Odd People by the Yanghe River

Everyone in our village is strange. My great-grandfather was stingy his whole life. The Japanese hanged him from an old locust tree, but the words on his lips weren’t “Spare me.” They were “I’m still short three dou.” My second great-grandfather was a womanizer all his life; every woman in town avoided him, and in the end, a Taoist nun did him in. My third great-grandfather was stubborn to the core. He enlisted to avenge his elder brother and fought for years, never knowing until the day he died that the Japanese had surrendered long ago. Later, I realized it wasn’t just them. Go back five generations and there’s a strange one in every generation: one read fortunes for camels, one apologized to mules, one planted cans on a battlefield, one sang to crops, and one let the Japanese chop up the coffin he’d saved for and burn it as firewood. My surname is Chen. I’m the last male heir of the family. I can’t farm; all I know how to do is write. In 2023, I returned to the village and spent two years writing them all down. For no other reason than to settle the Chen family’s account.