The Alps have always been the prime icon of Swissness. Often idealized or aestheticized, this world of high peaks shrouded in clouds, of dark forests and verdant flower-studded meadows, of wild animals and isolated chalets with their rugged peasants and cows and goats has generated a wealth of local myths and legends. In the past the mountains were still the haunt of spirits and demons. With today’s urbanization the Alpine world is perceived in different ways – as a sublime, unspoiled world of beauty, purity and innocence, the realm of freedom, a field of energy and mysticism; as a link to one’s true nature, to one’s childhood; or as a place of long winters, loneliness, depression, but also purity and redemption.

Collected by Swiss students of Chinese at the University of Zurich as a pendant to their study of the ghost world in modern Chinese films, the seventy-five legends published in this collection entertainingly reveal the fascinating co-existence of the real and the imaginary in the Swiss Alpine world.

阿爾卑斯山總予人「非常瑞士」的感覺。在這個經常被美化、典型化的國度，山峰雲朵繚繞，樹林陰森森的，青翠的草地裝點著野花；這兒有各種野獸，也有孤零零的農舍，住著粗獷的農夫和成群的牛羊──無數的本土神話和傳說，就在這種環境中孕育出來。昔日，還傳聞神祇和鬼魅會在山中出沒呢。今天，阿爾卑斯山開始城市化了，但人們卻以不同的方式去理解它，諸如：崇高感；原始的美麗、純樸和天真；自由奔放；活力與詭秘；連結著人的本性、靈魂與童年回憶；漫長的冬天、孤獨、壓抑、大自然的寂寥、純潔和救贖……

在蘇黎世大學一個漢學課程中，一群瑞士學生一邊研習現代中國電影中的鬼魅世界，一邊探討瑞士的高山傳說。本書收錄了七十五個傳說，引領讀者進入這個想像與現實並存、奇幻而多采的瑞士高山世界。