Records of Zhu Ming

In the winter of the thirty-fourth year of the Jiajing reign, many people died overnight in a county in Jiangnan. Everyone except him. His name was Zhu Muye. When he awoke on a riverbank, a thin layer of frost covered him. His palms were uncalloused, and he couldn't even remember who he was. He knew only one thing: he could not die. Over the next hundred years, he farmed military colonies, opened a teahouse, worked as a bookkeeper, and traveled through Liaodong, the capital, the northwest, and Shaanxi. He met a widow who sold wine, a cobbler, an old man hauling charcoal, a scholar who copied books, and a soldier guarding a wall. One by one, they were gone. There was only one thing he could do: record them. Their names, where they came from, what they did, and the year they died, all written line by line in a ledger. He filled eleven volumes. On the last page, he wrote: “I have recorded so many people, but not one of them remembers me.”