Paper Effigies of the Seventies

Yang Ruiyue is the paper effigy daughter of the owner of the town's paper effigy shop. Ever since the day she was made, her father has been crying: mourning his wife and daughter, who died unjustly, and weeping over his own helplessness.

One night, the paper effigy shop caught fire. Her father hung a jade pendant around Yang Ruiyue's neck and told her to keep walking south without looking back.

Yang Ruiyue had always followed orders, but that night, she couldn't help looking back. In the blaze...

Ah, her father had been made into a paper effigy, too.

Later, Yang Ruiyue returned to the town and opened a paper effigy shop. The figures she crafted looked lifelike.

Someone asked her, "Why do Boss Yang's paper figures seem so much more lifelike than everyone else's?"

Yang Ruiyue told him, "The best model for a painting should be alive. Paper figures are no exception."

Coming soon: "I'll Pick Up Trash to Support You [The 1980s]"

Blurb: When Liu Shenghuai was little, her master read her fortune and said she was doomed to misfortune, cursed with a short life and poverty. She wouldn't live past thirty, and she'd be poor all her life.

Liu Shenghuai had no desire to die poor. In the second year after she finished her apprenticeship, she began looking for ways to change her fate. Carrying her entire fortune of two yuan and twenty-five cents, accumulated over twenty-five years, she joined an archaeological team, hoping to borrow some luck from a thousand-year-old corpse and live a little longer.

But an earthquake trapped her in the main burial chamber. Just as Liu Shenghuai decided to loot the tomb completely, the head in the coffin came to life and opened its eyes to find her rummaging through the clothes on its corpse.

Liu Shenghuai silently met the head's gaze, then covered its eyes with her hand and tried to hypnotize it. "You just woke up too fast. No one's going through your coffin. Go back to sleep."

The head: "..."

To save her own life, Liu Shenghuai reluctantly stole the man's head. Before they escaped, she patted her chest and promised, "Don't worry. I'll take good care of you. Stick with Sister Huai! We'll go hungry nine days out of three! I mean, we'll eat nine meals every three days."

The head: "..."

Once they got out of the tomb, this was how things really stood:

Liu Shenghuai: "You know I've been broke since I was little, and I left my mom behind. I can only get by picking up trash... I've got no money, but you can take my life. I'm all about keeping you company!"

The head: "." So now I, a mere head, have to support you?

Liu Shenghuai: "OvO"

Coming soon 2: "Lampy, I'm Gonna Start Squeezing Out Oil"

Blurb 1:

Hua Deng is an oil lamp that lights the imperial tomb. She's nicknamed the Everlasting Lamp. After absorbing the essence of the sun and moon and the imperial dragon energy inside the tomb, she gained a spirit. But as a lamp, she has one major problem: she needs oil. Without oil, she'll go out. If she goes out, she can't take human form. And if she can't take human form, she's just an ordinary lamp.

The oil her craftsman poured in all those years ago is almost gone. Hua Deng decides to go out and earn some more. She makes a living as a stand-in for the rich: as long as she comes into contact with enough corpses, she'll have all the oil she needs. One day, she gets a job filling in for a wealthy older sister at a matchmaking banquet, on a matchmaking reality show, and at a matchmaking dinner.

The wealthy older sister is loaded. She promises Hua Deng a million yuan for every matchmaking prospect she drives away, with no upper limit. Hua Deng immediately decides she could do this for the rest of her life!

At the matchmaking banquet, Hua Deng acts like a wildly inappropriate fortune-teller. She starts predicting when every man who approaches her will die. The sooner they die, the wider she smiles. By the end of the evening, not a single man there will talk to her.

On the matchmaking show, Hua Deng is useless at everything except eating. When the director asks what she thinks of the male guests, all she has to say is, "A little oily, moderately oily, nicely oily, extremely oily." She manages to offend every single fan watching the livestream.

At the matchmaking dinner, Hua Deng talks more than all the meddling aunts combined. She opens with, "How old is your kid? What grades do they get? They're so amazing, they must be top of the class, right?" and follows up with, "If you're unhappy in your marriage, it's definitely the man's fault. You should just get a new one. It'll be better for the kids." She talks every matchmaker in the room into getting divorced.

Blurb 2:

Hua Deng has been thriving under the wealthy older sister's identity. But before they fully switch places, the sister tells her there's a gloomy man in her social circle. Everyone says he won't live long and has a terrible personality, so he's gotten stranger and stranger as he's grown older. If Hua Deng ever runs into him, she should just treat him like a corpse and leave him alone.

But one day, Hua Deng runs out of oil and can't maintain the wealthy older sister's appearance. By chance, she runs into the very man everyone has long treated as if he were already dead. She immediately sees hope. There are plenty of men who are a little oily, but a man who's practically a perpetual oil-extraction machine is a rare find.

So whenever Hua Deng runs out of oil and can't find any new corpses, she goes to Gu Zhongjin, the fully automatic oil extractor, takes a sip to refuel with an all-you-can-eat meal, and runs off afterward. Her whole strategy is to dine and dash!

Gu Zhongjin suspects he doesn't have long to live. Every so often, he has the same hallucination: a strange woman walks past him and gives him a bizarre, indescribable, utterly baffling smile.

Later, no matter how hard Gu Zhongjin investigates, he can't figure out who this mysterious woman is. Just as he starts making arrangements for his funeral, he spots a matchmaking show on a friend's tablet. Someone on the show is wearing a smile he knows very well...

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Theme: Promoting intangible cultural heritage and traditional culture