Republican-Era Tales of the Strange
The Republic of China was an era of old and new interwoven, buffeted by wind and rain. Clocks imported from the West ticked away, yet could not keep the long-dead vengeful spirits in old mansions at bay. Men in suits discussed science, only to turn around and glimpse the fading shadow of a woman in a qipao at the end of an alley. Loves and hatreds swept along by the tides of the age, and grievances buried beneath old customs and ritual codes, were creeping back into the world through moonlight, rainwater, and the cracks between the floorboards of old houses.
Here, in the lanes of Shanghai, a tobacco pipe weeps blood; beneath white plum trees, copper coins come to collect their debts, each one bearing an old account soaked in tobacco oil. In an old Nanjing mansion, a red wedding dress hangs from a beam; silver hair ornaments drift atop green water in a stone vat, while a ball of bones beneath a locust tree's roots hides the cries of an unborn child. In a Peking opera house, painted masks come alive, golden threads in the costumes coil around human bones, and the audience's cheers mingle with a stand-in actor's wails.
Whether they are an officer in uniform, a manager of a foreign trading firm, a homeless orphan girl, or a descendant searching for their family, anyone caught in this web woven from blood, tears, and obsession will find a red mole appear behind their ear. It is the mark of a vengeful spirit, the seal on a debt contract, and the beginning of a new cycle of rebirth.
Old objects become spirits, vengeful ghosts come to collect their debts, and every strange incident is tied to a forgotten past. Beneath the moon of the Republic of China, no mystery is unsolvable; there are only debts left unpaid. Those wandering spirits simply seek belated justice in this chaotic age of transition, or a chance to continue a bond whose story was cut short.
