Master, Would You Take a Look?

In old Tianjin, the officiant who presided over funerals was called a “Da Le,” someone who helped people settle their affairs after death. On the banks of the Gu River in 1992, a Da Le lived in an unassuming funeral home. Yun Zaitian, known as Master Yun, came from a family of Da Le officiants spanning three generations. He could read omens and faces. His main business was arranging funerals; on the side, he helped the neighbors expose scams. Bai Sumei was a traditional illusionist, with nimble hands that could perform tricks and dismantle mechanisms. Xu Wenzhong was the deputy chief of a police station, well-versed in both the old and new. He performed comedic dialogue onstage and kept the peace offstage. The three old friends teamed up to deal with the con artists who pretended to have supernatural powers. “Master, take a look for me. There's a ghost haunting the place!” “A ghost? There are no ghosts in this world. There are just so many people pretending to be ghosts that ghosts came to exist.”