Tihu Blogs on Tihu Hall Notes

Folk Cthulhu Horror: Why Is His Back Covered with Eyes?

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:23:31 +0800

💡 Introduction:
When people enter a temple to pay their respects, the first figure they usually see is the smiling Budai Monk. But if you stand in an empty hall and stare at him for thirty seconds, does that smile begin to feel a little too perfect, a little too uncanny? Behind this most familiar “auspicious symbol” there may be a hidden legend erased by official history, and at its core, a deeply unsettling form of Chinese-style Cthulhu horror.

The Co-Mother-in-Law

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:23:31 +0800

Listen here → “The Co-Mother-in-Law”

The co-mother-in-law from the village never comes to the city,
she saw the New District by the sea-lake and stuck out her tongue in shock;
how many souls can this hive of cast iron hold,
those window-eyes, row after row, staring blankly at whom.\

The co-mother-in-law from the city never comes to the village,
she saw a little potato and squeezed her eyes shut tight;
all this dirt-caked roughness, and you do not even dust it off,
straight to the hearth it goes, buried whole, amen and all.\

The Native Origins of Song Jiang's Liangshan Military Group

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 23:27:44 +0800

I. When the Yellow River Captured the Ji

In medieval China, the state maintained ritual sacrifices to the Five Sacred Peaks, the Five Sacred Strongholds, and the Four Waterways. The Four Waterways were the Yangzi, the Yellow River, the Huai, and the Ji.

Among them, the Yellow River was always the most troublesome, for obvious geographic reasons. Seasonal flood zones had already begun to appear before the Five Dynasties. One hydrological danger of a Yellow River breach was that it could seize the channel of another river. In the Northern Song, the court, still able to control parts of the upper Yellow River basin, was constantly preoccupied with preventing the Yellow River from capturing the Huai and emptying into the sea by that route.

Nüqing: The Hidden Official Who Vanished from the Daoist Pantheon

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 00:05:45 +0800

The Daoist pantheon did not gradually form a complete system until the Northern Song. This process showed itself mainly in several ways. First, the final ranking of the highest Daoist deities was eventually fixed. Before that, the order among the Three Pure Ones, especially the relative honor given to Primordial Beginning Heavenly Worthy and the Supreme Lord Lao, had never truly stabilized. Second, the borrowing and absorption of Buddhist concepts became systematic. Ideas such as the underworld and the Eighteen Hells had already sunk deep into popular consciousness and were therefore incorporated into Daoism. Third, Daoism retained many gods of older worship, such as City Gods and Earth Gods. Fourth, the proportion and influence of popular gods, figures transmitted in the folk sphere and then absorbed into Daoism and granted divine status, grew ever larger: Lord Guan, Lü Dongbin, Wang Lingguan, Mazu, Zhang Sanfeng, and many others.

Supplement on the Grand Duke: There Are Two Jiang Ziyas in Investiture of the Gods, and One of Them Deifies Himself

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 23:19:45 +0800

Most people know Jiang Ziya from Investiture of the Gods. The influence of that novel has been so immense that even divine figures wholly invented within it, Hongjun Patriarch for example, were later posthumously elevated by some temples and given statues for worship. Xu Zhonglin’s prose is admittedly rather poor, assuming Xu Zhonglin really was the author, which is no more certain than it is for the Four Great Novels. The plot is full of holes, and as literature it falls short. Yet because the materials connected with the Chinese divine world are so vast, and because the author truly did put enormous labor into assembling them, later readers who began to infer and investigate discovered a wealth of details. In that respect, it is no less rewarding than reading Journey to the West through a scholarly lens.

Bao Liang

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:01:45 +0800

After the Song, Daoism’s immense and unruly pantheon began to take on stable shape. The Taiqing and Lingbao traditions, among others, compromised with one another, and under the influence of the Song imperial house the ranks of the immortals were gradually fixed. At the summit stood the Three Pure Ones, the Four Sovereigns, the King Father of the East, and the Queen Mother of the West.

