Why Do These Spine-Chilling Chinese "Ghost" Animes Have a Particular Fondness for This Region?

“Each took root in South China, yet each left South China — and spoke of South China — in different ways.”

It is common for creative inspirations to collide, but it is a curious coincidence when animated works of the same “ghost story” genre enter the audience’s view one after another within the same period, each sparking its own share of discussion.

The series 《谷围南亭》 （The Last Dynasty）, the film 《世外》 （Another World）, and the short 《拜山》 （Hakka Dream） in Yao-Chinese Folktales 2 are precisely this absurdly coincidental set of “ghost-story animation” triplets.

The first to meet the audience was The Last Dynasty, based on Mo Fei’s manga of the same name, produced by Tencent Video and Kuaikan Manhua, and animated by Two Ten Animation in Wuhan. The work had already built up a following during its manga serialization; since the animation premiered on September 30, 2025, it has drawn in even more fans with its high-caliber production and promotional push.

Then, on October 29, 2025, Another World, directed by Wu Qizhong and produced and written by Yang Baowen, was released in Hong Kong and Macau. Hailed as the pride of Hong Kong animation since the “McDull” series, it has been described as “seven years in the making, with production quality closing in on Hollywood and Japanese standards.” While claiming the “No. 1 spot in Hong Kong film history for locally made animated films,” it also earned acclaim from many quarters.

Earlier this year, Hakka Dream was met with great acclaim as soon as it aired.

Co-directed by Zhang Junjie and Zhou Xu, this work takes the Hakka “bai shan” custom of the Heyuan region of Guangdong as its main thread. Though it runs only a little over twenty minutes, its art direction, which interweaves a sense of everyday life with fantasy, and its plainspoken interpretation of the two emotional motifs of “homeland” and “ancestors” not only resonated widely with audiences but also added a touch of South China character to Yao-Chinese Folktales.

Yet if we examine them more closely from the angles of visual imagery, production environment, and marketing tactics, the three are worlds apart. Another World takes “the knots in people’s hearts” as its starting point, striving to tell a story of universal value and to fuse exotic cultural elements from around the globe into its own art style — yet it cannot leave behind, or escape, that illusory localist complex.

Hakka Dream is the opposite. Although the work wears regional folk custom on its surface, as co-director Zhou Xu said, the South’s “bai shan” and the North’s “tomb sweeping” are hardly different. With one light tap, the story cuts straight into the softest part of the audience’s hearts.

Between these two modes of “surface/interior” inversion, The Last Dynasty, in turn, sits at the intersection most emblematic of animation industry standards.

In this quasi-danmei, dual-male-lead story built on the pun “gǔ+weí=guǐ,” Gao Ying, a freshman who has just arrived at the fine arts academy to register for the new semester, unexpectedly meets Gua’erjia Yinting, the “Prince of the South” who has kept solitary watch over the place for more than three hundred years. With handsome, stylish characters, a plot full of twists and turns, plus historical ghost stories and urban legends... The Last Dynasty has become, inside and out, a highly symbolizable consumer commodity.

This article uses my field notes as a medium and, with the anthropological framework of constructing “collective imagination” as its guiding thread, unpacks these three ghost-story animations that are “similar in form but far apart in intent.”

01 The Newly Invented “Hong Kong Animation”​

“Imagined Communities” and “The Invention of Tradition” are classic concepts in nationalism studies and historiography. Simply put, communities, ethnic groups, regions, and nations can all be understood as communities constructed at the cognitive level. What cements this narrative are all the people who believe in its surface reflections, emotional value, and even political significance.

“Invented tradition,” then, becomes the concrete means of establishing these “communities” that feel real. After all, when old ways of life are still vigorous, there is no need to revive or invent tradition; new “traditions” are usually invented not because old methods have failed, but because people deliberately stop using or adapting them. China’s Spring Festival Gala and Japan’s Kōhaku Uta Gassen, for example, are two classic cases in contemporary East Asian popular culture studies.

Therefore, Another World’s struggle between surface and interior stems chiefly from its reinvention of “Hong Kong animation”: a thing long believed to have declined and to be in urgent need of rescue.

This atmosphere inevitably calls to mind the recent quips in Hong Kong about Hong Kong singers or the Hong Kong music scene being “dead.” The difference is that the former unconsciously participates in inventing history, while the latter attempts to carry history forward through self-mockery and self-rescue.

