They approach slowly, scrupulously. Holding their breaths, with knees trembling and hands tightly clasped, they round another corner of the dimly lit maze, only to find - a zombie!

On a cold winter day last week, against the backdrop of spine-tingling tunes and sinister laughter played on loop through loudspeakers, some 1,200 Beijingers from all over the city took part in a "zombie invasion" at Wukesong Hi-Park in Haidian district, called Zombie is Coming.

Zhang Ran, 23, was one of the players who dressed up as a zombie last week. Besides having her face made up by staff members on site to look as if her flesh was rotting, she prepared her own costume, adorning a green surgeon's gown that was covered in blood. "I've always dreamed of dressing up as a zombie and chasing people," said Zhang, who works in the finance industry. "The makeup was great. I scared a lot of my friends afterwards when I posted the pictures on WeChat and Sina Weibo."

A participant costumed as a Chinese zombie. Photo: Li Hao/GT

A zombie bites a blood ribbon off a human player. Photo: Li Hao/GT

 

"Grrrrrrr…… Brains!" 

Organized by Beijing ZXHL Strategy Planning Co, participants were required to register online as a "human" or a "zombie." Five different playing courses were set up, evoking spooky environments such as a grisly jail and a haunted woods. At each stage, the humans would be given an objective to achieve - as in a video game - while the goal of the zombies was to stop them, by tearing "blood ribbons" off the human players. When a human lost all three of their ribbons, they were out of the game. 

In total, there were 1,000 "humans" and 200 "zombies" who participated in the event over the weekend, which also included a market selling zombie-themed food, drinks and souvenirs.

As tickets for zombies were harder to come by, another zombie fanatic, 28-year audio engineer Ding Peng, had to play as prey. "The most exciting part of being a human player is trying to work with your friends to get past each stage, without knowing what's about to happen," said Ding. "The zombies all had great makeup, it felt like Halloween."

After playing through all five courses three times, Ning Jie, a 32-year-old civil servant who played as a zombie, concluded that the trick to capturing more humans and securing blood ribbons is to "work with your zombie friends and drive the humans in one direction from the very beginning."

"Humans are fierce too. A human girl punched my zombie friend in the stomach and my hands were scratched by another," said Ning, laughing.

Ning, who also participated in a "Vertical Marathon" in August wherein he raced to the top of the 330-meter-high, 82-storey China World Summit Wing building in Beijing's Guomao area, said that Zombie is Coming could also be a good way of helping people to get fit.   

"Only activities that have a theme and a specific goal are appealing to most people," said Ning. "Just running is so boring."

Although Zhang said she enjoyed the event thoroughly, her one complaint was that as the day went on, the number of zombies dwindled, which meant that it was less competitive.

"The first round I played, there were five zombies against 20 people, but later, there were only three zombies for every 20 people," said Zhang. "[Because there were so few of us], the zombies became so popular that people voluntarily offered to give us their blood ribbons, in return for taking selfies with us."  

Ding was also a little disappointed by the lack of atmosphere as the day wore on. "Maybe because it took place during the daytime, it wasn't as scary as it could have been," he said.

A human player carefully makes his way through one of the courses. Photo: Li Hao/GT

A woman has zombie makeup applied by an event staffer. Photo: Li Hao/GT

 

The zombie craze in China

Zombie is Coming is not the first zombie-themed public event in China. In September, there was Zombie Run in Shanghai, in which dozens of people dressed up in zombie costumes and took to a public park, according to a Global Times report; in October, two zombie flash mobs descended upon subway stations in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the Yangtze Evening Post reported.

Yang Xupeng, one of the head organizers of the event, said that tickets for the first two weekends of Zombie is Coming sold out in the first three days. It will be running every weekend until February 1, 2015.

"Everybody is under great pressure living and working in Beijing," said Yang. "We wanted to provide an alternative, unusual entertainment option for urban dwellers besides the usual options of watching movies, singing karaoke and drinking in bars."

Yang said there was presently a renewed fervor for things zombie-related in China, particularly among 20 to 30-year-olds, based on the company's market research. He said that Zombie is Coming was conceived in the wake of this surging interest, especially among China's youth, who more and more are influenced by the influx of foreign media.

"Each of the stages and the makeup of the zombies are inspired mostly by foreign movies and TV series such as The Walking Dead and Z Nation, as well as from zombie walk events," said Yang. "But we tried to combine Western and Chinese cultures, and you can see Chinese zombies on the scene, too," said Yang.

 Ding, a self-professed zombie fanatic who has watched numerous zombie-themed movies and played many zombie-themed games, said that there were significant differences between Chinese and Western zombies.

"Western zombies are usually born from mutant viruses, and can only be killed by shooting them in the head, which is very bloody," said Ding, who listed Resident Evil and Dead Space among the Western zombie-themed video games he's played, and Zombie Brother and Lost in Apocalypse among the animations he's watched about the Chinese undead. "Meanwhile, Eastern zombies usually come about through mythological elements, are possessed of high intelligence, and can only be killed using amulets, spells and talismans."

Ding further cited the films of Hong Kong director Lam Ching-ying and the Happy Ghost series as classic productions that have influenced the pop-culture conception of the Chinese undead. In addition, China has a long history of zombie folk stories known as jiangshi, the most famous of which are collected in Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) scholar Ji Xiaolan's Yuewei Caotang Biji ("Notes from Yuewei Cottage").

Zhang Ran (left) and two of her friends strike frightening poses. Photo: Li Hao/GT

A girl dressed-up as a zombie for last weekend's rendition of Zombie is Coming at Wukesong Hi-Park in Haidian district. Photo: Li Hao/GT

  

The Chinese undead

"I think [the recent popularity of Western zombies in China] is a sort of cultural imperialism," said Zhang, who also considers herself a dedicated fan of zombie-themed literature and films. She said that Chinese fans started to become familiar with Western zombies with the introduction of the Resident Evil games in 1996.

"The theme of that shooting game was very novel for domestic players, and a lot of people I know were pretty obsessed with it," she said.

Zhang added that she hoped the enthusiasm for Western zombies would not lead people to abandon their love for Chinese zombies.

"Chinese zombies are a unique part of this country's culture," she said. "Many people know that [Chinese] zombies can hop, but they don't know that they can evolve too, just like foreign zombies. The fiercest kind, hanba, can cause a great drought over the land."

Nevertheless, this has not stopped Zhang from enjoying this Western zombie-themed game - for a very practical reason, of course. "When flesh-eating zombies do take over, you don't want to surrender your brains without putting up a fight," she said. "You need to be familiar with the rules!"