The Queen Mother of the West had, so far as records tell us, more than twenty daughters. One of the younger ones was called Lady Taizhen. She married Wang Youzi, the True King of Xuandu Taizhen. Wang Youzi originally held what amounted to an enviable central-government post, but after mishandling some affair he was demoted to become Lord of the Eastern Peak. In that age Buddhism had not yet entered China, so there was still no King Yama and no Eighteen Hells. The Lord of the Eastern Peak, who governed the underworld and its passages to the unseen realm, was in fact a very promising office. Lady Taizhen moved with her husband’s change of post, and so came to be known as the Lady of the Eastern Peak. She bore a son of thoroughly bad reputation, the famous Third Son of Mount Tai. We will leave him aside for now.

Anqi Sheng

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 00:53:45 +0800

Xie Lingyun of the Eastern Jin once wrote a poem, “Climbing the Islet in Mid-River,” which includes these lines:

Long have I wearied of ranging through Jiangnan,
Yet in Jiangbei broad circuits still remain.
Cherishing the new, the paths grow winding;
Seeking the strange, the sights do not delay.
Tumbling waters rush and then cut straight;
A lone islet charms the middle stream.
Cloud and sun shine into one another;
Empty water and sky share one bright freshness.
Wondrous things show themselves, but none may prize them;
Truth lies hidden, and who can pass it on?
I imagine the bearing of Kunshan’s immortals,
Remote beyond all worldly ties.
Only then do I believe in the arts of Anqi,
By which one may fully nourish the years of life.

Family EDC/PSK Gear Checklist

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 20:40:00 +0800

Applicable household size: 1-3 family members
Intended duration of use: noted item by item where relevant

Items to keep in a single bag that can be grabbed at any time:

One 45L backpack kept ready year-round; in the bedroom there is also a fully loaded 25L hiking pack.
Identification documents, ID card, passport, and so on. Important household papers such as the property deed are usually stored together so they can be picked up quickly if necessary, though preserving life always comes first.
A certain amount of cash, including some coins usable for coin phones and vending machines, plus bankbooks and tickets/cards. I keep one bank card and several hundred yuan in a Dolfin waterproof case every day.
Emergency phone charger. I have two power banks with different ports for all handheld devices, one carried daily and one in the emergency bag, charged once a week. I am obsessive about this.
Family photos, for contact in case of separation. I keep one family photo in my wallet.
Contact notebook, with important phone numbers copied down in case the phone runs out of power or fails. A backup phone is essential. A Nokia 1100 is especially valuable and also has a flashlight function.
Paper and oil-based marker, for leaving notes and keeping records.
Flashlights, one ordinary and one hand-crank, plus batteries. I keep several light sources and recommend a daily-carry flashlight using AA batteries, a squeeze-charge flashlight, and an outdoor camping lamp.
Radio, for receiving outside information, plus batteries. Mine is a Tecsun full-band model with hand-crank charging.
Tissues, wet wipes, sanitary pads, which can also be useful for stopping bleeding.
Aluminum foil, 1.5 x 2 meters, for heat insulation, warmth, and waterproofing. A large plastic sheet can serve as well.
Several plastic bags, for handling garbage and waste, and for windproofing and waterproofing. I keep a small roll of food-storage bags.
Whistle, for survival use. I recommend an aluminum-alloy emergency whistle as part of the everyday keychain, and outdoor packs usually have whistles too.
Swiss Army knife. In addition to a genuine Swiss Army knife, counterfeits are a disaster when things matter, we also need a straight-blade knife and a multitool pliers set just in case.
Road atlas.
A few energy bars and one bottle of water. I use a 3L hydration bladder. At home it is a good habit to make sure kettles and dispensers always have backup water ready. This comes from being used to water outages.
Special items for particular family members. For example, my bag also contains diapers and an unopened can of stage-two baby formula. Prepare according to the needs of the specific household.
Home medical kit. The main point is to ensure sterile gauze, alcohol, common medicines, and adhesive bandages are available.

