Influencer Who Destroyed Buddhist Statue to Test a Curse Dies After Car Crash

Chinese social media influencer Jiang Xiaorou, who gained popularity by visiting supposedly haunted places and posting about her experiences on her page, has passed away at 24 years old, one year after making a video in which she broke a Buddhist statue to see if a curse would come upon her.

Jiang Xiaorou was a passenger in a car driving from Guangxi to Guangzhou, southern China, when the accident occurred at about 7:00 AM on July 15th. Chinese media revealed that Jiang had multiple injuries, hemorrhagic shock, issues with blood clotting, organ failure, and severe brain injury based on the medical documents of the victim.

Jiang was placed in intensive care using a ventilator at the hospital in Guangzhou, but she never regained consciousness. After treating her for a month, the leaders from her home community announced her death on August 10th.

Her true last name was Li. According to Taiwanese news site ETtoday, citing media reports in China, Jiang was from Lanshan County in Yongzhou city, in south-central China’s Hunan Province. The news about the death of Jiang first spread through a social media user who claimed to be her assistant.

Jiang had 1.3 million subscribers on her Douyin profile, the Chinese version of TikTok. Her videos usually included her exploration of abandoned buildings and her search for supernatural evidence in them, as well as challenges of local beliefs. She used to visit those locations at night, nail her birth information to a tree, and spend the night in empty buildings.

In one of the videos, which is being recalled now, Jiang destroyed the statue of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy and compassion in Buddhism. It is believed that by destroying the Buddhist statue, one invites the wrath of the gods upon themselves. So she smashed the statue using a hammer while telling her viewers to look out for the curse. The video received a lot of backlash due to extreme disrespect towards religion, but most of her followers supported her courage.

The video went viral after news about her passing was published. Online users labeled this accident as her ‘karma’. However, there is no scientifically proven connection between these events, United Daily News claims.

Jiang’s mother asked the community for financial assistance since she could not afford her expensive treatment. After her passing was reported on August 11, her family confirmed the death and requested people not to make assumptions and show respect towards the dead, World of Buzz reports.

The authorities have not yet published a report about the cause of the accident.