Strange Tales from the Old Days

Some rules are scarier than ghosts.

If you’re walking alone at night and hear someone behind you call your full name, don’t turn around. Never pull up the iron chain at the bottom of the old well. If a wedding dress turns red by itself in the middle of the night, mix aged glutinous rice with incense ash and use it to hold the color back.

This book records what happens when those rules are broken. From the shadows counting heads at the Insect King Shrine in Liuzhou, to the East Wing of the corpse-bearers’ lodge in western Hunan, which is always empty, to the cries of “Which way?” heard on moonlit nights at the Grave-Mourning Hill in northern Jiangsu…

This isn’t about ghosts, but the reverence in people’s hearts that they dare not forget. It isn’t about strange happenings, but the line drawn by our elders with blood and hard lessons.

Open it, and you’ll believe: some things are better treated as real, just in case.