Making Cultural Relics at the Crematorium

On my first night shift at the crematorium, I found a Northern Song copper coin in the ashes.

Its patina was peacock blue, the kind that takes eight hundred years underground to form.

But the person whose ashes they were had died just three days ago.

On the second day, a ring on a girl killed in a car accident held a fragment of a Spring and Autumn bronze artifact.

On the third day, half a Warring States jade disc turned up in a retired teacher’s ashes.

The old building to the east, sealed shut, was piled high with cultural relics mixed in with the ashes.

Someone told me: those aren’t relics. They’re coffins.

I’m a college dropout who studied cultural relic restoration, now working the night shift at a crematorium.

I’m beginning to understand:

This crematorium is the biggest ancient tomb of all.