Historically, Hong Kong animation, though less renowned than Hong Kong cinema, has had its share of highlights. Taking “non-live-action films made with Hong Kong creators/teams at the core” as examples: The Flower Princess（1957）, Master Q（1981）, A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation（1997）, Storm Rider: Clash of Evils（2008）, No. 7 Cherry Lane（2019）, and the most famous and long-lived “McDull” series（2001-2016）, are all representative works.

However, the history of Hong Kong animation is also a discontinuous narrative inseparable from the struggle over the right to define “Hong Kong animation.”

From the 1950s to the present, due to geographic and social resource constraints, Hong Kong has never had a complete animation industry chain. Therefore, animations led by Hong Kong creators/teams have either been “independent, purely hand-made” works within limited conditions, or “end products” assembled from resources gathered from around the world. The 2019 short film Another World was the former; the 111-minute feature now in theaters is the latter.

But the biggest contradiction of Another World lies in this: the more it subjectively wants, through the fusion of global cultural imagery, to present a story of universal value, the more it is swept along by an unconscious localist tendency.

First, the story of Another World is not complicated. Its inspiration came from producer-screenwriter Yang Baowen’s time living in Beijing, and it then used Japanese author Naka Saijo’s novel The Thousand-Year Demon as its blueprint. It tells of a thousand-year cycle in which Gudo, a little ghost serving as a soul guide, meets a girl named Yuri at a transit station for the dead called “Another World,” and gradually guides her to let go of the attachments of her past life and be reborn smoothly.

Yang Baowen said that at the time she lived near Joy City in Chaoyang on the North Fourth Ring Road, often passing an intersection without traffic lights and watching pedestrians and vehicles jostle and rage past one another, she came up with the idea of giving concrete form to “anger, heart-knots, and karma.” Later, she found the framework of The Thousand-Year Demon and filled it with her own vision.

But from a screenwriting perspective, the writers did not tell well a story that could have been interpreted with great breadth and tension. Through one round of promotional amplification after another, what the film’s creative team kept repeating and emphasizing ultimately came down to the line: “making animation that belongs to Hong Kong is a heart-knot shared by all Hong Kong animators.”

Second, because the “Another World” setting is not a gloomy hell but a colorful, physics-transcending alternate dimension, the film’s creators always say when explaining the art design: all the elements are fused together... The character designs and story backgrounds of Another World are not attributed to any specific country or cultural elements; they merely adopt the style of a corresponding era and its cultural atmosphere.

In this regard, the film’s art director Zhang Xiaota summarized: “I wouldn’t dare say this is the Hong Kong style, because Hong Kong itself has no clear stylistic framework.” Director Wu Qizhong also stressed that a working environment centered on Hong Kong creators and linked to animation teams around the world can make Another World’s worldview bigger and broader.

But when the actual production circumstances of Another World are marginalized by the media and audiences, all we can see again are phrases and slogans such as “Hong Kong people’s pride,” “Hong Kong animation must not sink any further,” “Hong Kong animated films win glory internationally,” and “Hong Kong can make great animated films too.”

And although few animated features would claim that they were “easy to make,” the “woe-is-me” tactic is often ruled ineffective. But if the purpose of publicizing “arduous production” is merely to redraw a rallying target called “Hong Kong animation” and to raise one’s arms shouting “So Hong Kong does have animation after all!” — rather than carefully tracing “what Hong Kong animation is” — it ultimately leaves one uneasy.

Such intentions are understandable, and Another World is not an isolated case. But if you ask: do you like this kind of public-discussion atmosphere? Every film-watching friend of mine confesses without exception: I just don’t like it.

02 Bai Shan, Tomb Sweeping, Homeland, Ancestors​

Unlike Another World, which from the very start borrows the shell of foreign cultures and dissolves specific regional elements on its surface, Hakka Dream completely reverses this “surface/interior” relationship.

To go further, Another World’s approach fits modern capitalism’s shaping of globalized imagery and suits the temperament of Hong Kong as an international metropolis. But clearly, this is a spiritual path different from the one that traces its origins to the Shanghai Animation Film Studio and advocates “exploring the national style.” By comparison, Tsui Hark’s A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation, which draws on a Chinese classical novel, is closer to the latter; Tsui himself has mentioned the profound influence that the Shanghai Animation Film Studio’s works had on him.

