Chinese vampires and Chupacabras

I work with a grad student from Taiwan who is just a joy to be around. One of the benefits of working with her is learning new bits of culture, since I'm not well aquainted with her culture.

She occasionally asks me to help her with understanding words or phrases. Usually this is because she is transcribing written documents that the other research nurses have scrawled on their papers, and sometimes she asks about phrases that are medical in nature that she hasn't been exposed to.

The other day, she asked me about someone choking. It was a question on a form to assess for domestic violence, basically asking someone if anyone had tried to choke them. I explained it, and then she said "like a Chinese vampire?" No, I said, vampires suck blood out of the victims' necks.

And this is how I heard about the Chinese vampire, which is very different from our western vampires. It's more of a zombie, but there is actually a legend that goes along with it.

So now the Chinese vampire will be one of my favorite cultural legends, along with the Chupacabra (the Mexican Goat-sucker).

I first learned about the Chupacabra from, where else?, the X-Files. My kids learned about it on some random cartoon. And later, I would see billboards in Dallas with a beer can with two holes in the side saying "El Chupacabra". Gotta love Spanish beer signs ;)

Anyway, Chupacabra became a little inside joke for our family. One day we went to Fort Worth to eat at Joe T. Garcia's - a great Mexican place. Tom was laughing as he brought Chris back from the bathroom. Apparently, Chris starting singing the word "Chupacabra" to the Imperial March from Star Wars. There were apparently a couple of workers from the restaurant who were also in the bathroom and were just about to die laughing.