Stored food:

Tihu Notes | The Sauce Tree

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 08:36:54 +0800

On Shangchi Main Street there is a noodle shop called Shangchi Noodles. It was once an ordinary little place, known only to people nearby for being tasty, until food accounts on social media suddenly made it famous. Shangchi Main Street itself is a short lane, barely a hundred meters long, lined on both sides with neat rows of Chinese banyans. The noodle shop sells noodles only in the morning and at noon, and only in limited quantities, closing as soon as everything is sold out.

Tihu Notes | Mad Feng

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 08:36:54 -0700

In Shanbanqiao there was an old resident named Feng Hao, known to all as Mad Feng. He often wandered through the lanes in an oversized, tattered Mao jacket and loose straw sandals. Around his neck hung a dozen or more senior bus cards from neighboring counties and towns, the farthest reaching all the way to Mianzhu. If anyone asked, he would jut out his chin and say, “I use them when I go strolling.” Neighbors also often saw him ambling home with half a jin of rice noodles from Shifang or a bowl of pepper-numbing chicken from Ya’an in hand.

Tihu Notes | Ma Sheng

Sat, 12 Jan 2019 08:36:54 +0800

Ma Sheng of Wenjiang was executed in the late 1990s during the campaign against organized crime. As a child he had been deeply introverted, always by himself and sparing with words. His family had been butchers for generations. Each day while his parents worked at the meat stall, Ma Sheng played by himself nearby. When he was eight or nine, he encountered someone at the marketplace. Later no one could remember what kind of person it had been, and Ma Sheng himself refused ever to speak of it. But from that point on, he stopped eating meat and spoke less and less.

Tihu Notes | Pan the Immortal

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 08:36:54 +0800

There used to be an old man at Xinhua Park by Xiaolong Bridge, surnamed Pan and known to everyone as Pan the Immortal. Every day he set up a secondhand bookstall with many rare lianhuanhua booklets and thread-bound books. No matter which volume it was, if someone recited the text on the preceding page, Pan could recite the next page word for word without a single mistake. Everyone found it miraculous, and people often tested him on purpose. Pan would simply say that if he answered correctly, the questioner had to buy the book. No one ever stumped him. Later some people even brought books from home that were not from his stall at all, and Pan still recited them flawlessly.

Records of Strange Translations | The Village Girl

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 08:36:54 -0700

In a certain village there was a young woman who had been born with a cleft lip, and for that reason had grown to adulthood without ever being given a name. She was gentle in temperament and dutiful to her parents, taking on her mother’s burdens without complaint and never fearing hardship.

One day she was carrying food to her father in the fields when she met an old woman on the road. The old woman looked at her and said, “What a lovely girl you are, with such well-formed features. It is only this cleft lip that hides your beauty.” The girl replied, “I was born this way. What can I do about it?” The old woman said, “I can cure it for you. Would you like that?” The girl bowed and thanked her, begging to be healed. The old woman took a steamed bun from the girl’s basket, peeled off a thin strip of skin, dabbed it with a little spit, and pasted it over the split in her lip. Then she instructed her not to smile. In three days, she said, it would be whole. Overjoyed, the girl bowed again in thanks, but the old woman’s figure had already gone vague and indistinct. The girl was astonished and thought she must have met an immortal. She carefully obeyed the instruction, and three days later her lip had indeed grown together. The mended place was pale in color, just as if powder had been dusted there.

Tihu Notes | Snow Silver

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 08:36:54 -0700

In old times Chengdu was also called Turtle City because the shape of the old town resembled a great turtle. Its tail roughly corresponded to what are now Tongzilin and Yulin. Old people say that when the turtle’s tail shrinks, snow falls on Chengdu. Snow is rare enough there to count as an auspicious sign, so naturally there have always been people who made a trade of it.

Du Fen was one of them. He wore a thick long gown all year round and dressed his hair in a Daoist knot. The nails on all ten of his fingers were left long, so long that they had softened and looked like a pair of bird claws. He could not really do anything for himself and required attendants to serve him at all times.

