When the Suona Sounds: Red Weddings Send You to the Underworld, White Funerals Bring You Back

The suona has been passed down for thousands of years.

You think it's just the king of instruments, a brute that bullies every other sound?

No. In my hands, it can tell good from evil and divide yin from yang.

My name is Ge Tianchong. The year I failed the college entrance exam, my father shoved a suona into my arms and said, “Of all the instruments, the suona is king. This heirloom from our ancestors is more than it seems.”

I didn't believe him.

Not until Sister Xia, the widow next door, died in my arms wearing a red wedding dress, with my child still in her womb.

On the seventh day after her death, black water bubbled up from her grave. The people who had bullied her began to die one after another.

A ghost baby crawled into my belly.

My father played the forbidden tune “Eighteen Yama Kings” to save me, and died right before my eyes.

Only later did I learn that some tunes are not for the living to hear, and some things can only be done with a suona.

People cursed me: “You lousy suona player, what makes you think you can do anything?”

The suona's first note sends wedding rites to the underworld and brings funeral rites back to life.