Do you know where the
capital city of the ghost world is? Well, a
Chinese Daoist will tell you that it is the
county town of Fengdu, on the upper reach of
the Yangtze River in China's Sichuan
province, just 172 kilometres from the
Chongqing metropolitan. Every third day of
every third lunar month, the town holds a
Ghost Temple Fairs following the long
tradition of the grand capital of the shadow
world. During the festival, the locals
celebrate the wedding anniversary of and the
visit to their neighbourhood by His Majesty
the Ghost.
According to the Daoist
legend, everyone will be called to face the
judgement of Ghost King upon death (except
those who are promoted to Heaven
straightway). But to successfully cross the
border into the realm of the dead where the
King’s courtroom situates, you’ll need a
valid passport, which in the old days could
be purchased at Fengdu county magistrate’s
office. You don’t have to fill out any
application forms though, as long as you pay
in cash, an officer would happily issue the
travel document, complete with a round red
big seal to certify its authenticity.
Once you appear in the
court before Ghost King (after your death,
naturally), your good deeds and bad conducts
are to be weighted against each other, and
the outcome will determine whether you should
be released back to the human community by
way of reincarnation or sentenced to Hell.
The Hell,
apparently, is like a multi-storeyed
skyscraper (hellscraper). Some say there are
total of 24 floors in it, others insist that
it has only 18. In any case, it’s a big
place.
Allegedly, the Hell
ward guards (also known as
"devils") on each floor are
specialised in one of the particular torture
techniques, which include hanging the inmates
upside down and leave them in that sorrowful
position indefinitely, taking their skin off,
tearing heart from their body and frying them
in boiling oil. The severity of the
punishment depends on the seriousness of the
offence. And if a crime is so horrendous and
the convict is sentenced to life imprisonment
(or should say death imhellment), the poor
ghost would be subject to the torture over
and over and over and over again, with no parole
eligibility until eternity ...
At the moment, the
ambitious government of Fengdu (It's the
government administered by people, not
ghosts, of course) is undertaking a grand
project to renovate the township to reflect
its celebrated status as the CBD of the Other
World. It is planned to erect the biggest
statue of Ghost King on the planet, construct
a scary ghost town to haunt the visitors and
set up a Hell of terror to torture the
tourists.
The whole project would
cost an estimated 2,300 million yans and is
expected to be complete in August 2007. By
then, if you are getting bored with your life
of peace and comfort and eager to be haunted
or tortured, you know where to go.
