My name is Zhang Shan. I was a country boy who just wanted to work the land, until I inherited my grandfather’s peachwood Five Thunder Token and my maternal grandfather’s handwritten copy of the Burial Classic. I thought they were just keepsakes, until I saw with my own eyes, by the Yellow River at the entrance to my village, the woman described in the records: wearing a red jacket and green trousers, her long hair veiling her face as she sat crying by the water at dusk. The moment she turned around, I was dragged into another world: a dark underworld woven from countless true tales of folk tragedy and bloodshed, and eerie legends. From the deadly water ghost at White Horse Rapids in Lanzhou to the wailing of the thousand-year-old headless general at Qixinggang in Chongqing; from the stench of a century-old zombie bursting out of its coffin in Nanchong to the old witch deep in the Miao Mountains who devours young girls... Armed with the token and ancient book, I staggered across China in the 1990s. This is no mere story. It is a secret history of the folk, forbidden to speak of for generations, yet perhaps rooted in real events. Are you ready to see it for yourself?
