What In The Devil Were The Chinese Thinking?

What In The Devil Were the Chinese Thinking?

Chinese people, an ancient civilization, has a complex and unique view on the world of the dead. In this book, we will meet a sky god who tilts the heavens, an archer who shoots down nine suns, and a woman who eats a stolen elixir and becomes the loneliest person on the moon. Visit a Jade Emperor who runs Heaven like an overworked civil service, a Kitchen God who spies on your household all year and gets bribed with candy every winter, and a hell with ten kings, a mirror that shows your true deeds, and an old woman waiting at the exit with a bowl of soup that erases your memory before you're born again.

Along the way: dragons that bring rain instead of breathing fire, a nine-tailed fox with a public-relations problem, a scholar who fails his exams and becomes the most feared demon-catcher in the empire, and a corpse that hops because nobody told it decay was optional.

Each chapter blends myth, history, and a healthy amount of irreverence, tracing how these figures were reimagined generation after generation — and asking, again and again, what the hell the people who dreamed them up were actually thinking. Illustrated throughout with public-domain art from museum collections worldwide.

For readers who love mythology, folklore, and the parts of history textbooks quietly leave out.

Suitable for readers who are into:

Chinese mythology, world mythology, folklore and fairy tales, comparative religion, Journey to the West, the Monkey King, Chinese gods and goddesses, ghost stories, the Chinese underworld, Taoism and popular religion, ancestor worship, Chinese dragons, fox spirits, illustrated history books, pop history, world history for curious readers, Asian history, Chinese culture and traditions, mythology for adults, humorous nonfiction, armchair anthropology, Pu Songling and Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the Eight Immortals.