Excerpt

Introduction:

I have always had an active imagination. I was the sort of child who would see all kinds of things in the indistinct shapes of the dark, and of course, I loved ghost stories.

One of my earliest memories of horror was watching the 1986 TV adaptation of Pu Songling's famous Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Its opening titles, a single, dimly lit lantern, hovering unsteadily over a desolate nocturnal field, to the sound of ghostly, whispering wind, gave me unspeakable chills. During my childhood in Guangzhou, I would often visit Yuexiu Park, which, for a period of time, housed a replica of the underworld scenes from the fantasy epic Journey to the West, meaning I could visit the grim scenes repeatedly. I remember really wanting to live in a cave like the White Bone Demon.

Just where does this penchant for the dark and mysterious come from? I am sure I could lay on a psychiatrist's couch, and attribute it to some rather frightening traumas during my childhood. At the same time, this fascination with fear is natural to us all. This emotion is one of the primal human urges, and whilst it is not one that everyone finds easy to face or admit, or even one that certain societies and cultures are comfortable presenting to the world, we need the ability to be afraid in order to truly know what it is to be brave, calm and safe. One of the things I appreciate in both the writers and readers of horror, is their willingness to face fear.

Over a rather complicated and fragmented life, I have been no stranger to different kinds of fear. I have found myself part of many social groups and enclaves, who have shared their fears with me. Fears that range from facing life in an unknown place, and being different, to fears of those who are different coming into their safe spaces. I have seen, and felt, fear of not achieving, not being good enough; fear of social ostracization, fear of being misunderstood, not being seen, heard, and fear for personal safety in a space which should be the most comforting. Whilst what one is frightened of is entirely subjective, there is no shame in fear itself.

After moving to the UK, I fell in love with gothic fiction. I spent an adolescence reading authors such as Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, Alexandre Dumas, before following them with the likes of Horace Walpole, Charlotte Gilman Perkins and R.L. Stevenson at university. As an adult, I also found myself sitting down to Hammer horror films, eighties American cult classics and Hong Kong zombie films, and later finding out about mainland Chinese Qingming and Zhongyuan releases. I found myself drawn to the likes of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, and films like Guillermo Del Toro's The Orphanage. Whilst gore has its place, it does not affect me nearly as much as that suggestive sense of eeriness.

The Chinese view of Horror has always struck me as being unique. Where nearly every horror myth I have come across in the West is a cautionary tale, China has a long tradition of journal and documentational style writing, referred to as the zhiguai, or tales of the strange, that mixes history with legends and hearsay. Traditional culture assigned these stories of the supernatural and paranormal to the classical literary cannon, which is why back then, five-year-olds like myself were able to watch series like Liaozhai on prime time national broadcasts. Moreover, the mishmash of Chinese beliefs did not label spirits and ghosts as something evil and unnatural, but rather, just part of the normal order of things, with their own place in the world, and traditionally, the 'frights' have only arisen when the spirits are angered, restless, or the boundaries trespassed.

As I began to put this collection together, I came upon a new horror. The more I spoke with agents and editors in China, the more I discovered that there had been a certain 'poisoning' of the genre through a slew of gratuitously violent, gory, and sexualised content, and a string of real-life deaths, all of which were blamed on copying films, books and series with a horror theme. Nobody over there wants to publish Horror.

My own research had shown me that China's horror fiction was at the same stage science fiction had been around a decade ago, and would also be ready to find an international readership, but whilst there was an amazing love for horror literature here in the West, it seemed that people did not want to be known as horror writers within China. I had paved my way into China's publishing industry with my first collection, but even with these contacts and avenues, how could I find those excellent writers I had read and written about, if they did not want to be found? There had been several online short story platforms specialising in horror, which would have been perfect selection pools, all of which seemed to have shut up shop at the start of the pandemic, and never reopened. One of the few horror storytellers I managed to get in touch with, was unwilling to collaborate unless the entire collection was just his work, whilst another showed great willingness, until I mentioned the 'H' word, at which point he politely, but rapidly, fled from the conversation. Another dead end.

I had bid farewell to a day job of fifteen years in print production, in order to concentrate on creating and curating this ground-breaking first anthology of contemporary Chinese horror, and I was already experiencing the abject terror of not being able to deliver this book.

I was not going to give up. I was going to find these voices, by any means. I emailed, sent voice messages, held international phone conversations, stalked and pestered people (in an amicable and courteous manner) on social media, and did my best to explain that Horror fiction is much more established and recognised in the Anglophone market. I could see there was a lot of excellent writing in this genre from the last thirty years, especially around the period of domestic boom, which readers around the world would find fascinating and love to read. I thought how tragic it would be to see these works and creative voices buried. I hoped to gain new recognition for these writers with my anthology, and for this positive interest outside of China to feed back to the domestic market, in the same way it had done with kehuan (sci-fi), and we may just be able to alter attitudes and perspectives within the country. Obviously, a lot of this fell on deaf ears. After all, I had come to them about a sensitive topic, seemingly out of the blue, and pranks and scams are rife throughout Chinese net space. I held my breath, but my already low expectations were lowering still, until one day, my heart leapt at the notifications on my phone. Whether it was the earnestness of my words, the desperation in my tone, my sheer bloody-mindedness, or the scent of opportunity, they started to respond.