Back to Hakka Dream.

True to its Chinese title, this is a story about the traditional South China folk custom of “bai shan.” Yet the connotation and denotation of “bai shan,” like an onion being peeled, keep expanding outward through layer-by-layer dismantling.

The outermost layer is the folk-custom imagery and direct behavior tied to a specific region. For example, the Hakka architecture (ancestral houses), the dishes (stuffed bitter melon, stuffed tofu, egg-parcel casserole), the three sacrificial offerings (chicken, fish, pork), the language, and the various details of the bai shan process (climbing the hill, clearing weeds, burning incense, weighing down spirit money, laying out offerings, etc.) shown in the film. The creators have also mentioned this on many occasions.

And although South China itself has subtle variations — “customs differ within a hundred li” — because the suckling pig is an essential offering, the film not only abounds in “pig” elements but also turns the protagonist A-Yuan into a “suckling pig” outright.

Peeling further, it connects “bai shan” with “tomb sweeping,” thereby achieving resonance with the wider public.

In fact, bai shan in South China during Qingming or Chongyang is not purely about commemorating one’s ancestors; it is more like a family gathering. As shown in the film, clansmen and kin scattered in different places gather on their native soil and reconnect with one another. Besides bai shan, activities such as “kinship reunions” and “clan association meetings” are also frequently held in qiaoxiang, the hometowns of overseas Chinese. In this way, the film also brings out the ancestral-hall and clan culture of contemporary Chinese society, which is “prosperous in the South and weak in the North.”

Therefore, whether in the film’s promotion or in behind-the-scenes sharing, the production side first puts forward the explanation that “bai shan means tomb sweeping,” to lower the audience’s comprehension cost. In this way, whether it is the northern colloquial “shangfen,” the “baibai” of the Fujian-Taiwan region, or various other regional expressions, all can be generalized into a popular consensus based on historical tradition.

The innermost layer, then, is the emotional connection to “homeland” and “ancestors.” With this layer of connection, folk custom, as a popular consensus, can convey cultural meaning of more universal value — it belongs to the Chinese people, to Chinese communities worldwide, and to humanity itself.

Chen Liaoyu, general director of Yao-Chinese Folktales 2, said on the program Lan Yu’s Studio: “The world of conversing with ancestors... is a world steeped in a very Chinese context; Chinese viewers will smile knowingly. (For example) it is full of Easter eggs, including a child asking his ancestors to bless him with good grades. (So) what the ritual of bai shan truly resolves are the problems and needs of the living.”

This approach of using a point to bring out the whole has been proven by many acclaimed animated works of the past (especially Hollywood ones). The most classic are Coco (2017) and Turning Red (2022).

Just the year before last, also in Hong Kong, the smash hit The Last Dance told audiences the same thing: the living, too, have many hells they need to break through.

03 Embodied Consumption: “This Artwork Is Unlucky”​

Rewind to around Christmas last year. Another World held a “Thanksgiving Day” event in the 4th-floor atrium of New World Plaza in Mong Kok, Hong Kong. In advance, attendees had to purchase event tickets at designated venues using their movie ticket stubs; those who chose specified screenings could also meet the creative team face to face.

The venue was limited on the day, but the crowd was considerable, the planning was rich, and fan elements were everywhere. The simplest examples were themed tote bags and “itabags” covered with character badges. Gashapon were 30 HKD a pull — a moderate price — and many visitors queued up, opened their capsules on the spot, and then formed groups on the nearby mall seats to swap and trade. Meanwhile, some fans talked about their fondness for specific characters in the film and recommended them to like-minded others.

But clearly, a settled community has yet to form around Another World, and the nourishment of fan works is relatively lacking. This is even more true for Hakka Dream, which is shorter and has only recently been released. By comparison, The Last Dynasty presents a striking contrast —

Beyond the “newly invented collective imagination” and the “historically rooted collective imagination,” this “one-of-a-kind Chinese folk-custom micro-horror suspense animation” (Tencent’s promotional tagline) shows us what the “consumption narrative of folk-custom symbols” and the “collaborative creativity of the animation industry” look like.

First, because today’s consumers (Eiji Ōtsuka’s “narrative consumption theory” calls them “users”) are accustomed to receiving and reassembling fragmented information, people no longer consume the story itself; they choose to consume settings and symbols.

