Folk Customs

My grandfather Lin Huaiyuan was a folklorist. His death was officially ruled a cardiac arrest. But I know it's not. When he was found, he was lying on the floor of the study room, surrounded by a large number of sketches of talismans he had drawn by himself. He showed no signs of struggle, and even had a strange, almost relieved expression on his face. Only his right hand was clutching an old notebook bound in cowhide. That "Folklore Notes" became the entire legacy he left to me. At first, I just thought it was a precious manuscript that my grandfather had studied all his life. It records unique folk customs from various places in neat small regular script, mixed with dialect folk songs and ritual diagrams. Until I turned to the chapter about "Combating Corpses in Western Hunan" and found a photo that was supposed to be blank tucked into the page of the book.