The next few months were punctured by immense ups and downs. Word of mouth about the project opened more and more doors, until I had a submission pile threatening to crash my little inbox. I read and read until my eyes felt ready to pop out of their sockets, but this was still only half the battle. I now had access to works and writers in the genre, but assembling the collection I wanted was going to take very careful curation. I have often said that Chinese literature is either very short, or very long, and in horror, it seemed like the best writers worked predominately in the long form. It took a lot of cajoling and discussion to convince writers to share shorter pieces with me, or let me take stories out of the context of larger collections, to try and merge those with some shorter pieces, "Tetrising" them into a collection I feel shows the gamut of contemporary China's Horror scene. I have to say that some of what I was sent just felt like a gratuitous collection of foul language, violence and gore, as well as a level of misogyny that no rural setting or uneducated characters could excuse. These had to be filtered, before quieter voices of solid skill could be allowed to stand out. Like other genres I have been working in, such as science fiction and Wuxia, horror literature is still dominated by male voices at the most visible levels. What was initially put in front of me was almost entirely from male writers, some of whom, unfortunately, were the ones who made the most demands, from content coverage to contractual terms. I had to specifically request those female writers whose works I had had my eye on, either by reaching out to them myself, or insisting to agents that they also submitted some women's writing. There is still the assumption that I would only want 'famous' voices, rather than those who are just starting to have their skills recognised.

I was given collection after collection of stories that were suspenseful or dark in tone. Authors who considered their work "Thriller" or "Mystery" stories. I had to spell it out bluntly. Whilst I would happily look at different themes, styles, and tones, I wanted stories that induced nothing less than intense fear in the reader.

One of the organisations who really understood the project, though, and who were instrumental in helping me seek out new voices, women's writing and a wider range, was the Future Affairs Administration (FAA), whom I had met at LonCon 2014, back when they were still a group of sci-fi fans. It has been heartening to see them grow into a company and leading brand in the industry with a multi-channel network under their belt. Their core business is to develop new sci-fi products ranging from books and films to TV shows and video games, but also to nurture writing talent and grow the community. One of the many projects they run is an annual SF Gala, for which writers from around the world are invited to create work around a different theme each year. In fact, one of the stories in this collection ("Ti-naang") comes from that project. The fact the FAA pivoted so quickly to helping me find the new generation of Horror writers is a testament to the cooperation, perceptiveness, resourcefulness and proactivity of this young team, and their involvement in the editorial process of this story was one of the most rewarding and fruitful collaborations I have had in these projects.

Whilst this collection is meant to introduce you to the wonders, and terrors, of Chinese Horror, it is still climbing out of a pernicious, exploitative era, and in doing so, many current attitudes and the representation of genre in China are problematic, and that extends all the way down to what you actually call it. For example, whilst there are specific terms for certain sub-genres, such as lingyi (paranormal), the most common term for Horror as a whole, is kongbu wenxue, the same "kongbu" (恐怖) that is the term used for Terrorism. Understandably, the word is filled with negative connotations. An alternate name for Horror is jingsong wenxue, but jingsong (惊悚) meaning "shock and fright", has come to be the Chinese equivalent of the term "Grindhouse", or "Goreporn".

Neither of these terms really describe Horror beyond the most superficial and stereotypical elements of storytelling, and certainly fail to illuminate exactly what this kind of literature is really about. Just as science fiction explores the hopes and dreams of a culture or people, their Horror stories examine their fears and anxieties, an equally important undertaking for anyone hoping to understand a society. At its beating heart, Horror as a genre is about human nature, and even when it extends beyond humanity, utilising the full toolbox of fantasy and the impossible, it is still about the impact on the frail human mind and body. Yes, what it shows can be our failings, weaknesses, cruelty and selfishness we would love to pretend did not exist, but without doing this, we cannot improve, progress, or regulate.

Most horror writers I spoke to in collecting these stories preferred to use the term 悬疑 xuanyi (suspense), or thrillers, which puts them on the same shelves as spy stories, or detective novels. In not naming a genre, or employing euphemisms, we risk it disappearing from literary history. I have, in my correspondence, used the term kongxuan (恐悬), in an attempt to invite a more nuanced approach to the genre, and express its diverse nature. A constant reminder that Horror is a lot more than jumps, shock, and gore, though each of those has its place. It tells of the fearful things we encounter around us, and within ourselves.

As print publishing began to shy away from Horror literature, the rise of internet platforms in China became a haven for writers. In fact, many of the stories featured here, whilst being written by well-established authors, only saw the light of day due to social media and horror blogs, which kept the dwindling flames burning at a time when it risked being extinguished by public outcry.

