Follow the Customs

Firecrackers on New Year's Eve don't drive away the Nian beast, but the mandrills. What is burned during the Qingming Festival is not paper money, but remittances sent to the underworld. The Dragon Boat Festival is not rowing a river, but a ferry between Yin and Yang. Every piece of folk custom is a contract between man and God that is still in effect. Contracts are broken, ghosts and gods bite back - living people bury themselves in ancestral graves, river lanterns flow upstream and never disperse, and eighty-one seals appear on the bricks of the ancient city wall. Those who can repair these contracts are called away from the world.