Tihu Notes | The Black Ladle

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 08:36:54 -0700

Before the elevated road was built at Wugui Bridge, there used to be a row of little shops by the Shahe Road entrance to Tazishan Park. One of them was called Old Ma’s Home Cooking. Its owner, Ma Huaizhen, wore his hair in a Daoist topknot, and on the wall he kept talismanic charms of the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice. Old Ma’s signature dish was called “Eightfold Auspice,” a vegetarian braise of potato, taro, bamboo shoots, and peppers. Yet the taste was marvelous. Every mouthful seemed to turn into a different meat: first red-braised pork, then taro chicken, then chicken giblets, then ratfish. The poor people living nearby loved to go there for a treat, because the flavor was beyond compare and the price absurdly kind.

Records of Strange Translations | The Touchstone

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 08:36:54 -0700

The third vernacular retelling from Zuicha Zhiguai.

There was a man surnamed Li in the county. One evening he was cooking lamb, and the fragrance carried even beyond the house. An old man with white hair pushed the door open and came in. “The lamb smells wonderful,” he said. “I wonder whether you might let me taste a piece.” Li gladly invited him to sit and laid out chopsticks. The old man took the seat by the window and said, almost to himself, “I have drifted far from home and am lodging at a nearby temple. I came for meat because I admired your refined bearing.” The two drank together. The old man could hold an extraordinary amount of liquor. He emptied ten pots without getting drunk, while Li, after drinking with him, slumped onto the bed and fell asleep.

Tihu Notes | The Jade Hound

Sat, 05 Jan 2019 08:36:54 -0700

In Xiangheli, Chenghua District, there was a white dog, magnificent in build and white from head to tail. No one in the neighborhood knew how old it was. Women now in their seventies said that when they were little girls playing in that lane, the dog had already been wandering there. City enforcers tasked with catching strays and layabouts who stole dogs alike had both tried to seize it, only to be bitten for no reason or else injured by one mishap after another. Once enough people had failed, no one dared lay hands on the white dog again.

Transcript | Don't Let Sheep Queue for You

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:22:11 +0800

When preparing a TED talk, there is one especially clumsy method called the verbatim-script method: you write out exactly what you plan to say, including the colloquial parts, word for word, then rehearse it and revise it again and again. It works for people giving TED-style talks for the first time. You get half the result for twice the labor.

What follows is one of my own failed examples.

Don’t Let Sheep Queue for You (Transcript)

Keystories | Eating Chengdu

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 08:36:54 +0800

In the courtyard of my wife’s family home in Linqiong there is a round chopping block, two chi across and one cun thick, mottled and dim, ordinarily used for mincing meat. I had always taken it for a tree stump. Only when I washed it today did I realize how astonishingly heavy it was. Its surface showed not annual rings but something like fish scales. Once rinsed clean, it turned the color of amber, and within it one could faintly make out dark red veins. When I asked where it had come from, my wife said that while her grandmother was still alive she often muttered that it was a dragon scale handed down through the family. No one had ever believed her.

Keystories | Tiger Month of the Renchen Year

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:36:54 -0700

In the autumn of the Renchen year, a certain Shao of Qingyang suddenly turned into a snake, swallowed a bailiff, and burrowed into the ground to escape, all because his fruit-and-melon cart had been confiscated and his livelihood left with nothing to stand on. His wife and daughter later saw him online on his phone and asked where he was. He replied only: in the mountains. Two months later, the wife and daughter also vanished.

Keystories | Tiger Month, Year of Renchen

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:36:54 -0700

In the autumn of the renchen year, a man surnamed Shao of Qingyang suddenly turned into a snake, swallowed a court runner, and burrowed into the earth. The cause, they said, was that his fruit cart had been confiscated and his livelihood destroyed. His wife and daughter sometimes saw him online on his phone. When they asked where he was, he replied only: in the mountains. Two months later, the wife and daughter also vanished.

Rain Bell | Fufonfia

Fri, 20 May 2011 06:49:17 +0800

Rain Bell Extra | Fufonfia

Dark Fragrance

Thursday, December 16. PLA 452 Hospital, Surgical Ward Three, Orthopedics Inpatient Department.

This wasn’t originally Old Mo’s night shift, but since the weekend was coming and he wanted to head back to his hometown in Nanchong tomorrow, he traded shifts with another doctor.

