dc.description.abstract | Taiwanese Hakka ghost folklores are founded on the historical imprints of the Hakka people upon this land through the centuries. Ghost stories are interwoven with the lives of the Hakka people—they are the products of their culture and also a presentation of their collective memories, reflecting the Hakka people’s perceptions of and attitude towards death. Regardless of whether you believe in the existence of supernatural beings or not, with its perennial evolution through time, Hakka people’s perception of these beings have already been merged with Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist intellectual traditions, evolving into an irreducible part of cultural traditions and folk beliefs.
Included in this thesis are 42 ghost stories that are told by Hakka people or have taken place in Hakka villages; 33 of them are stories in which the storyteller or the editor has personally experienced “supernatural encounters” and are vivid illustrations of how their thought processes are when faced with death—their proximity, curiosity and fear of it. Whether they are analyzed from their historical contexts or from a social psychological point of view, it can be observed that none of these ghost stories exist in vacuums—all of them have arisen from a wealth of cultural roots.
Therefore, the first focus of this thesis is to examine the cultural implications reflected in Taiwanese Hakka Ghost stories. Investigating within the contexts of, but not limited to, cultural landscapes, fatalism, immigration and colonization, karma and folk traditions, it becomes evident that within these Hakka ghost stories contains the character of its people—a profound mentality towards adopting local identities and growing roots wherever they find themselves in.
The world of ghosts is comparable to that of humans: there is the good and the evil and good ghosts shall be promoted into deities when they come to the rescue of humans—these are what makes Taiwanese folk beliefs extraordinarily unique. These types of stories have been widespread owing to the common belief that performing kind deeds eventually attracts good karma. The second focus of this thesis is to discuss how water ghosts ascend into godship—how they succeed in the challenges of humanity—and also to analyze the spiritual dependence and wishful projections of the Hakka people towards local divinities.
Extending analogies to engage in observations on the mong shin er phenomenon is this thesis’ third focus. By comparing and analyzing contemporary news on urban events and literature against each other, it can be recognized that the fascinating mong shin er phenomenon, which has its roots in folk beliefs, is very much still alive and ever-continuing.
The fourth focus of the thesis is Hakka proverbs—they are inseparable components of the Hakka people’s daily vocabulary and not only pass down crystallizations of ancestral wisdom, accumulations of valuable experiences, exchanges of intimate emotions but also are manifestations of Hakka people’s beliefs in the supernatural. 213 Hakka proverbs pertaining to ghosts have been gathered and collected herein to allow a glimpse into the worshipping of ghosts by Hakka forebears. | en_US |