1
Ever since I can remember, my father has always been busy with our family funeral-supply shop.
Paper figures, paper horses, joss paper, incense and candles, coffins, tombstones—we sell all of it.
With so many of these things around, strange happenings tend to find their way to us.
When I was little, I was scared. I’d run out of the funeral shop crying, unwilling to stay inside.
When I was five or six, I’d wail and beg to go to school. Every time, my father would just laugh, rub my head, and say school was much scarier than any of this.
As I got a little older, I grew used to all sorts of things and stopped finding them strange. The things I thought were ghosts had never actually hurt me.
Even now, I’ve never been to school.
My father said there was no point in going, that I wasn’t born to follow that path, but he’d let me read.
A whole lot of books.
As he put it: “School is useless. Reading is useful.”
A few days ago, on the Ghost Festival, my father told me to go burn joss paper at a crossroads.
“No one in our family has died. Why burn joss paper?”
“We’re in this line of work. Maybe some lonely ghost has no one to make offerings for them. If they find this money, they might be able to live a little better.”
I laughed at him for being superstitious, but still went along with it and headed out with him.
He led me to a small road where there wasn’t a soul in sight.
“There are lots of wandering spirits on small roads. The ones who come here today have no living relatives. They roam without a home, so burn it here.”
My father lit a few sheets of paper, told me not to burn them too fast, then went home to carry on with his work.
I was scrolling through videos as I burned the paper. When I looked up, I saw someone standing in front of me and nearly fell backward in fright.
“Hey, buddy, got a light?”
I patted my pockets. “I don’t have a lighter either. My dad took it after he lit the fire.”
The man shook his head with a smile, picked up a half-burned sheet of joss paper, and brought the flame close to the cigarette in his mouth.
For some reason, a strange gust of wind suddenly blew.
The flames curled around his neck, but he didn’t seem to feel any pain. By the time his cigarette was lit, his neck was burned raw and blistered, and it even smelled charred.
Cold sweat poured out of me, trickling down my cheeks and dripping onto the ground.
“Hey, buddy, your… your—”
“Thanks. I’m Trương Tiểu Niên. I’ve been dead for three days. How long have you been dead?”
2
At that, my calves seized up. I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t move, so I could only stand there trembling.
“Boom!”
The man couldn’t help laughing. “I’m kidding. You’re a grown man and you’re that timid?”
“But your neck…”
“What about it?” He reached up and felt his neck a few times.
Huh? It was fine?
Maybe I’d imagined it. It was dark, after all. Easy enough to see things wrong.
Anger surged from the bottom of my heart all the way to my head. “Damn it, buddy, are you sick in the head?”
He didn’t get mad. “Come on, I was just joking. There are no ghosts in this world. Believe in science; reject superstition.”
With that, he turned and walked away, gradually disappearing from my sight.
After that weirdo threw me off, I wasn’t in the mood to burn joss paper anymore.
I tossed the rest of the joss paper into the fire. The flames flared up, lighting my flushed face.
After making sure the fire was completely out, I cleared my throat and headed home.
“Oh? You burned it fast.”
I snorted in reply.
“Then go on home first. I still have some work to finish, so don’t wait for me.”
Our home wasn’t far from the shop, about a twenty-minute walk.
Near the apartment complex, I spotted a newly opened bar by the road: Quán Rượu Tầm Thường.
It sure wasn’t eye-catching. It really did look ordinary.
There was no signboard. The so-called sign was just a few scrawled words on the wall, serving as the bar’s name.
The courtyard wall was brick covered in cement, in a purely old-fashioned style.
I quite liked drinking, and I often drank with my father at home. Since I was getting home early today, I decided to stop in and take a look.
I pushed open the old wooden door and frowned.
The inside was even worse. The ceiling had a sloping roof, the kind you hardly ever saw anymore, with a few beams supporting some roof tiles.
Cobwebs filled the spaces between the beams. I couldn’t tell whether they were part of the decor or real.
Posters from the ’90s hung on the walls, and electrical wires ran down them to the baseboards. It couldn’t have looked any more old-fashioned.
A rotary phone, a cassette player, a black-and-white TV, a teapot printed with a leader’s portrait.
Every decoration seemed designed to drag you back to that era.
I had to admit, a bar with this kind of style was a rare sight.
It wasn’t large, with only four tables. A wooden ledge ran along the wall, serving as extra seating.
I sat down at a table in the corner. Hmm, the chair was a little hard. My butt hurt.
“What’ll it be?” The owner was a stylish woman with short hair and big eyes. A faint scar marked her right cheek, and she looked very tough.
