Paper Bones

Before his death, my grandfather gave me a incomplete genealogy, with only three lines written on it—— "You cannot read this book while you are young." "You cannot hand over your genealogy to someone with a foreign surname." "Don't let the paper figures in your home get contaminated with living blood." I thought it was just an old man's superstition. Until the paper doll that had been guarded for three hundred years in the family ancestral hall turned its head on the night I cut my finger. It said to me in my grandfather's voice: "The seventh generation... Finally someone can see me again." I just discovered that in every generation of our Gu family, there are people who are going "crazy" - those uncles who were sent to mental hospitals, those cousins who suddenly disappeared, those names that were crossed out with red pen on the genealogy... They are not crazy. They are "seeing" things for the entire family. And now, I am the seventh generation "keeper of the record".