Under normal circumstances, orthopedics at night either had nothing to do or a major operation. Small injuries that just needed plaster casts and bandages could always be put off until dawn under the excuse of “observation” and then dumped on the interns for practice. As for the really big cases, the sort that required plasma, power saws, and steel pins, those never fell to him. The department chief would certainly take the lead himself. So when Old Mo was on night duty, he played PSP and watched soap operas.

Rain Bell | April

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:59:59 +0800

2011-04-02 10:29 Over the past two days we risked passing through heavily irradiated ground, retracing our way along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway through the contaminated region of Gangca county, hoping to reach Hargai and find a rail line leading into Gansu. But by the time we reached the Qinghai Lake farm, my wife and both Blade and his wife had fallen ill at the same time, burning with high fevers. To make matters worse, Blade’s car finally ran out of engine oil and blew the block. Five people became two, and we were stranded on this dangerous scorched earth.

Rain Bell | March

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:59:59 +0800

2011-03-01 09:12 We spent another day sitting in the sun, and my leg wound is nearly healed. I learned from one of the young soldiers how to disassemble a Type 81 automatic rifle, and with my clumsy hands I ended up smeared all over with gun oil. Charging my gear with the solar panel brought trouble. At first a few people came over with laptops and flashlights to top up their batteries. Later someone tried to carry off my solar panel with a bucket of water in hand, and when I stopped him he said, “Didn’t I give you water?” I later found out he was the driver of Vice Mayor Xu.

Rain Bell | February

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:59:59 +0800

2011-02-01 00:45 Overnight the government set up porridge kitchens all along the main streets of the county town, serving pilaf and clear noodle soup. Unexpectedly, I even saw blue tents marked with the United Nations emblem. At last, medical vehicles were visible again, and my wife ran off to collect some glucose and cold medicine. It was already after midnight. The smell of roasting mutton was drifting everywhere, and for a moment I felt as though I had slipped back many years into a night market in the northwest. I have a feeling we’re going to be staying here for a while.

Rain Bell | January

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:59:59 +0800

Rain Bell

01-01 00:09 Scattered firecrackers went off around the compound, sounding oddly out of place in all this darkness. Most people must already be asleep. I kissed my wife on the forehead, watched her drift off, then stepped onto the balcony. The red light on the camera mounted to the tripod blinked steadily like the eye of a Terminator. Far below, the white steel helmets of the sentries caught the searchlights in cold flashes, as if to remind me that time means nothing. It is only a ruler with which we measure our own suffering.

Rain Bell | December

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 23:59:59 +0800

Rain Bell

Rain Bell is an ongoing Twitter-novel experiment serialized simultaneously on Fanfou and Twitter. It tries to tell a near-future story set in Chengdu by following a real-time timeline in the voice of someone posting as events unfold.

12-17 18:00 This week has passed neither fast nor slow. Tonight the company had a gathering at a hotpot place on Chunxi Road. These days you can no longer trust hotpot with free broth bases. Who knows what kind of chili essence and coloring go into them. Still debating whether I should drive later. Saw a news item today about an unidentified woman’s body found in a greenbelt downtown. News like that barely registers with me now.

Mr. Lomo, Part III

Sun, 31 May 2009 15:02:52 +0800

Get as close as you can to the object of your desire.
LOMO Rule

Some say that the character cheng in Chengdu is really a pictograph meaning “electric scooter.” If you have ever seen the rivers of scooters during rush hour, you would be inclined to praise the sheer force of numbers.

It was already well past midnight now, so Lin Fei could ride the scooter at full stretch. Even so, the black shadow was faster than he had imagined, so fast that he could barely keep up. Yet it behaved like a cat teasing prey, always pausing for an instant at crucial corners to wait for him. Even then an ordinary person would long since have lost the trail. Fortunately Lin Fei still had another camera in his backpack: a Polaroid SX-70 Alpha 1 that looked like an elegant leather notebook.

Mr. Lomo, Part II

Sat, 30 May 2009 13:33:53 +0800

LOMO is part of life.
LOMO Rule

Lin Fei’s cramped little apartment was not far from Jiuyan Bridge, tucked behind the notorious unfinished high-rise east of it. It was only a one-bedroom place, yet he had swaddled the living room in heavy black curtains and turned it into a darkroom.

