Time for Part 2! I want some answers dammit! Links:
Part 1 &
Part 2. The clip begins with a voice over saying that although Howard completed his solo mission of experiencing the paranormal, they still wanted to find the original "Corpse Fisher" that they wanted to interview so they set off to find him after a day of rest.
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These villagers also don't know what happened at the end of
the last episode. |
They keep being pointed in different directions by village people and the presenter comments on how the mountain roads are quite twisty and dangerous (
I've been on some roads like that in China before. Can confirm you fear death at every corner, LITERALLY.)
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The red brick is pretty creepy...Vengeful ghosts like to wear
red D: Then again so do Chinese brides though... But a lot
of vengeful ghosts are scorned brides! It's a vicious cycle. |
They seem to find the place that the original Old Dude lives and Howard says how hopefully they'll be able to find OOD (original Old Dude) because he can take them by boat to see the corpses.
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| "Bai bitches" |
They see a small boat going past and they believe it's OOD but they think that he suspects the police have him under surveillance so when he saw the camera crew, he steered away. The host and Translator Lady shout out "OOD where are you?" futilely into the lake.
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Imagine they're shouting their love for each other instead of
shouting for the Corpse Fisherman. |
I'd like to note that this scene also looks like something from a romantic drama lolol. 5/7 would watch.
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The villagers speak their own dialect but I'm not sure what
it is. It's interesting though! |
The presenters decided to follow OOD's route by foot by asking villagers how to reach him. They thought even if he refuses to be filmed, they could at least film his process of "fishing" the corpses. One villager tells Translator Lady some information but I didn't really understand... she says something about it smells really bad in summer and when children see it, they get very scared. Howard comments that the villagers were being very enthusiastic and kind, trying to help them find OOD.
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| DIY buoys |
One villager takes them over to what seems to be OOD's spot and Howard says there aren't any corpses hanging there at the moment but they have these man-made buoys made out of empty metal cans. The bottom of the buoys is actually a net and at night, OOD brings up the net to see if there are any corpses there.
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| Pretty ominous image |
The presenter says, we couldn't see any corpses at the other bay but the rope around the rocks should be hanging onto corpses but it's submerged in the river so it's unclear whether it's a corpse or not.
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WHY U DO THIS. Ok for our entertainment, but still! Much
scare, *mutes laptop*. |
Howard says a (probably Taoist) master back home gave him this bell which when rung, apparently lets spirits know that they are trying to contact them.
Errrrrr this spiritual frequency better not be valid through laptop speakers because I am NOT trying to contact any of y'all. Let me just put on some headphones real quick.
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| Poor Translator Lady is getting the crap scared out of her. |
Howard says after ringing the bell for a bit, they could hear a loud noise from behind. Translator Lady says that they could hear a loud "pong pong pong" sound which was loud enough to hear over the wind. The crew all decide to leave.
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Damn, my screen cap doesn't show Translator Lady holding
onto Howard's arm but she does it later in the scene! Shipping
this couple. The fangirl always finds a way. |
The footage is now dark and they're all walking. A villager seems to say something to them from a distance but I can't really hear and they carry on walking.
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| Woop woop it's the sound of da police. |
Then suddenly they get stopped by a policeman and he asks them what they're doing around so late. They say they're just here on holiday from Hong Kong and the police man says there's dead people here and you're coming here to play.
Yeah man, why you playing where there's dead people, gosh. Howard says normally in rural areas like this, they don't have policemen patrolling so they suspect the policeman is there to check whether OOD has been illegally "fishing" corpses.
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Their faces say GUILTY! A.k.a., people you want to play
poker with. |
The crew all look like naughty children when questioned by the policeman. Clearly none of them have ever played poker.
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He looks like such a friendly uncle! Also, it seems one of the
job requirements of Corpse Fisher is to be swag AF. |
Part 2 begins. The voice over says the next day, they managed to contact OOD through a villager and he agreed to have the corpse fishing process filmed but to not be so conspicuous, he only allowed one person with him to film.
But dude, you're being filmed... this is the most conspicuous thing ever. Once on the internet, never off the internet! They had a camera man ride the boat with OOD and decided to set off at 5am the next morning.
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| Dang, that rubbish and polluted water... |
By the section of the Yellow River near this village, there's a large area that stops waste (
I'm thinking it's some sort of dam or filter?) at the bottom of the river. It collects up innumerable amounts of rubbish and also any corpses that drift there from the river.
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| Ominous... |
When the gate opens in the morning is the time to begin work.
