The Little Medicine Jar in the Mountains: My Dad and I Pay Our Respects to Every Northeast Chinese Immortal

Name's Lin Xiaoman. I'm fifteen this year, and I grew up in Linjiatun at the foot of Changbai Mountain. Don't let my age fool you: not many people in the village can beat me when it comes to “medical experience.”

It wasn't by choice. I've been frail since I was little. A bit of wind gives me a cough, a little rain gives me a fever. My dad, Lin Dazhu, was so worried his hair went gray in two spots. From then on, he picked me up and started our “Northeast Auntie-Seeking Tour.”

One day he'd take me to Auntie Zhang's to have a shamanic ritual performed. Halfway through burning the yellow paper, Dad stamped it out and started arguing with her: “Your drumbeat's wrong. Last time, Auntie Li went ‘boom-boom-clang.’ Why are you going ‘clang-clang-boom’?” The next day we'd head to Auntie Wang's to read the incense. The moment the ash fell, Dad leaned in to look and insisted on asking, “Auntie, how come the ash didn't form my daughter's name? Was the fire not hot enough?” The wildest time was when we went to Auntie Zhao for bone-reading. She had barely touched my wrist before Dad let out a howl: “Auntie, please be gentle! This girl's bones are brittle. Don't break them!”

I thought I was just following Dad around while he made a fuss, but things got stranger the more aunties we visited. Once, an auntie had just said there was “something” on me when a strange wind swept through Changbai Mountain. Another time, after I drank the talisman water an auntie gave me, I dreamed that night of an old man with a white beard chatting with me. He said I had some kind of “special constitution.”

Between Dad's hilarious arguments with all the aunties and the growing number of baffling supernatural incidents, how did a sickly girl like me get mixed up in all this? The secrets beneath Changbai Mountain and the strange state of my health will take more trips with Dad to the aunties before we can figure them out!