I dozed off on the last bus. When I woke up, it had stopped at a bridge.
Two groups stood on the bridge, one dressed in red, the other in mourning clothes. They were frozen at the entrance, neither willing to go first. It was the old custom of a wedding and a funeral competing for the right of way.
A sheet of red paper was pasted to the stone stele at the bridgehead, listing five rules. The bridal sedan had to cross before sunset. The funeral procession could not go ahead of the sedan. If someone offered congratulations, you had to reply, "The same to you." If someone offered condolences, you had to reply, "My sympathies." Do not look back at what lies below the bridge. The bride must not touch the ground at any point.
Old Zhou, the driver, didn't believe in any of it. Someone on the bridge congratulated him, and he smiled and replied, "The same to you."
Then, right in front of me, he turned into a sheet of paper from head to toe.
Only then did I understand that one of the five rules was wrong.
I'm an editor at a folk customs magazine. I've spent four years doing fieldwork, and I thought I knew enough. My only talent is asking old objects, "What are the rites for this occasion?" Each time I ask, one trace of me disappears from the world: first a person vanishes from photographs, then my colleagues forget my name.
Later, I stood in front of a mirror and saw everything in it, except me.