Man, they called it Dead People Bay but they have the real name underneath directly translates to something along the lines of Big Trousers Bay? It's a sign to put on your big boy pants now... Ngai Jik Gwun began fishing for corpses at 16 and is now 40 y.o. He's fished at least 1000+ corpses from the Yellow River. In the summer when the Yellow River expands, the number increases even more shockingly. He's experienced fishing 20 bodies in one day.
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Woah... that beautiful mountain in the background and then
that polluted water in the foreground... |
Before finding any corpses, they also fish out plastic bottles because they can make some money from it but also they can clear the way to fish the "big prize".
I'm pretty grossed out by his description of the body as the big prize. The literal translation was "big fish" but still... gives me chills that they can reduce a human body to that... I guess at the end of the day, we really are just walking slabs of meat.
The cameraman asks one of the fishermen whether they were scared the first time they saw a corpse on the river. The response is he's not scared, he's used to it. His dad also did this job.
I couldn't catch the last thing he said in mandarin T_T They film something that looks like a bruised and bloated pig corpse?
I couldn't work out what it was but it looked in between a pig and a potato. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a human though because the narration would have gone batshit crazy if it was.
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| OMG NOOOOO D: |
Suddenly, OOD sees a male corpse and he immediately fishes it up. The show censored the corpse so I shall put up a screen cap of it although it still makes me feel super uneasy. Oh my days, at one point, he's attached his "fishing rod" around the corpse's ankle and just has the boat move across the river with the rest of the body dangling in the water. You can see his trainers! O_O
It may sound silly but I thought it was harrowing to see his trainers because shoes are such an indicator of someone's personality.
After tying the corpse to the back of the boat, OOD has to hang up the corpse by the riverside for 1-3 weeks. If no one comes to collect, he has to cut loose the corpse and let it go because if it's left to soak there over a long period of time, it will become completely unrecognisable. There's more footage of OOD poking around the corpse with his oar and then the voice over says that if no one collects/acknowledges the corpse, there's no income. So if OOD does retrieve a corpse successfully for someone looking for the person, he will collect over $10,000 for the retrieval. If they just view the body without retrieving, it will cost at least $500.
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After seeing him poke around the dead bodies, he no longer
seems like a friendly uncle T_T |
There's some close up censored footage of him untying some rope around an appendage but you can clearly tell it's a mangled and decaying hand. It's really grim. This screen-cap is still not that close up and you can't see the rotting flesh around the knuckles on the hand that the zoomed in frame shows D:
If you're curious then by all means check out the video link for yourself but I won't be uploading that because it was too graphic for me. I really felt a bit sick after watching that footage... >.<
They show some other footage of corpses hanging from rocks by the riverside. It's still horrible, even though it's slightly censored and there are bags covering the heads. OOD says that the corpses can be of any age, even in their 80s and even just months old.
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| "Poverty is scarier than ghosts." |
The clip ends with the voice over with a very poignant message. They asked OOD if he's scared of ghosts because he's in contact with so many dead bodies. His answer was:
"No, because poverty is scarier than ghosts."
Well, that got deep real fast. I was expecting to watch an episode of 怪談 for its cheap thrills but this episode was more like a documentary on desperation and grimness of humanity. The juxtaposition of the image of OOD fishing through the river of rubbish against the beautiful mountain scenery background really symbolises the stark difference between the rich and the poor in China. Ok, my GCSE Eng-Lit-interpretation-brain might be coming out right now but in less symbolic terms, it's still shocking how there's this magnificent mountain landscape has been clogged up with rubbish.
It's so sad to think that these bodies have to be "purchased" to be retrieved for a proper burial and that some will not even get claimed or buried. It's difficult to think that there's almost a "price" for your loved one. It's sad that some of the families with missing relatives will never find them. It's sad that OOD resorts to illegally fishing dead bodies as his source of income. I can't begin to imagine what sort of horrors he's had to endure for it be scarier than picking up dead bodies for a living. This episode just ended in a whole lot of sad. Instead of talking about ghosts, it ended up touching on the extremes of humanity and OOD's end remarks remind us that sometimes the living is more frightening than the dead.
It's really messed up that people can exploit this situation and make a living out of it. I suppose it could be seen as a matter of survival but at the same time, the families have to pay so much to retrieve the bodies. It also raises the issue of social stigma and mental health in China. This episode had a lot to unpack but they never really got into it more.
If you're interested in finding out more about the Dead Body Fishers, I found this article on BBC about it. I discovered this article whilst trying to look up the "Dead People Bay" because I thought they were just making stuff up at that point (this is before they showed the actual footage of dead bodies) but then seeing this article on BBC means this is actually a thing in China... It's an interesting read gives some perspective on OOD's profession but be warned, there are some grim photos on it too.
