Red lanterns hung high overhead.
White funeral paper money scattered noisily through the air.
The villagers of Fenshan Village crowded tightly around the doorstep of the wealthiest household, an incessant buzz of gossip humming through the crowd.
A little girl with pigtails reached down to pick up the tiniest bits of “happy money” from the ground, along with a round piece of white funeral money. Seeing this, her mother immediately scolded her, snatched the paper money from her daughter’s hand, and threw it to the ground.
She slapped the girl’s hand and spat on the ground as if to ward off bad luck.
“Lousy, ill-omened thing! The silver coins are what we pick up — the paper money is for bribing the ghostly messengers to save a life! What are you picking that for?!”
Having finished her scolding, the woman looked up again to watch the commotion, all the while deftly pocketing the penny she had taken from her daughter’s hand without anyone noticing.
The little girl pouted and continued searching the ground for more happy coins that had been trampled into the dirt and overlooked.
“The bride is entering the gates—”
The matchmaker and the fortune teller stood together.
At the head of the hall sat a silver-haired man and woman, both over sixty years old.
They wore traditional long wedding jackets embroidered with double “囍” characters. The gaunt, withered old woman’s face was caked with white powder, her cheeks dotted with two patches of bright red rouge. The old man was equally thin and shriveled; even dressed in fine silks and gold, he looked as though he might not last much longer.
Beneath the hall.
The bride, her head still covered by a red veil, clutched a red silk ribbon in her hand. The other end was tied to a colorful rooster, with a large silk flower suspended in the middle.
The villagers outside murmured among themselves:
“I wonder if that fortune teller is really any good… Will the eldest son of the wealthy Gong family actually survive?”
“He’s been sick and ailing for so long now. I suppose they’re trying anything, treating a dead horse as if it were still alive.”
After the founding of the new China, people had cut off their braids and begun living new lives. But some small villages remained as absurd and feudal as lost souls from the old era, clinging to superstition.
Fenshan Village was one of them.
This was the 1950s.
The nation had just endured several wars, the new country was newly established, and the people were struggling to cope with the impact of foreign cultures, driven forward as if by a whip.
Times were hard.
Terribly hard.
And the harder times were, the more people believed in fate.
The entire village consisted of poor, impoverished farmers — except for one wealthy household: the Gong family. An ancestor of the Gong family had once been a high-ranking official, making them not only educated but also wealthy in the eyes of the villagers.
The Gong family had two sons.
The eldest son was born to the old woman and the old man. The second son was born to the old man and his concubine.
The concubine had passed away. The second son, not being the old woman’s own, was intelligent and clever — a thorn in the old woman’s heart.
The old man was old and could pass away at any moment. The old woman had no intention of letting the family fortune be split with Gong Er, who wasn’t her flesh and blood. All her hopes rested on her biological son, the eldest. She indulged him endlessly, giving him anything he wanted.
But the eldest, spoiled rotten by his mother, was a lecherous degenerate.
He frequented brothels and slept with widows.
Eventually, he contracted that certain disease. At the dawn of the reforms and opening up, there were no effective treatments — and in this small mountain village, there was not even a Western doctor. The local Chinese doctors were mediocre at best. Soon, the eldest was on his deathbed.
The old woman wailed, distraught.
She had consulted countless doctors and tried every folk remedy. Finally, she brought back a fortune teller.
The fortune teller told her he had calculated the exact day the eldest would die. Her only hope was to choose a bride whose birth chart matched his, hold the wedding on that very day, parade through the entire village with the full clamor of drums and gongs, and scatter paper money along the way for the ghostly messengers to pick up.
Once bribed, those messengers — their hands greased and hearts softened — might grant the eldest a reprieve.
All superstitious nonsense, of course.
But the old woman was overjoyed. She immediately hired a matchmaker to find a suitable bride.
The villagers knew the eldest had contracted that disease. In those days, people avoided such illnesses like the plague; they would even take detours around a house. Especially since the eldest was about to die.
Only those with no regard for reputation or safety would consider sending their daughters to be married into the Gong family.
There were, of course, a few shameless deadbeats and gamblers tempted by money who were willing to sell their daughters.
But their birth charts didn’t match.
What was to be done?
Just as the old woman was growing anxious, the household steward had a stroke of inspiration. He went to a human trafficker and bought a beggar. Not only did the beggar’s birth chart match, but after wiping off the layers of dirt, the face beneath was extraordinarily beautiful!
Furthermore, the person was half-starved and near death — willing to do anything for a bite to eat.
The old woman was overjoyed. She burned incense and kowtowed, thanking everyone from her ancestors to the gods.
On the day the fortune teller had predicted the eldest would die, she threw a grand, spectacular wedding celebration.
“Things are different now. You need a marriage certificate to be married. Just the ceremony and the feast don’t count. Is it okay not to get the certificate?” a woman muttered.
Another woman in blue floral cotton spit out a sunflower seed shell and rolled her eyes.
“Who knows? But plenty of people in our village haven’t gotten one. It doesn’t seem to make a difference. It’s just a piece of paper — what legal effect could it possibly have? That’s nonsense. The older generations all got married like this.”
“True…”
The old woman didn’t understand that marriages now required a certificate.
She had brought in a rooster to stand in for the eldest, who was rotting in bed, unable to move. The trumpets blared, the firecrackers crackled, and after the feast, wouldn’t it be done?
Besides, the Gong family was wealthy!
There would be meat at the feast, and money scattered on the ground!
The villagers, who barely saw a drop of oil all year, couldn’t help wiping the corners of their mouths as they thought of the upcoming feast, clapping and grinning with delight.
The thin, slender bride, still wearing her red veil and wedding gown, stepped over the brazier.
She entered the hall.
The villagers watching whispered among themselves: “They say this bride is quite beautiful — just too thin. She was begging, almost starved to death.”
“Such a hard life. Homeless and displaced, and now marrying someone like that.”
“Sigh…”
The ceremony officiant called out: “First bow to Heaven and Earth—”
The matchmaker rushed to the bride’s side, her face beaming with festive cheer, ready to help the bride turn and kowtow.
The Gong family servants, meanwhile, held the rooster, preparing to push its head down.
Just as this bizarre celebration was in full swing, a boy of sixteen or seventeen, dressed as a servant, came running. His face, in the middle of summer, was as pale as a ghost. He stumbled crazily into the hall.
He tripped over the high threshold and fell hard, skidding to a stop before the old man and old woman seated at the head of the hall.
Under the astonished gazes of the crowd and in the sudden, deathly silence, he wailed: “Madame — the eldest young master — the eldest young master is gone!”
“What?!”
The villagers who had been watching were stunned.
After a moment of silence, a cacophony of voices erupted like a sudden thunderstorm.
The old woman shot to her feet, her entire body trembling. Her eyes rolled back, and she fainted.
People rushed to support her, calling out to her.
The old man, upon hearing that his eldest son was gone, stared wide-eyed. He had already been living on borrowed time; now, he simply breathed his last.
“Madame, the master—”
“Oh no, oh no — the master has stopped breathing!”
·
At the same time.
Before Gong Ze had even opened his eyes, he heard someone calling him. Fighting off the dizziness of just having transmigrated, he opened his eyes to see a sharp-looking boy of fifteen or sixteen shaking him.
“Second Master — wake up! Something terrible has happened!”
“…”
“…”
Leave a Reply