On August 21, the Chinese Taekwondo Association issued a formal denunciation of the performance saying that it “smeared the image of the nation and blasphemed Chinese culture”.
The association cancelled the studio’s membership and banned it from participating in national taekwondo contests.
It also revoked the licence of the team’s coach, Liu Hao, who choreographed the dance, prohibiting him from participating in training and competitions held by the association.
However, opinion was divided on mainland social media about the punishment.
“I think the performance respected neither taekwondo nor China,” one person said on Douyin, the mainland’s version of TikTok.
“Has the association overreacted here? It was just a non-governmental group having some fun. Why be so sensitive,” said another online observer.
“I think it is creative. I also enjoyed watching Hong Kong zombie films when I was little. There is no need to make a fuss as long as we are confident in our culture,” commented a third person.
Another online observer supported the punishment and said the performance fuelled stereotypes pushed by Western countries that depict Chinese people as “old fogeys in robes with long braids”.
While a number of videos of the full performance were removed online, several media outlets quoted coach Liu as saying the performance ended with the seven “zombies” “taking off their robes and receiving the world’s recognition of their brand-new image”.
The classic Qing Dynasty zombie image first appeared in the 1985 Hong Kong horror film Mr Vampire, directed by Ricky Lau Kwan-wai, which starred Lam Ching-ying.
Deviating from zombies in Western films, who usually move in a freestyle fashion, in Mr Vampire they used stiff body movements that lay the foundation for 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong zombie productions.
It is believed that Mr Vampire’s zombie image was derived from the Qing dynasty shamanistic practice of ganshi, or driving corpses, which prevailed in the Western region of today’s Hunan province in southern China.
Performers of the practice travelled thousands of miles with the bodies of people who died unwillingly, such as from the death penalty, to their hometown to be buried.
In order to transport more than one body, ganshi practitioners attached the bodies’ arms to bamboo poles, so it looked like the corpses were hopping with their arms stretched out.
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