What's a Chinese Vampire?

One would have to be living under a rock to not notice that there's been a huge upsurge in popularity for anything vampire in American pop culture in the past few years.  We’ve had Bram Stoker’s Dracula types that can transform into a bat. Then Anne Rice’s gothic Interview with a Vampire types and most recently the Stephenie Meyer’s romantic Twilight vampires. However, the stories I loved as a child didn't involve vampires with long black flowing capes or romantic leading men who have a penchant for sucking your blood. Instead, I would imagine a Chinese version of a vampire with a bit of zombie qualities mixed in; they’re called “jiangshi”. Jiangshi, as depicted in Hong Kong movies like my favorite "Mr. Vampire" horror comedy series, was a resurrected corpse dressed in Qing dynasty clothes that hops around looking for living human flesh and can only be stopped by a unibrowed Taoist priest slapping a magic piece of yellow paper on its forehead. This Halloween why not watch a jiangshi movie or two? 
- Tomika