The character for locust tree combines the wood radical with the character for ghost. Plant no locust trees by your door, or you’ll summon ghosts. But Huaitang Village is full of locust trees. They don’t plant them to summon ghosts, but to keep them there.
Three years ago, she turned and walked away. Three years later, a letter that should never have found him asks him to come to a village that doesn’t appear on any map and attend her funeral. The villagers are holding a ghost wedding for the lover who died three years ago, and he is the groom. He tries to escape, only to find the road circling back on itself. It turns out the story about pairing a living person in a ghost marriage is a lie. He is the one who should have been in the coffin all along. Every layer of truth he uncovers seems to be the last, but there’s always another beneath it. And beneath that lies three hundred years.
"The wipers wiped away the rain, and then wiped it away. The headlights illuminated the raindrops into countless slanting white lines, as if someone was hiding in the dark, pulling on the endless threads all over the sky." Not just anyone can write this kind of beginning. Beautiful!
It's not fast to get into the core storyline, but it's well-conceived.