About impossible I think. The only chance is that if some Chinese voyager met Africans who spoke of nzambi, understood what they were talking about, told other Chinese people about this, and the concept got popular and widely diffused enough that it was adopted into Chinese folklore.
I wonder if there’s any etymological connection between “jiangshi” and “nzambi” (the word in an African language that evolved into “zombie”)
About impossible I think. The only chance is that if some Chinese voyager met Africans who spoke of nzambi, understood what they were talking about, told other Chinese people about this, and the concept got popular and widely diffused enough that it was adopted into Chinese folklore.