In Shensha Town on the border of Hunan and Hubei, there is the last family of corpse collectors. Chen Yan is a data analyst who is afraid of water. He was laid off in the city and returned to his hometown just to sell his old house and boat. He has never looked back. But his father, Chen Jiujin, was floating face down on the stone steps of his home in forty centimeters of water. He was holding a bunch of fetal hair tied with red thread in his hand and couldn't break it open. There is a rule in the account left by my father called "Don't leave the river empty" - if you don't fish out the dead bodies when you go into the water, and if you come ashore empty-handed, the river will mark you down. On the ledger, the column three days later actually said "Chen Yan". Thirteen water regulations, if one is broken, one will be repaid. When three gates burst in 1998, officials said forty-seven people died, and Chen Jiujin recorded 63 in his account. The extra sixteen have no names. It's never the ghosts who break the contract, it's the people.
