The Female Ghost Reincarnated in the Millennium

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Present-day life and a Republican-era past life]

Past and present lives + supernatural folk customs and strange tales from southern Yunnan + love and hate + the cycle of cause and effect

“Who is that lovesick female ghost looking for? Shen Jixiu of Beiping.”

Song Tanxi was born in Beijing on the first day of the new millennium. Her grandfather, who had once been sent to Yunnan as an educated youth, repeatedly warned her as she grew up: “No one in the Song family is allowed to go to Yunnan in their lifetime, especially not to the southern part of Yunnan.”

But at twenty-three, she secretly boarded a slow train to Yunnan.

When flames curled up from the brazier honoring the eight thousand souls lost beside the Yunnan-Burma Railway, Song Tanxi heard a man call her from behind.

“Song Tanxi?”

The voice was clearly right behind her, yet that call of “Song Tanxi” seemed to have drifted across this boundless, desolate world for a hundred years before finally piercing through countless barriers and reaching her ears.

“Hello, my name is Shen Qishan.”

After Song Tanxi arrived in Yunnan, all kinds of ghosts kept chasing her. One day, she finally couldn’t take it anymore and asked:

“Why do you keep chasing me?”

One ghost said, “Because you kicked over my rice bowl.”

Song Tanxi thought: I’m so unlucky, even walking down the street I can kick over a ghost’s rice bowl.

Another ghost said, “Because in your past life, when you were a ghost, you chased me just like this.”

Song Tanxi thought: Now that’s a fine example of the cycle of cause and effect...

[Reader's Notes]

1. This story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual events or people is coincidental. Apart from Beijing and Kunming, which are real cities, all other place names are made up. Please don’t take them as real.

2. This is an alternate-world story. It only borrows the Republican-era setting; everything else is invented. Please don’t take it as real.

3. The characters in both their past and present lives are deeply in love.

4. The gods, ghosts, spirits, and monsters in this story all come from my imagination and folk legends. I hope nothing here touches on any sensitive topics.

5. Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship.

Theme: The cycle of cause and effect.