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Hi, everyone and welcome back to Happy Hour. 欢迎回来酒馆. Hi, 安澜.

Hi, Lulu, hi, everyone.

So what are we gonna talk about today?

So I have a question for you.

Okay.

You probably have seen the headlines in China. Haunted house goes up for court auction, gets auctioned, then pops up for auction again six months later.

就是那个法拍凶宅是吧?

Exactly.

It's interesting this sort of news you notice.

Would you bid?

Although I am a die-hard horror film buff, I don't think I would really want to stay, court auction or no court auction, I don't think I would like to be in a凶宅, in a haunted house really.

I guess so, it's kind of like a house with a sad story or some people say residual energy.

I'm thinking about all sorts of like Japanese horror films like The Grudge or something like《 咒怨》, bad feng shui.

Yes.

Yeah, but here's what I find quite fascinating. Every country has its own version of the bad house. You guys call it like haunted house or murder house.

Yeah. Haunted house, murder house. There's lots of different terms for it because haunted house doesn't necessarily mean that someone was murdered there. It just means that there's possibly a ghost there. But a murder house is…

What an improvement!

But remember Britain is a very old country with some very old buildings.

Yeah. But a lot of those ghosts were murdered. That's how they became ghosts.

Well, some of them were, some of them weren't.

Yeah. So I guess today we're gonna talk about that, gonna talk about haunted mansion 凶宅and all of the cultural comparisons.

Okay. So let's go house hunting.

Okay. So let's start with the basics. Well, if you're a Chinese speaker, you have this nice word, compact word, 凶宅. 安澜, you've heard of that, right?

Yeah.

凶 is吉凶, 吉 is auspicious, 凶 is more evil, unlucky.

Fierce, yeah.

And 宅 is just house, one word whole package.

Now English doesn't have a single perfect match, but it has some options.

Okay.

So let's go through the list.

Haunted house.

Exactly. So this is the most common, the most general, a house with ghosts. But when you say haunted house to an English speaker, their first thought is either a creaky old Victorian mansion or the ride at Disneyland.

Yeah, see, this is very interesting because when you say 凶宅 in Chinese, most people would try to avoid it. Well, apart from some, you know, probably die-hard pretentious daredevil teenagers, they would go explore.

Yeah.

But when you say haunted house or haunted mansion, in English, a lot of people would think of it as more theatrical. They don't really think of it as, you know, someone got murdered here last week.

No. I guess maybe you could say cursed house.

Cursed house.

Yeah. So this is a house that has basically just lots of bad luck. So every family that moves in ends up divorcing, going bankrupt, or even worse. So it's not so much a ghost, but it's a pattern.

It's like some evil presence is there.

Yeah.

Or maybe in China it's just bad feng shui again, 风水不好这个地方.

Exactly, but there is also a professional term, stigmatized property.

Stigmatized?

Yes.

Is that real English?

Yeah.

Okay, because we always talk about social stigma, 比如说社会污名化, 比如说离婚, 现在没有那么多社会污名化了, 心理问题没有那么多社会污名化. So stigmatized property meaning that what? this property has been associated with something negative.

Yeah. Exactly. And this is what real estate agents would call it. It basically means a property whose value has dropped because something had happened there, murder, suicide, violent death, or even a reputation for paranormal activity. In some countries and some states in the United States, sellers are legally required to tell you if the house is stigmatized.

You know, I don't really know that much about US property but I watch a lot of like Japanese films and TV show, they have something similar, they call it, I believe there is a term in Japanese real estate called a house with a, a sort of like a mental issue.

Okay.

Like a psychological stain, they call it.

Yeah.

And that I think it's very much like the idea of stigmatized house. So it might not be murder, but it's something intrinsically negative that you are really legally obliged to tell the renter or the buyer, potential buyer.

Yeah. But you also have other terms like murder house, death house or even sometimes demon house.

What, they all participated in Satan worship or something?

Pretty much.

Any number of movies and TV shows jump to mind.

Well, exactly. I would say this is where things get a little bit interesting, because the concept of a bad house is universal, but the reasons why it's bad are very different between different cultures.

Well, I guess so. In Chinese culture is mostly about feng shui and energy.

Yeah.

A house can be bad because of where it faces, what it’s built on, and we used to have Feng Shui masters to do all of that when they were building houses. Even the floor number, you notice that in China we don't really have... a lot of the buildings don't really have 4th floor, or 14th floor.

Yeah. I live on the 5th floor, which is technically the 4th floor.

Well, just don't think about that.

Exactly.

I used to live on the 17th floor, but they have taken out 4th, 14th, and interestingly 13th.

Well, yeah, yeah. That's the thing that always gets me about the number four is that whenever I see a phone number that ends in 4s you can pretty much guarantee that they are a foreigner.

444.

Exactly.

Yeah. You don't necessarily need a ghost you just need bad Qi(气) really.

Whereas in western culture particularly in Britain, the US and Europe, the focus is more on curses, religion and crime.

Okay.

So a house is bad because a witch cursed it or because a demon was summoned there, or because someone was brutally murdered and now they ghost won't leave.

So our haunted houses are more about harmony being disrupted.

Yes.

And yours is more about and actual evil presence.

Exactly.

We do also have that idea as well, like you know, if there is a brutal murder.

Yeah, precisely. So there is a thing that we mentioned before, disclosure laws.

So the legal requirement that you need to tell the prospective buyers and renters what is happening.

Yeah, so for example, in many western countries, sellers are legally required to disclose if a death occurred on the property within a certain time frame. Some places even require disclosure of paranormal activity if the seller knows about it and the buyer asks.

Okay. So if no murder actually happened there, you were actually required to tell the prospective buyer or renter that my house is haunted.

Yeah, well. You could get a lawsuit.

I guess in China, the system is ... less transparent.

Yeah.

The real estate agents might hint that this property has history. I mean, I’ve actually seen on social media, people posting like listings of specific real estate, like specific properties that has a “history”, but obviously you get that a lot in the neighborhood gossip network.

Well, exactly, everybody knows what house to avoid. And sometimes that's why you see these types of court auctions as stigmatized property goes up, no one bids, so the price drops. Then eventually somebody who is brave or simply desperate, buys it and then they try to resell it 6 months later because they heard a noise at 3:00 a.m.

Yeah. I mean, it’s probably nothing. But once you get that idea in your head, it's difficult to get out.

Yes.

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文稿校对：梅薇薇 & Jenny

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