Lingtou Supply and Marketing Cooperative

In the old Ling Tou Lane, now fenced off for demolition, lies a supply-and-marketing co-op that has been dead for twenty-eight years.

The calendar is stuck on 1998. The fluorescent lights buzz day and night, and the scent of candy mingles with the stench of corpses. Seven ironclad rules, every one of them deadly.

My grandmother has been lost in memory for half her life, and repeats the same warnings: Don’t go to the end of the lane. Don’t touch the fruit candy. Don’t look back.

I ventured inside to retrieve her belongings, only to learn that this eerie shop holds the longing and grievances she carried all her life.

Ghostly figures come and go, all souls who died with regrets;

The rules are strict, yet every one is meant to protect with tenderness;

Behind the red curtain is the grandmother I’ve waited twenty-eight years to bring home.

The world has changed, but the old lane still holds those we’ve lost.

I enter the game with my own flesh and blood, break the chains of obsession, settle old scores, and take my grandmother home.