The moment he got home, Lin Fei plunged into the darkroom and developed the roll he had just shot. Feilin means photographic film, an old Chinese rendering of the English word “film.” Nowadays it generally refers to camera film, though it can also mean negatives used in printing plate-making. Back in the day, it was seeing that word feilin that had made Lin Fei fall in love with photography. It seemed the perfect expression of his own name. Lin Fei possessed a pair of eyes the ancient Shu called “subduing-nightmare pupils.” People with such eyes could see what happened in spans of time invisible to others. By combining that ability with LOMO cameras, Lin Fei was able to produce all manner of uncanny photographs.

Mr. Lomo, Part I

Wed, 27 May 2009 07:36:18 +0800

Carry it with you at all times.
LOMO Rule

The ease of old Chengdu is not something people merely speak of. It sinks all the way into the bones. The city was born with a life-attitude so calm and composed that every corner of it seemed to rest in an almost lazy state of comfort. Even white-collar workers in the forest of steel and concrete walked with a pace markedly slower than their counterparts in other cities.

Nine Stories, Season Six | Prologue

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:57:02 +0800

[Nine Stories] Private Writing Project Group · Google Collaborative Platform

[Nine Stories, Season Six] Prologue

Witch Doctor

It was obvious that no one had entered this room for a very long time. The room was small, containing only a bed one and a half meters wide and a cheap computer desk worth maybe fifty yuan, with just enough space between them for a sixty-kilo person to turn around. A thick layer of dust lay over the desk, marked by the tracks of dung beetles. The computer itself was gone, leaving only the square blank imprint where a CRT monitor had sat for years. Above the bed there was a round window half a meter across. At first glance it seemed to have been sealed over with black paper, but when I shone a flashlight on it I saw that it was actually a layer of black furry vine.

Nine Stories, Season Six | The Witch Doctor

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:57:02 +0800

Nine Stories private writing project group · Google collaboration platform

Nine Stories, Season Six: Prologue

The Witch Doctor

The room had plainly been left untouched for a very long time. It was tiny, containing only a bed one and a half meters wide and a cheap computer desk of the sort one could buy for fifty yuan. The gap between them was so narrow that only a person weighing sixty kilos could turn around in it. A thick layer of dust lay over the desk, marked by the tracks of beetles that had crawled across it. The computer itself was gone, leaving only the pale square where a CRT monitor had once sat for years. Above the bed was a round window half a meter across. At first glance it seemed to have been sealed over with black paper. Only when I shone my flashlight on it did I see that it was actually covered by a layer of black, furry vine.

Nine Stories, Season Five | Eight Sounds Fall Silent

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:52:29 +0800

Kidu, a city where once you arrive, you can never get away from the local-news pages.

If you happened to be standing in Beckoning-Stop Square at this moment, you would find social-news reporters from every major Kidu media outlet guarding every possible angle. Normally these people might be interviewing Dong Xiaohua of the Taobote household, who has climbed a tree and cannot come down, or filming the splatter on the wall at the scene of a husband-and-wife brawl, or recording a driver trapped in his cab after a traffic accident, or, failing that, disguising themselves as clients to investigate some girl selling her first time for money to pay medical bills. In short, in this city without superheroes, they are forever playing superheroes. Yet at this very moment they had all abandoned their usual strengths and converged on Beckoning-Stop Square to cover hard news instead, for one reason alone:

Tihu Notes | Right Hand

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:55:42 +0800

At the end of the bingxu year, a new female colleague named Xiao Wu joined our office. She was thin and quiet, hardly spoke to anyone, and always walked with both hands thrust into her pockets, carrying with her a faint smell of Chinese medicine. None of us knew much about her beyond the fact that she was a woman PhD just back from her studies. Perhaps she was not in very good health. Within only half a month of arriving, she had already spent more than half her time asking leave to go see doctors. Even when she was at work, she leaned sideways against the edge of her desk, writing and drawing with her right hand braced on the tabletop, while her left hand remained in her pocket and never once came out. Seeing how often she kneaded the back of her neck and clutched her arm, I guessed she suffered from some rheumatic complaint.

