Ancient Chinese Beliefs: What Happens After Death?

The Chinese underworld was never just a place of demons, torture, and fire.

It was an office.

For nearly 2,000 years, Chinese stories of the afterlife have been filled with clerks, judges, registers, summonses, court dates, and government officials. Long before Buddhism arrived in China, the dead were already being processed through an enormous supernatural bureaucracy.

In this story, we trace how the Chinese underworld evolved — from ancient Han dynasty officials and Mount Tai, to the Ten Kings of Hell, Judge Bao, Ox-Head and Horse-Face, Meng Po’s soup, and even the Monkey King rewriting his own death record in Journey to the West.

And along the way, we discover something strange: when Yama, the Indian god of death, arrived in China, he didn’t take over.

They gave him a desk.

#ChineseHistory #ChineseMythology #JourneyToTheWest #ChineseCulture #History

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Edited by @iwestez