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 musical hooligan?

No. In my hands, it can discern good from evil and divide the realms of yin and yang.

My name is Ge Tianchong. The year I failed the college entrance exam, my father pressed a suona into my arms and said, “Of all the instruments, the suona is king. This heirloom from our ancestors is no ordinary thing.”

I didn’t believe him.

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

On the seventh day after her death, black water seeped from her grave. The people who had bullied her began dying one after another.

A ghost infant crawled into my belly.

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

Only later did I learn that there are songs the living must not hear, and things only the suona can set right.

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

Because when the suona sounds, weddings lead to the underworld, and funerals bring the dead back to life.