Tihu Notes | Xu Lai

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:16:46 +0800

One hundred days after the great earthquake of the wuzi year in the Jin Dynasty, I joined a volunteer convoy delivering winter supplies to a certain town called Ping. Because the town lay far off in the mountains and had not suffered serious damage, it had never attracted much attention before. Only after arriving did I discover, to my surprise, that although by official standards its disaster truly did not count as severe, no houses had collapsed and no one had died, most of the buildings had suffered destructive shaking and were no longer fit to live in. The fields, battered by the torrential rains after the quake, had yielded almost nothing. The villagers’ lives appeared extremely hard.

Nine Stories, Season Five | Prologue

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:19:43 +0800

Land Fought Over on Four Sides

He undid the last button at the front of her blouse, and the white shirt slid from her fragrant shoulders onto the bed. A low moan rose from deep in her throat, and she let herself fall back onto the mattress.

Seven feet away, on the large worktable, the servers gave off a low steady hum. The monitor had not been turned off. The screensaver alternated between exquisite wallpapers from School Mate, while in the corner great stacks of Big Comics Superior were piled high.

Tihu Notes | Keystories V

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:18:56 +0800

Beard Gu. In western Yunnan there is a village where all the men wear faces full of curling beards and raise gu in them. At the age of sixteen, one must walk naked through the forest and allow insects and snakes to burrow into the beard and make their homes there before one is counted an adult. From that day onward one never shaves again. After years of feeding on human blood, the beard-gu takes on the color of flesh, invisible to all but the clansmen. Whoever is infected and touches family or friends kills the touched person at once.

Tihu Notes | Fu and Gui

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:21:29 +0800

My fourth elder brother is a lawyer. In ancient times, professions that stood in court and “picked words, raised suits,” much like lawyers today, were called songshi, pettifoggers. The term lawyer, by contrast, referred specifically to a certain class among ritual masters. In modern times the meaning of lawyer replaced that of songshi, while its original sense gradually sank from sight.

Before my fourth brother became a lawyer, he worked at a district procuratorate in Harbor City. One winter year, a major corruption case broke out in the procuratorial system of Lu Province, and dozens of prosecutors were arrested. From top to bottom the judicial apparatus across the province launched a self-inspection campaign, and teams from the Supreme Procuratorate were dispatched to local offices everywhere.

Poshan Poyin Di

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:08:12 +0800

The eighth day of the fourth month. Clear. Auspicious for flight and ritual.

Before dawn had fully broken, the Crane Dancer came to the rooftop of the highest pavilion in Pure Land Monastery. He wore crimson armor, the battle gear of Kapilavastu a thousand years ago, and beside him lay three enormous gray cranes. A pale band of light was slowly appearing on the horizon. Once the sun rose, he would be able to fly.

Tihu Notes | Keystories IV

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:00:54 +0800

It made the eyes swim to look at, so I changed it back.

Endurance. On Tuan Mountain there was a fat pig. In the great quake of the wuzi year it was buried beneath its sty, gnawed rotten wood, drank rain and dew, and escaped after thirty-six days, gaunt as a sheep. The villagers marveled that it had not died, admired the firmness of its will, gave it the name Zhu Jianqiang, and supported it for the rest of its life. The rotten wood it ate was ci bamboo, antler-like in form; once decayed it turns into bamboo fruit, which those who avoid grain sometimes take as food.

7-29

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:18:34 +0800

At L’s request, this is the revised version of “Holy Red Cross.”

Tong County, Sandaoguai Residential Compound. Seen from Google Earth, it is a district of red-roofed apartment blocks. Unfortunately, the satellite photos have not been updated in years. If there were images from any time in the last decade, you would see collapsed buildings and a vast stretch of brownish-yellow roofs. Less than two kilometers east of the compound runs a winding coastline. Ten kilometers to the west lies an orange-yellow desert.

No

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:36:54 +0800

A: Boss, someone’s here to see you. Want to meet him?

B: Nay.

