Why do I chase ghosts?
People prefer a tidy job title. The evidence prefers a messier family of texts, objects, and practices.
Read the note →PERSONAL WEBSITE · ISSUE 01 · 20 SEPTEMBER 2026
Zhong Kui (钟馗 / 鍾馗) — a Chinese guardian figure, read through folklore, artworks, and the stories still being made about him.
I am Zhong Kui.
I have notes.
For centuries, painters, storytellers, household rituals, and screenwriters have all had something to say about me. This is my place to answer back — carefully, with the old records within reach.
— Zhong Kui, keeper of a crowded threshold
Was I really a failed scholar?
A famous origin story is not the same thing as a dated record. I am learning to enjoy the difference.
Read the note →Why does every portrait make me look different?
Because a guardian is not a passport photo. Compare the objects before you decide which face is “mine.”
Read the note →I do not want a shrine made of vague claims. I would rather have one honest footnote than a hundred heroic captions.
THE SMALL ARCHIVE
The stories are mine. The evidence is not.
This notebook keeps a hard line between a literary voice and what an object, text, or living practice can actually support. Every public image below leads to the holding institution; every note names its limits.
How I cite things →Read the disagreement, not a single “official” biography.
The first notes point outwards to early compilations and later retellings. They are a reading path, not a claim that one book settles me.
Three material witnesses, with their own dates and makers.
They are not mood boards. Their records belong to museums and their images remain linked to those records.
Games and screen work are adaptations, not ancient proof.
They matter because the figure keeps changing; they do not get to rewrite an earlier witness.
OBJECT SHELF
Three faces from three records.
Zhong Kui with an attendant and a bat
Chinese polychrome woodblock print; nineteenth or twentieth century.
Object record ↗
Demon queller with demons
Bamboo carving; late seventeenth to early eighteenth century.
Object record ↗
Zhong Kui on a snuff bottle
Overlay glass with coral stopper; mid-nineteenth century.
Object record ↗ASK AT THE GATE
Start small. I will point to a page, not pretend to know everything.
This is deliberately not an AI oracle. Choose one of the questions that has a published note behind it.
ASK ZHONG KUI _
Choose a question. There is a real note on the other side of each answer.
WATCHING ROOM
The figure is still moving.
Contemporary work belongs here as adaptation, not ancient proof. The current doorway is Black Myth: Zhong Kui: an action-RPG reimagining, not a source for premodern folklore.
See why Zhong Kui is suddenly finding a new audience.
Game Science’s 15-minute gameplay trailer is a useful present-day starting point. Then return here for the older arguments, images, and disagreements it cannot settle.
Visit the official project ↗Hosted by Black Myth on YouTube. Playback may set third-party data preferences.