Truth be told, Zhang Guozhong had his own selfish reasons for volunteering to go to the countryside. During the Cultural Revolution, food was everyone's eternal obsession. People of that era seemed to have bottomless stomachs—especially the peasants who labored in the fields. Whether at a wedding feast or eating cornbread by the edge of the fields at noon, no one ever leaned back with a satisfied belly and said, "I'm full." They ate whatever there was, and however much there was, it was never enough.
A year earlier, the memory of braised chicken with potatoes and scrambled eggs with chilies at the headman's house still lingered on Zhang's tongue as if it had been yesterday. To him, Xiao Zhan had seemed like a land of plenty: rich fields, flocks of chickens and ducks at every home. Meat was scarce, yes, but at the very least there were eggs every day, and steaming bowls of fragrant white rice. Tianjin's Xiao Zhan rice, after all, had once been tribute to the Emperor himself.
But when Zhang returned, not as a city envoy in the guise of a shaman but as an educated youth sent down to the village, his illusions were shattered.
There were hardly any rice paddies at all. As far as the eye could see stretched endless stalks of corn and sorghum, crops so common even thieves didn't bother with them. Aside from the welcoming feast held in his honor, where he managed to taste a few mouthfuls of meat, the next time Zhang ate meat was a year later, during the New Year celebrations.
That banquet itself became a source of lifelong embarrassment.
Before the entire village—locals and sent-down youths alike—the headman praised Zhang to the skies. He claimed that Zhang had risked his own safety to rid the village of evil spirits, that his powers had brought relief to Li Daming, who now ate more and suffered fewer fits than before. He even boasted that Zhang, still so young, already surpassed the famed fortune-teller Xu from the neighboring village. The headman wrapped it all in the high-sounding language of socialist virtue, declaring Zhang's bravery a shining example for all.
It was absurd—an official revolutionary hero leading peasants to battle demons. Even the other educated youths laughed until their sides hurt. But the headman went on solemnly, undeterred, while Zhang wished the earth would open and swallow him whole. At least the villagers seemed convinced; they regarded him with embarrassed respect. To people who could barely recognize numbers above four, it made perfect sense: city men had once overthrown landlords in their village, and now the city had sent a man to catch demons. Why shouldn't it be true?
"Wait, you've all misunderstood," Zhang protested, his face burning. "I am a worker's son, a staunch Marxist. There are no ghosts or spirits in this world. All I did was use a few folk remedies to treat Comrade Li Daming's schizophrenia…" He spoke mainly for the other educated youths, knowing the villagers would never be convinced.
From then on, Zhang was lodged in the headman's home. The man slept better knowing a "half-immortal" was under his roof. Zhang didn't bother correcting him anymore. What weighed on his mind was Li Daming's possession.
By asking around, Zhang learned that after he had pasted that charm on Li Daming's door, the man's condition had indeed improved for a time. He could eat more, sometimes even had moments of lucidity, and even urged his daughter to fetch a doctor. But Zhang knew the truth: back then he hadn't understood charms at all. He had simply copied the simplest design from the Mao Mountain Treatise. Later, with study, he realized the one he had drawn wasn't a talisman for expelling spirits, but a corpse-suppressing charm, meant to prevent fresh corpses from turning into revenants. By rights, Li Daming's symptoms should have worsened. So why had they improved?
Zhang replayed every detail in his mind, every word spoken that day. Suddenly, he remembered—Li Daming had unearthed a coffin while digging the riverbank. The coffin had been by the river. The riverbank… the riverbank…
With a flash of revelation, Zhang leapt to his feet and ran straight into the headman's house, shouting, "I know! I know! It's the riverbank!"
Startled, the headman nearly dropped his pipe. "What is it? What do you mean?" But Zhang could only repeat, breathless, "The riverbank!"
The headman's wife pressed a glass of water into Zhang's hand. The headman himself offered a cheap "Zonghe" brand cigarette—scraps of old wrappers turned inside out, stamped with the word Zonghe. Machine-made cigarettes were rare in the countryside, a mark of distinction. It was Zhang's first smoke. The taste was sharp and bitter, but he didn't care. He poured out his theory in a rush.
The very next morning, the headman gathered a dozen strong men and led Zhang to the site where Li Daming had once dug. The riverbank had long since been repaired, the other side opening into the Caoschang River, whose water levels had dwindled over the years until the levee served more as a token than a barrier.
A group of villagers pointed to a low mound. "Here. This is where the coffin was found."
Zhang stood atop the bank, scanning the terrain. "This is it. It has to be."
The landscape confirmed his hunch: two ridges of embankment along the river, with a small creek feeding into the Caoschang from the south. A row of willows lined the creek, the water and trees forming the shape of a drawn bow.
"This used to be a graveyard, wasn't it?" Zhang asked.
"That's right. But after Liberation, the dead were buried south of the village. No one's been put here since."
"And when Li Daming dug up that coffin—did anyone see what was inside?"
"No. Everyone thought it was cursed. A few days after his accident, the coffin was burned." The headman's eyes gleamed with faith in Zhang's words.
Zhang's jaw tightened. "That coffin was empty!"
"What? Empty? How could a coffin be empty? What, were the landlords burying livestock in them now?"