Ghost of a chance

City tours that share stories about the spiritual world give tourists a new perspective on Chinese culture. Xu Lin reports.

It's both exciting and a bit frightening to have a nightly ghost tour in Beijing, a city with numerous ghost stories and some famous haunted houses.

When we wandered through the old hutong in the neighborhood of Houhai at 7 pm, I was quite alert at first as I knew our guides would frighten us when we were not ready. But it turned out to be a two-hour humorous and informative trip, which brought Beijing's culture and history back to life.

According to one of our guides, Daniel Newman from the United Kingdom, people are interested in anything that is mysterious, and we like ghost stories in particular because they give us a rush of excitement. When we get scared, we release endorphins as well as adrenaline, and this gives us a high that can be surprisingly addictive.

In 2010, Newman founded Newman Tours, which comprises several foreigners, and now offers English explanations in special tours of Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou and Hangzhou. Most customers are foreigners, who enjoy a new perspective of these old cities.

Our journey began when Christopher Pegg, our other guide, from the United States, told us in front of the metro gate that the metros didn't run after 11 pm in the past because ghosts are most active from 11 pm to 1 am in China. The staff needs to empty the tunnels of ghosts at that time to avoid trouble.

Before I started to worry about the spooky metro system, I chuckled when he showed us a short video as evidence on his iPad, which was about a long-haired woman in a red qipao, or cheongsam, scaring the other passengers away on the metro with her strange behavior.

"My only suggestion is, when you are on the metro sometime past 11, just keep a close eye on who is riding with you," he said, and winked.

When Pegg took us to stroll on the street near Prince Gong's Mansion under the dim light, one of the most extravagant residence compounds in the capital, he shared more ghost and historical stories from the Forbidden City.