her hometown in an ancient house haunted with familial spectres associated with a ghostly flute.

I was also gratified to realise that Ni had chosen a more female authors than many anthologies and a wide spread of writers with those early in the their careers and well established. Also writers with different experiences in publishing some traditionally based, some purely web based.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Solaris, and Tantor audio for the ARC. The narration by both Emily Woo Zeller and David Lee Huynh were great!

This is a celebration of all things Chinese horror, which is fantastic. As this is audio, and I was listening at work without accompanying text, it was hard to note any of the story titles themselves, as they were in Chinese! But there were a few that stood out to me. The editor does a great job of adding notes and translations, however how some of them would pop up as footnotes right in the audio did add a slight layer of confusion for me, as they would repeat the Chinese phrase multiple times before commenting on it. It’s both necessary to define the terms used, but also took me out of the stories a lot.

One story that stood out was a mixture of ghost story, as well as a commentary on the pricing crisis on land that’s happening. An entire housing complex, which our main characters were not aware of when moving in, is mostly being used to house the ashes of the dead. While awake one night, a boyfriend finds a coin in the mouth of his girlfriend, a token used to help the dead. He freaks out and of course they desire to move. The twist that followed was not one I was expecting, and it was well done for something so short. The commentary on land, taking care of loved ones, and placing them to rest, reminded me of this year’s Korean film Exhuma.

Another I particularly enjoyed found a man and woman waking up inside an apartment. With no way out, they are trapped, and as their kidnapper knocked them out, they don’t even know where. Through various phone calls, the person on the other line offers them ways out through various tasks or tricks. I listened to this story right after watching Saw II and the comparisons cannot be understated. While there are no contraptions, the life and death possibility of being trapped, as well as the choices to save each other, does have a kind of Jigsaw feel with the person on the other end of the line. It also feels very reminiscent of those earlier 2000s movies where all the trapped person has is a phone.

Otherwise, with this being kind of mixed, as it includes short stories, novelettes, and novellas, I did struggle a bit with the different lengths, as sometimes I’d get used to a specific voice and then the story would promptly end. Then you’d start all over. I feel like collections of all shorts are a bit easier, but there were none that I disliked! As the editor notes several times throughout, some of these were what would be considered very Classical Chinese horror…which kind of felt like differing stories with the same ending of, “they were dead the whole time!” Not really displeasing, but I think it’s why I enjoyed the ones that differed the most.