1983: Guarding Graves in the Countryside

In 1983, in Wayaocun, a remote mountain village in Yiwu, Zhejiang, the collective system had only recently been dismantled. Villagers were just beginning to encounter the market economy, as superstition collided with science. The “Dragon Mother Pool” behind the village was considered forbidden ground, and a legend persisted about a “guardian of the tomb in the pool.”