Urban legends are a typical product of incomplete information being repeatedly constructed by people; the internet age has accelerated their reproduction and spread.

For example, the “Eight-Coffin Cursed Array at Yiwan Plaza” in The Last Dynasty is modeled on Liwan Plaza in Guangzhou. Here, more real than the street rumors are the accumulated grievances between property owners and vendors, occasional tragic incidents, and the declining commerce of the old city. As Shi Aidong analyzes it: unlike ancient legends, which preserved interpersonal emotional communication and judgments of right and wrong, modern urban legends have become a sewer through which city dwellers drain negative emotions such as loneliness, anxiety, and unease.

In The Last Dynasty’s processing, such urban legends are symbolized even further. Liwan Plaza and its rumors are highly abstracted into tomb structures, exorcism talismans, feng shui arrangements, zombie soldiers, and a girl with double pupils — all supernatural elements that Hong Kong zombie films brought to prominence.

Second, fan communities, as unpaid laborers in the animation industry ecosystem, give animated works an inexhaustible vitality. Ian Condry （Ian Condry） argues that it is precisely this “collaborative creativity” （collaborative creativity） — jointly participated in by animators, associated manga artists, sponsors, merchandise distributors, and a great many acts of “powered by love” fandom — that allows “animation” to retain its cross-media vitality in global society.

In this regard, The Last Dynasty has made many fruitful hands-on attempts. For example, it organized a themed art exhibition and directly operated the “Nanting Shop.” Every visitor’s consumption experience highlights the uniquely human significance of “embodiment” （embodiment） — that is, something of flesh and blood, non-virtual, and incalculable.

Let’s start with the art exhibition. Those who made a special trip to OCT Harbour, an out-of-the-way shopping district in Shenzhen, to see it were surely fans of The Last Dynasty. The venue simply recreated the scene of the “Great Qing Dynasty Hotel” and put up some animation production materials.

To add fun and to boost the platform’s data, the exhibition featured interactive games at different difficulty tiers. The hardest quiz even asked such tricky questions as: What pattern is on the back of Gao Ying’s phone? What color is Gao Ying’s pencil case? What is the reservation phone number of the Great Qing Dynasty Hotel? Needless to say, this is not a task that can be completed quickly within ten minutes (of course, you could also just go online to search for the answers); to complete it successfully and claim a “tracing-paper bookmark” with lovely artwork, you would really have to scrutinize the series frame by frame.

What was striking was that, in that same moment, a young fan who looked like a female college student was carefully viewing the exhibition, trying to find the quiz answers from it. “She just wants to complete the quiz on her own,” said the person accompanying her.

Another fan check-in spot for The Last Dynasty is Nanting Village on Xiaoguwei Island in the Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center. Here, there are some standee decorations related to the animation, along with a small shop selling merchandise. According to the person in charge, almost every day fans come here on “pilgrimage,” and they are always quick to snap great photos, pick out goods, and pay.

Within this seamless sequence of check-in rituals, certain embodied contradictions — perhaps absurd, yet real — stand out as especially interesting.

For instance, in the dim light, a visitor picked up an acrylic art board and studied it closely, murmuring: “This artwork is so beautiful — too bad it’s unlucky and not suitable for the home.” The moment she finished speaking, the person in charge came over in surprise: “What’s unlucky about this artwork?” The answer: in that scene, Gao Ying is physically cut in half at the waist.

04 Epilogue: Crossing the Boundary Lines of the Animation Field​

Now, the “little Nanting shop” has quietly closed. But fans of The Last Dynasty will continue to be fascinated by this “Chinese-style horror,” keep shipping the “Ying Ting” pairing, and look forward to the second season that is “being planned.”

Another World has been distributed in the UK and Ireland and is expected to land in Japan within the year. As for Hakka Dream, with the national tour of the “Yao-Chinese Folktales: Dream-Making Wonderland” Art Exhibition, who knows whether this “story of one corner” will keep finding its way into countless homes?

From Hong Kong to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, to Heyuan, to Wuhan, Beijing, Shanghai, and then to the world... The Last Dynasty, Another World, and Hakka Dream each took root in South China, yet each left South China — and spoke of South China — in different ways.

In this way, crossing the boundary lines that exist across the field of animation — tangible (national borders, frontiers, customs) or intangible (language, customs, imagery) — our understanding of “Chinese animation” should likewise become all the more vast.