I Seek Justice for Old Things

Shen Zhao arrives as an intern mediator at the Great Shanghai Civilian Tribunal for Old Objects and Appeals.

He has a secret: when he touches an old object bearing a grievance, he can hear its “testimony.”

An enamel bowl from 1943 weeps as it insists the ruling that branded it “traitor’s property” was wrong.

An aluminum factory badge from 1989 roars out the truth about its owner’s “suicide.”

An unsent letter stubbornly proves that its owner never betrayed their country.

By the rules, the tribunal only mediates disputes over who owns an “object.” It does not reopen cases involving “people.”

But Shen Zhao discovers that every old object in this city is waiting for someone who can hear it.

And the tribunal’s nine veteran mediators happen to correspond to nine kinds of wrongful cases that are “not accepted.”

It’s not that they can’t take the cases.

They’re afraid to.

Because every old object whose grievance is successfully redressed lets Shen Zhao glimpse a piece of the city’s history that “should have been forgotten.”

And when the ninety-ninth old object speaks, he will learn what happened on the night three years ago when his younger sister “disappeared”:

Who was it that “filed” her away inside a blue-and-white porcelain bowl?