“Uh, a pot of peach-blossom wine, please.”
The owner was very friendly. Seeing that it was my first time there, she even gave me a plate of sunflower seeds.
The wine was good, and the music was good too.
Across from me was a singer, holding a guitar and singing a lilting folk song.
I was thinking I’d have to bring my father here sometime when the door opened and someone walked in. It was Trương Tiểu Niên.
3
He spotted me in the corner, paused for a moment, then smiled and waved.
I glared at him.
He didn’t come in to drink. He went over to the folk singer, whispered a few words, and then they switched places.
Once he was settled in his chair, he took out a sanxian.
A sanxian?
Playing a sanxian in a bar?
“Peach leaves point up at the tips, willow leaves shade the whole sky~”
Was that opera? “Tham Thanh Thủy Hà”?
Trương Tiểu Niên’s voice was very distinctive. I knew this folk song well, and plenty of people had covered it, but none of them sang it as well as he did.
I never would have guessed that this seemingly unserious guy had such a beautiful singing voice.
Gradually, I was completely captivated. I took out my phone and recorded a bit.
When he saw me filming, he even struck a few poses on purpose.
After he finished the folk song, he swaggered over and sat across from me, casually taking a glass and filling it for himself.
“Sorry for scaring you earlier.” With that, he drained it.
“Hey, using my wine to apologize to me?”
He laughed again, a little sheepishly, and waved to the owner. “Sister Zhao, put this table on my tab. And bring another pot of green-plum wine.”
“You sang beautifully,” I said sincerely.
“Ha, it’s what I study.” He pointed behind him.
Oh, got it. There was an art academy in that direction, so he was probably a student there.
“You’re studying how to sing ‘Tham Thanh Thủy Hà’?”
“What, this? I study Peking opera, but hardly anyone listens to Peking opera. Folk songs like this, on the other hand, get people…”“...like.”
I nodded.
“Have a cigarette.”
I took it automatically. “I don’t have a lighter.”
“Haha, you really hold a grudge. I just went to the convenience store and bought one.”
I smoked, but Dad didn’t let me smoke much. With him gone, I didn’t stand on ceremony with Trương Tiểu Niên and lit up without hesitation.
“I remember ‘Tham Thanh Thủy Hà’ is a folk song from the capital, right?”
“That’s right. It was even rumored to be a vulgar song for a while.”
“Then why do you still sing it?”
“My senior likes it. If she likes it, I’ll learn it.”
Those few short sentences revealed a lovesick young man, which fit the story in “Tham Thanh Thủy Hà,” too.
We drank quickly. In less than twenty minutes, we’d finished both pots of wine.
“I’m heading back to campus. Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
I blurted out, “How about we exchange contact information?”
4
When I got home, Dad had just come in, too. I told him about the new wine bar downstairs and how good the fruit wine was.
“Did you smoke?”
I felt a little awkward. “Yeah. I met someone I hit it off with and had a cigarette.”
He said nothing more, but his brows furrowed into the character for “river.” “It’s the Ghost Festival today. You shouldn’t be wandering around.”
“Come on, what era are we living in? You still believe in superstition?”
I took off my jacket and sat down on the sofa. “I’ll play you a folk song. A fuddy-duddy like you will probably like it.”
I opened my phone. “Huh?”
Where was the video?
I searched all over my phone but couldn’t find the clip of Trương Tiểu Niên singing.
Dad’s brows were still furrowed. “What kind of cigarette did you smoke?”
“Huh? I didn’t check the brand.”
“Tell me everything that happened today, in detail. Don’t leave anything out.”
I told him everything, from burning the spirit money to meeting Trương Tiểu Niên at the wine bar. I left nothing out.
“The cigarette you smoked was a longevity cigarette. Smoking it can extend your life.”
What?
Dad’s story got more and more mysterious. “But you can’t smoke one for free. You have to help someone complete a task.”
“Dad, have you been drinking, too?”
“I’m not joking! Trương Tiểu Niên is a ghost!”
“No way. He sat across from me, we clinked glasses and drank together, and I accidentally touched his hand. It was warm—he was definitely a real person.”
“Where’s the video on your phone?”
“I probably forgot to hit record.”
Then I remembered something. “Look, we even added each other on WeChat.”
To prove Trương Tiểu Niên wasn’t a ghost, I sent him a sticker.
He replied almost immediately: “What is it?”
“Nothing, sorry. Sent that by mistake.”
He sent back the sticker of an old man sitting on the subway.
“See, Dad? Do ghosts know how to use stickers?”
Dad didn’t know what to say for a moment. He just sighed.