December 1967.
An unprecedented cold wave swept across the ancient city long known as the gateway of emperors. All of China was in upheaval. The Cultural Revolution had reached its furious peak, its storms even touching distant Hong Kong. Whispers of the "send-down" movement drifted through every street and alley, leaving hearts restless.
Compared to the villages, life in the city still seemed a privilege. Grain and oil were rationed—meager, yes, but dependable. People rarely ate their fill, yet even so it was better than the coarse sweet potato flour of the countryside. The scars of the Great Famine (1959–1961)—what the people called du huang, the "years of enduring hunger"—had been carved too deeply into memory ever to fade.
As secretary to the school's Revolutionary Committee, Zhang Guozhong carried a constant frown. His new assignment filled him with dread: to compose a denunciation of feudal superstition.
Zhang was not an ordinary man. Once a student of the very technical school where he now taught, he had been retained for his stellar record. In those days, admission to a technical school was harder than today's path to Tsinghua University. Failing that, one went to high school. Well into the 1980s, technical graduates were seen as true intellectuals. For Zhang—who had once scored near perfect in Chinese literature—penning a polemic was child's play. He could damn anyone, from a principal to a war hero, into irredeemable filth.
But this time was different.
The book before him—a late-Qing edition of The Mao Mountain Gazetteer, seized from the school Party secretary's home—left him paralyzed. Its pages brimmed with formulas for subduing demons, martial diagrams, drawings of obscure herbs and artifacts, and outlandish remedies: earth scraped from beneath a roof, sesame oil infused with ancient coins. None of it seemed tethered to reason.
A proper denunciation required evidence. The Committee demanded proof that such works were not merely false but poisonous—a cancer corrupting five thousand years of Chinese civilization. Were it Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, that would be easy—mere ghost stories. But this? At worst, it was foolish trickery. Trickery was not poison. Trickery could not be written as a national calamity.
Two weeks passed. Zhang pored over the book each night, searching for a flaw. The text seemed fantastic yet strangely coherent, each passage feeding into the next like a net without a seam. At last, his grandfather crept down from the attic, his frame bent with age.
"Child," the old man whispered, "what's written in that book is true. If you don't believe me, try it on someone."
"You traitor to the proletariat!" Zhang snapped. "I have nothing to do with you. Do not interfere with my revolutionary work."
Since the day his grandfather had been branded a traitor, the Zhang family had lived under constant suspicion. His father had been denounced and expelled from the factory. Zhang himself was barred from the Youth League. Their windows were smashed. At last, they were forced to sign a public declaration severing ties with the old man. From then on, his grandfather lived alone in a drafty attic, shunned. The family pitied him, but dared not show it. In their crowded wood-frame apartment—once part of the old Italian concession—neighbors' eyes were everywhere. A quilt slipped to him at midnight was the most they dared.
The old man smiled faintly, leaning on the wall as he shuffled back upstairs. His words, however, lingered in Zhang's mind.
Yes… if I find someone with the symptoms described, and the cure fails, the argument writes itself.
At that time, Zhang believed none of it. Yet the problem remained: no such patient could be found. With his Committee letter in hand, he visited hundreds of households in a week, searching in vain. He was ready to abandon the hunt when a piece of news arrived.
One morning, a young comrade named Xiao Liu came rushing in.
"The school Party secretary, Old Wei No. 2, is dead—suicide! His wife's gone mad, though she's lucid at times. She rants about his past, things that could clear his name. The Committee thinks she's trying to overturn his case. They want us to interrogate her—and you'll need to draft the denunciation."
To Zhang, this was providence. The secretary's widow's condition sounded uncannily like what he had read in The Gazetteer.
If I try the method on her and it fails, I will have my proof.
He slipped a vinegar bottle into his satchel, tucked in paper and pen, and added a few pomelo leaves he had prepared. Together with Xiao Liu, he set out.
The scene that greeted him broke his heart. In life, Secretary Wei had been kind, cultured, a man of calligraphy, painting, music, and Go. For years, Zhang had admired him. Now his home looked like a desecrated temple, looted and abandoned. His wife lay drooling on a bed, muttering ceaselessly, while a few stern-faced students and teachers stood guard.
Zhang spread a torn newspaper on the floor, sat cross-legged, and listened carefully to every word.
"How could I be a traitor? I joined the Party at thirty-eight! When Tianjin was liberated, I was head of the school security corps—I arrested spies, I earned merit! It's all in my file. Everything you say is slander!"
Her eyes were vacant, yet her voice burned with fervor. The air in the room thickened, strange and oppressive.
Xiao Liu leaned close. "Tell me—do you think she's truly insane, or just pretending to clear Old Wei's name? The record about her catching spies is real. Funny, Old Wei never spoke of it, not even to Principal Chen."
"Shh," Zhang hissed. "Quiet. Let's hear what else she says."
And as he watched the woman's trembling lips, the pomelo leaves in his satchel seemed to weigh heavier, as though the book itself were waiting—waiting for its trial.