Baishan Night Talk: Northeast Folk Anecdotes

The kang is still hot, but the story is not yet cool. Chen Shan, a graduate student in folklore, returned to his hometown in Northeast China to recuperate. Every night, he lay on the hot kang and listened to the "unscientific things" told by the elderly. He originally wanted to use it as material for field investigation, but gradually discovered that these stories were connected in the dark—— From the tiger minions altar in the depths of Changbai Mountain, to the blood-cut window grilles in the reclaimed villages; from the Japanese songs in the abandoned mines, to the shadow of the girl who appears in the urban elevator. Twenty-four nights, twenty-four stories, pieced together is not only a legend of strange things, but also a century-old secret history of the Northeast buried in snow. Each narrator says: "This happened to us." But Chen Shan gradually realized that all the stories contained the same old gaze - from the mountains and forests, from the black soil, from the rusty machine tools and abandoned tracks. And when the fire was about to go out on the last night, the oldest narrator slowly looked at him: "You think we're just telling stories?"