Jiang-shi Jester

i love her

Stiff legged, loves to bounce, more interested in sucking out your life force than your actual blood. Which I don't know which is worse-a quick bloodless death but dying feeling cold; or the gradual sapping away of my life force. Which is also being cold.

But I had to think why he dressed like that.

A google says:

And Like.....What is a CHINESE OFFICAL OF THE QING DYNASTY? How is that defined. What do they DO exactly? What is a Jiangshi's JOB prior to hopping?

And looked it up.

and Ironically enough.

It's a generalized bureaucrat

More specifically, he's a numbers guy. He's an accountant, he's the tax guy, he's the guy managing the funding of the city state, he's the guy in the charge of the prisons, a Qing Dynasty Official is just a umbrella term for a massive amounts of different civil service jobs. They handled everything from allocating finances to build public temples and bridges, to the minting of coins, to working directly in the Forbidden City to working directly with the military to just basically handling taxes.

The reason why Jiangshi are dressed like that is the public sentiment/joke that 'Fucking Tax guy is a vampire with no heart fucking blood sucker' that Transends nearly all cultures in a strange solidarity the same way big hats, fried bread/dumplings, and that dragons rip hard as hell does.

So that brings two thoughts to my mind.

It's hilarious because vampires LOVE counting stuff and Jiangshi LOVE counting stuff, it's one of your escape routes to fucking throw some shit down and be like 'COUNT BITCH.' while you make your get away. The Guy whose whole job is to count has to keep counting even in DEATH.

2. Jiangshi would be insanely smart? In order to become an Goverment Official in the Qing dynasty before it was abolished, you had to take a really really hard test. It was designed to keep it relatively fair and even when it came to who became a civil servant-rather than let it just be dominated by the aristocracy. (of course it wasn't immune to corruption, bribery or the fact a rich man will have more resources and time and luxury to study for the test while a poorer man would struggle.) You also had to be preemptively recommended for the exam by someone with good standing who can back up their claim that you'd be a good candidate. And like any intense exam with high stakes, there were numbers of fatalities-including suicides and psychological breakdowns from the stress-one man's breakdown leading to the Taiping Rebellion where he led a sort of cult like following in a rebellion.

Decided to draw High Roller as a Jiangshi, or a Chinese Hopping Vampire.