In Sinophagia, I have tried to take a broad approach to the subject of Horror, where much of the selection engages on a psychological level. Chinese society is such a broad and diverse group, with regional concerns and habits usually hidden away in front of a Western audience, to show a unified "Chineseness." But here you will see the urban fear of the rural, the rural fear of the urban, the traditional fear of modern living, and Modern China's fear of its past.

So much of China is still wild land, from mountainous regions and forests to wide barren deserts, and so much of the supernatural thoughts of China surround the ghosts, spirits and monsters that seem to inhabit these places. In fact, there is certainly an idea that Chinese Horror is overwhelmingly rural, but with Chinese society becoming more urbanised, I knew there were some excellent horror stories inspired by urban legends, and based on social sources, and I made a consolidated effort to include those.

My first collection of Stories, Sinopticon, was very much about the visions of China, but Horror is a far more visceral thing, and whilst this may be considered a companion piece, I also wanted it to stand out as its own thing. We wanted a title that sounded unsettling, but without fuelling any sense of Sinophobia. '-Phagia' was chosen because of its association with 'devouring'. If any student studying this is seeking to increase their wordcount, you could consider it an ironic statement regarding the rising Sinophobia around the world, rooted in unfounded fears surrounding Chinese and Asian eating habits.

As always, the primary aim of this collection is to entertain you, the reader, with well-written, enjoyable works, even if that enjoyment is a little macabre, or sadistic.

The writers in this collection are varied. Not just in style, but age, gender, background and importantly, location. Whereas science fiction by nature transcends geographical boundaries, Horror traditions are intensely regional, with strong emotional energies, such as fear, very much embedded in our natural and manmade surroundings. Sinophagia reflects a society still dealing with recent histories of war, invasions, and revolutions, who still have a deep-rooted connection to a land that has not always been hospitable, and a cultural memory of the dangers brought by floods, famine, and the inhospitable terrain which surrounds the flatter cradle of early civilisation. What emerges is a very regional horror landscape, with the ethnically diverse mountains of the South and West, such as the imposing Zhangjiajie range of Xiangxi, providing the perfect sublime, but terrifying backdrop for the Chinese Gothic, whilst the equally impressive glass and steel 'mountains' springing up through urbanisation, fulfil the 21st century literary imagination to engage with the real-life horrors around them. In Sinophagia, we see a contemporary society that is concerned about class, the rural and urban divide, unaffordable housing, the aftermath of biopolitical policies, the alienating impact of urban living and how the growing consumerist economy and overwhelming pressures of the jobs market affect businesses and families. Whilst these issues are present in many non-genre books in China, they are often downplayed, or given imaginary happy endings, or in typical Chinese fashion, endured for a greater good. Horror allows the suffering in these situations to be explored unchecked, and often unresolved. In this collection, you will also see much violence against women, and the obliteration of their agency. China's improved awareness is reflected in its fiction, especially in the works of female writers who boldly tackle this alongside wider humanist concerns.

One thing that I have really enjoyed about putting this collection together, has been the way Horror plays with perspective and voice, and there is certainly a vast array in this book, from conventional omniscient narrators and intimate first-person storytelling, to an unusual second person viewpoint, and the marginalised voices of the non-human and non-mortal. There are neuro-divergent characters, and those who are being deliberately misled or manipulated, and sometimes, a combination of these, suddenly, rapidly switching, which make the stories all the more interesting. Whilst the styles and tones vary from story to story, from literary to journal-like reportage, from grave voices of gravitas, to the darkly comical, each of them has a sense of the uncanny, with themes of entrapment, secrecy and concealment, running through them. I truly believe that many of these stories can be read as archetypes for "The Chinese Gothic".

The last few years seem to have thrown even more darkness into our everyday lives. I sat, a few years ago, feeling surreal whilst translating zombie sci-fi during a tide of infections and lockdowns, and working through this anthology whilst myself becoming infected with COVID added a horrific dimension to the project. Not only are we dealing with a general collapse of society amidst a worldwide health crisis, and wars and conflict on every front, but also a seeming return to old lines of hatred along race, sexuality and gender. To some extent, horror literature helps us work through bad experiences and trauma. Experiencing frightening stories in fiction and emerging from them (relatively) unscathed gives us hope, and helps us think about our own suffering in a wider context. Whilst they are not meant to be a panacea, they do help to move us towards new courage, and towards healing. I am writing this introduction during Halloween, a time when we set up an elaborate space of themed horror fantasy to give the local children the most memorable trick, or treat, depending on how they see it. I have only recently started to appreciate their faces lighting up with not only fear, but also excitement, and then joy, and I can think of no better way to consider how horror can bring a renewed sense of life, as well as fear and reflection.

You may notice that I wrote (relatively) unscathed. You may think that you are going to read this book, and when you finish the last page, you will calmly put it down and get on with your lives, but I hope that as the curator of this collection, it will change you a little along the way. Whether it's a moment's hesitation before you step out on the balcony, or the speed with which you slam the book down after the last twist, I hope that some of it will stay with you for a very, very, long time.