The Irreverent Old Immortal of the Northeast

The Northeast’s Irreverent Spirit Medium

In 1983, a roar rang out across the black soil of Northeast China, loud enough to knock the icicles off the eaves.

Li Tiezhu was the famous village idiot of Kaoshan Village: useless at everything, but first at the dinner table. He thought he’d spend his life in a drafty mud hut, eating his fill and waiting to die. But then the ancestral spirit altar his grandmother had left behind suddenly forced him into service. The Weasel Immortal was a blabbermouth and a braggart, the Snake Immortal spoke so slowly it could drive you mad, and the Fox Immortal was an arrogant, sharp-tongued beauty addict.

Trouble came from the start: Dong Yue, the beauty from the neighboring village, was being haunted by something nasty. She cursed like a machine gun and fought like a firecracker, but one night she was possessed and started circling a grave, braying like a donkey.

The immortals made Li Tiezhu perform a spirit-medium dance, but ended up arguing among themselves first:

The Weasel Immortal: “The little brat’s got such soft, fair skin. We should tie her up and make her our spirit medium’s wife!”

The Snake Immortal: “Shut, up. Hurry, up, or, she’ll, start, chewing, the, grave, stone!”

The Fox Immortal: “Tsk, mortals. What a spectacle.”

After they finally drove out the evil spirit, the first thing Dong Yue did upon waking was kick him hard. “Li Tiezhu! You danced like you were having a damn seizure!”

From then on, Li Tiezhu’s life as a spirit medium became one calamity after another. The county theater troupe’s leading actor kept singing off-key because he’d stolen a headdress and was haunted by guilt; a young woman sent to the countryside wanted to return to the city, but the spirits read her fortune and told her to wait until spring; a young widow complained that her house was cold in the middle of the night and threw herself into Li Tiezhu’s arms...

Dong Yue charged through the door, brandishing a fire poker. “What’s this, Master Li? Does fortune-telling come with a warming-the-bed service now?”

Until one night, deep in the darkness...