Red and White Taboos

[Chinese HorrorFolklore SuspenseFemale Perspective] Before grandma died, she asked someone to tell her: Don't come back. Lin Wantang, a graduate student in folklore, is back. Eight words are engraved on the stone tablet at the entrance of the town: Follow the rules when entering the town, and everything will be safe. The rules are—— Don't cry when it's trivial, don't laugh when it's trivial. Women are not allowed to enter the temple. The paper figures don't have any eye-catching features. There is a wedding and a funeral taking place in the town. Don't laugh at happy events, don't cry at funerals. No one felt wrong. Lin Wantang felt something was wrong. The red wedding dress left by my grandma had her name sewn all over the inside of the cuffs. On the wall of the dry well in the backyard, someone carved two words with their fingernails: Save me. Gu Changan handed her a paper figurine: "To ward off evil spirits." Lin Wantang asked: "Does it work?" "My grandpa said it works." He paused, "He has been dead for three years." People in the town said that after observing the rules for twenty years, they can no longer get rid of them. Lin Wantang doesn't believe in rules. But she couldn't explain why she began to have the same marks on her body as those of those "observant" women. No ghosts. But it's scarier than a ghost. This is a story about "why people are willing to be eaten by rules".