Du'an Paper Shop

After the failure of Beidiao, I returned to Baiyang County and took over the papermaking shop left by my grandfather. The first night I opened, a dead man placed an order with me. The order was written on a blank piece of rice paper in the shop, and the ink was cold. The name of the deceased, cause of death, and last wish were written clearly. I thought it was a prank until I finished tying a paper man as ordered, and the man walked out on his own in the middle of the night. Since then, there has been no shortage of orders. Some people died in unknown circumstances and asked me to put up a paper lantern to illuminate the way; some people could not breathe their last breath and asked me to run for them and bring the truth to the ears of living people. I ran errands for the dead souls and exchanged skills that my grandfather had not finished teaching me, from paper lanterns illuminating the road to cutting paper into soldiers and paper horses walking at night. I thought I was just a shopkeeper who delivered goods to the dead, until one day I saw my name on the death certificate - I was the person who died twenty years ago. Grandpa used a scapegoat to save my life. The living body, the dead body, and the paper life, the three lives merged into one, have actually become my qualifications to overcome the rules of yin and yang. The deceased places the order and the living delivers the goods. A story about a county town papermaker who went from running errands for the dead to becoming a yin and yang of paper.