The Yellow Paper Bride

Born in a yin year, on a yin month and yin day, and nailed alive into a coffin: this is called “adding joy.”

The Great Zhou's old custom of “live burial” uses a woman's resentment to suppress a haunted residence and bring prosperity to her descendants. The outside of the bridal coffin is painted with a picture of a hundred children, while the inside is carved with soul-subduing incantations. A breathing hole is left in the bottom, extending the victim's life by three to seven days. During that time, the bride remains conscious, scratching the coffin walls with her fingernails and counting the hours with her blood.

Shen Zhaoshuang's ancestors specialized in opening coffins for ghost marriages, until they angered the powerful and were wiped out. She survived and now makes a living by helping people break off engagements. But she bears a curse: each coffin she opens costs her one of her senses.

She cannot smell the scent of corpse wax seeping from Huaian Village, taste the nuptial wine offered by the woman from the sunken ship, hear the quarrels of the two souls in the embroidery tower, or feel the hand offered by the brothers at the funeral home. When her final sense is stripped away, she finally “sees” the truth:

Every bridal coffin is the same coffin. Every bride is the same bride. Every curse is the same sentence: They are waiting for you to come inside.

A period horror tale blending the strange and the supernatural through a female lens, capturing the screams and silences trapped in the coffins of patriarchal tradition as the heroine's five senses steadily fade.