The village head said, “Actually, before Wu Xiufen got married, we already knew her husband, Zhang Qiang, wasn’t long for this world. The old men all said that he had the presence of a dying man.”
I frowned. There appeared to be some unknown story in this village.
The village head dropped the cigarette butt to the ground and licked his dried lips. He continued, “At the time, I was already an adult. Even though I didn’t know Zhang Qiang that well, I heard from the others that he had a lungs problem. Plus, he would cough nonstop.”
“Was it that serious?”
The man clapped. “That’s right. Even a normal person could see that he was not physically fit. However, Wu Xiufen didn’t mind it. Later Zhang Qiang died from a weak lung, or perhaps it was cancer. Tell me, why would a woman with both wealth and looks marry someone who was dying?” I scratched my chin and said nothing.
The man continued, “Someone did remind Wu Xiufen, telling her to reconsider. After all, marriage was for life. Even though Zhang Qiang was a local, we didn’t want a woman to waste her happiness like that. However, she insisted on marrying him. Is that not strange?”
“It is strange.” I nodded.
At that moment, the wife came out with a few dishes as well as rice. After a whole day of working, I was indeed starving. The sky was already dark.
“Come, eat up, and I’ll continue the story.” The village head invited us. We grabbed the rice and started to eat. The man took a sip of the soup and resumed the story. “The other strange thing is no one knew how those two got to know each other. We hadn’t seen Wu Xiufen before. It was like she had materialized out of thin air. We only met her a few times before they got married.” The village head swallowed the food. “But marriage is a good thing. In the end, we gave them our blessings. As long as they had love, the rest didn’t matter.” The man’s wife sat down and chided, “Right, but it was my family who organized our wedding back then. So you would say that.”
The man glared at his wife. “How can we compare to them? It’s destiny between us! Our fate was decided from our previous lives…” This couple sure loved each other. Even before us, they didn’t forget to feed us dog food.
The village head smiled at his wife and continued, “So they got married. Not long after that, Zhang Qiang’s parents died. But they were already old, so it was normal. However, the couple never had any kids, and that got the villagers talking.”
We listened and ate.
The village head took another slurp of the soup. “Some said Wu Xiufen was infertile, and that was why she had to marry Zhang Qiang. Others said Zhang Qiang was too weak to perform his marital duties. In any case, there was no child. Soon Zhang Qiang died.” The man added, “When he died, Wu Xiufen was only 30. Some of the bachelors in the village didn’t mind her being a widow, they offered to marry her but she rejected all of them.” After a sigh, the man continued, “Those people kept bothering Wu Xiufen, so she closed the door and stopped going out. Eventually, the men scattered. That was more than 30 years ago. Wu Xiufen would be more than 60 now. But for the past 30 years, Wu Xiufen would go up the mountains to burn paper money for Zhang Qiang.”
“Every day?” I frowned and asked to confirm, “You sure about that?”
The man sighed, “Yes. After the men saw how loyal Wu Xiufen was to Zhang Qiang, they all gave up. Even now, she still went up to his grave daily regardless of the weather. It’s about 6 pm now. Around 8 pm, she’ll make the journey to the mountain.” I glanced at the watch. Then the village head ended the story. He looked quite melancholic.
However, after hearing the village head’s story, I was quite confused. Marriage was common, but the details of this marriage were weird. Even though Wu Xiufen lived at Xing Dong Village now, she didn’t come from this place, and Moulin Rouge Workshop wasn’t situated here either. A woman brought a lot of money to a place where no one knew her and married a man she hadn’t met. Plus, everyone knew the man was going to die soon. Wu Xiufen had to have a reason to marry someone like that. So what was that reason?
When we finished dinner, it was already 7 pm. The sky was fully dark already. Sitting in the yard, looking up, the sky was grey, and there were only a few twinkling stars. The spring night was rather cold. The village head and his wife had already started to put away the stuff.
We planned to spend the night at the village head’s house, and he agreed readily. He had a lot of spare rooms.
Then we went out. We waited behind the pile of firewood before Wu Xiufen’s home, waiting for her to come out. The time ticked by, and the lights in the village went off one after another. The village was too small to have streetlights. We couldn’t open any flashlights. Time seemed to slow down. After who knew how long, there was a click. We woke up immediately.
The wooden door opened. Wu Xiufen carried a stack of something yellow and came out. She closed the wooden door, but she didn’t lock it. She wasn’t worried about thieves. Wu Xiufen looked around and only departed when she was sure there was no one around. Gu Chen gave us a signal and told us to follow. In terms of tailing a suspect, Gu Chen was the expert. We stayed about 10 meters away from Wu Xiufen. We moved carefully lest we made any sound.
Suddenly we heard a spark. Soon we saw fire light up Wu Xiufen’s hands. The ember was small. Looks like Wu Xiufen didn’t plan to burn all the paper money, just a few of them. As she moved forward, she tossed the burning paper money into the air. The paper money twirled before they landed and sizzled on the ground.
Wu Xiufen also mumbled something that we couldn’t understand. It sounded like a spell. We followed Wu Xiufen as she moved alone in the dark, burning the paper money.
Many families were preparing to call it a night. The night breeze blew, and it caused me to shiver. The burning paper money fluttered everywhere, and they looked like ghost fire. The old woman in a black coat was holding a stack of paper money, mumbling a spell while walking towards a grave. It was strange. Wu Xiufen moved surprisingly fast. She also used the burning paper money as a light source. She was heading towards the mountain behind the village, and we had already reached the foot of the mountain. She paused for a moment. The flame flickered in her palms. It extended her shadow, making it look like a demon. The few of us held our breath. The old lady paused to spread a lot of paper money on the ground before she resumed her journey.
We followed her up the mountain. Suddenly the old lady took out a stack of black paper from her pocket and started to burn them instead. We hadn’t encountered a culture that burned black paper for the departed.
Things only got stranger because eventually, Wu Xiufen got down on her hands and knees. She crawled forward, and she tarted to cry. She didn’t stop burning the black paper and chanting the spell though.
Our heart rose and fell with her strange behavior. What was Wu Xiufen doing? And had she been repeating this strange ritual for the past 30 plus years?
The 3 of us shared a look. Under the dim light, we saw the confusion and underlying fear in each other’s eyes.
Finally, Wu Xiufen stopped. We saw that she had halted before a tombstone, but it was too far for us to see what was carved on the stone.
Wu Xiufen hugged the tombstone, her mouth still moving.
I leaned forward to take a closer look and accidentally stepped on a broken branch. It snapped crisply.
1 comment:
Gosh Noooo
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