I'm No Charlatan

Yang Ye opened a shop in an alley where two pagoda trees grew around a corner.

Every day, he read fortunes and examined people's faces, making just enough to buy a few packets of spicy strips. Occasionally, he'd listen to a four-wheeled Mercedes passing by and bragging.

After a while, people started calling him a fraud.

Yang Ye had seen all kinds of things and people.

He once saw an ancient zither with only one string left. When plucked, it made no sound at all. They said it was searching for someone from more than two thousand years ago.

He had also seen an old gold hairpin stuck at an angle by the waterside in Jiangnan, its little pendant swaying in the wind as it waited for a story that would never reach its end.

He had even seen a statue standing alone in a park. In the middle of the night, it tugged at his sleeve and asked him whether ice cream tasted good.

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