#jca chow

Here is a long explanation for those who are interested. I hope my expression is accurate enough.

• The role Uncle plays is 黑无常 (Hei Wuchang). In Chinese mythology, we have a pair of death gods, one dressed in all white, and the other dressed in all black. According to popular folk beliefs, the "white" one is responsible for guiding those good, kind souls to the afterlife, while the "black" one is responsible for escorting the souls of bad people and capturing fleeing evil ghosts. The "white" Wuchang is gentle and kind, always smiling, and the "black" Wuchang is fierce and tough.

• The role Jade plays is a Chinese paper doll for the dead. There is a classic Chinese horror story about paper dolls: if you draw pupils on a paper doll, it will be possessed by a wandering ghost and come alive.

(Usually, only the "white" Wuchang has a long tongue, because he was hanged. I thought this feature was quite interesting, so I boldly added it to the "black" Wuchang that Uncle plays.)

In tradition, the family of the deceased will burn paper effigies of people, objects, and money to provide for the deceased in the afterlife. One popular opinion is that the burned paper dolls will accompany the deceased in the afterlife, taking care of their lives and keeping them from feeling lonely. And the burned paper money and paper houses can enable the deceased to have money to spend and a house to live in the afterlife. (Interestingly, nowadays you can even customize a paper iPhone for the deceased.) However, fewer and fewer people continue this tradition because it is not environmentally friendly and is prone to causing fires.

• The role Chow plays is the qi vampire. Yes, a qi vampire used to appear in an episode of JCA. But when we talk about Chinese vampires, the image that comes to mind first is a corpse in mandarin clothing of the Qing Dynasty. This is probably because the specific design of Chinese vampires originated from the folk tales and legends in the Ming and Qing dynasties. And in the 1980s, many classic Hong Kong films featured vampires dressed in Qing Dynasty costumes, and we as audiences, loved them very much. As a result, this idea that Chinese vampires wear Qing Dynasty costumes became more widespread. But the vampire image in JCA is also okay, because Chinese vampires are basically mutated corpses which can't rest in peace or have bad fengshui in their graves.