The County Town’s Spirit Eyes

Jiang Shiyuan is 35 and from Wanchiu County, Henan. After her husband dies in a car accident, she works alone at a textile mill to support her two sons, Shitou, eight, and Tiedan, five, while pinching every penny to pay off the mortgage on their old commercial apartment in the county seat. At night, after the boys are asleep, she curls up at an old desk on the balcony to write online novels for extra money. Her health has long since given out. At three in the morning one day, she collapses onto her keyboard. When she wakes, she suddenly has the “heavenly eye”: she can see the ghosts wandering the corners of the county seat and hear them speaking in thick Henan accents.