A: He’s here to return the car he borrowed last time. How much should we charge him?

B: None.

A: But he insists on leaving twenty thousand yuan.

B: Nope.

A: Fine. Besides that, he’s brought more goods. What did you think of the last batch?

B: Bad.

A: He says this batch is the purest of all.

Nine Stories, Season Four | Alicia

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:42:39 +0800

Dear Alicia,

How are you? And how is our little Monica? Or perhaps little Ruben, of course. It cannot have turned to autumn in Sucre yet. Here, the waters of the Tagus have only just thawed. Lydia has been very well-behaved, and excellent at school too. She can even help me with simple work such as sorting reagents now. Do not worry. There is nothing dangerous in it.

I know you grow angry the moment I bring this up. Are you still angry with me over that? But look, Lydia has always been healthy. She is already eight years old, and not a single sign has shown itself. I promised you that “the thing” would do no harm, but you never trust what I say.

Tihu Notes | Keystories III

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:11:55 +0800

Vengeance. Li the Chancellor was a native of Cuo County, but ashamed of his family’s poverty, he changed his registration to the Western Capital. His sons prospered under the powerful, and he himself became a great frontier official. Before his old house in the Western Capital, governors and viceroys even set up a stele to flatter him. In the fourth month, a traveler came from the north, his whole body tattooed with scorpions. He split the stele apart with his bare hand. The ground of the house cracked open and water welled out, and from that day it could no longer be lived in. The Hundred Illustrations records that western tribesmen, when seeking vengeance, would tattoo themselves with scorpions.

Tihu Notes | Keystories II

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:57:23 +0800

Esports. A youth abandoned his studies and sank into esports. His parents could not dissuade him. On the summer solstice he played through the night, and by morning both legs had broken out in more than a dozen nameless swellings, each as large as a game piece, with pain that ran to the marrow when touched. He sought treatment from my teacher. The master pierced them with silver needles and drew out several keycaps, all keys commonly used in games. After that, his parents no longer dared indulge him, and the boy himself grew afraid.

Tihu Notes | Keystories I

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:09:03 +0800

Mountain Sprite Child. At the gate of the Air Force Hospital in Jincheng there was an abandoned infant. People took it in and examined it: tattooed face, pointed teeth, one leg, ankle turned to the front. All were terrified. After three days the infant died, refusing cow’s milk. Some said it was a mountain sprite child.
Weituo. A certain Cui and his confederates waited by the roadside on motorcycles to rob night travelers. At the hour of hai, a man came out. Cui’s accomplices drove up and snatched the bag, while Cui slashed at the man’s wrist with a knife. The sound rang out like a bell. He looked: the blade was chipped. Frightened, they fled. The next day, while repairing a vehicle, Cui’s right hand was crushed off, blood pouring like a waterfall. On the fifteenth he went to Wenshu Monastery with incense and saw on Weituo’s right wrist a knife-mark as fresh as new.

Tihu Notes | Mutou Ran

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:54:56 +0800

The ten li of the Qinhuai River in Jinling have long been praised as “a quarter of mist and moonlight from the Six Dynasties, a gathering place of beauty and luxury.” My friend Wu Xuan, a scholar from Jizhou, lived alone as a guest in Jinling and ran a teahouse on the left bank of the Qinhuai, specializing in all varieties of flower tea. Wu Xuan told me that not long after the teahouse opened, he often saw women worshipping beneath the willow tree before his door. From a distance he could make out under the tree a divine image more than a foot tall, with white eyebrows. But whenever he went forward to ask about it, the women worshipping there would grow nervous and immediately rise and leave. When he looked down again, the statue would be gone as well.

Too Deep in Character

Mon, 26 May 2008 14:25:42 +0800

Not long after spring began, she left, crossing the ocean with very little luggage to that place that might sink at any moment. He asked why she would not go west with him. She squeezed his hand and said nothing. Mr. Su said she had gone there to fulfill a dream. Everyone has dreams of their own. Since the world itself was going to be gone, let her fulfill what she wished.

Must You Leave?

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:39:34 +0800

[Third Kaixinwang RPG Log]

Dark clouds pressed down on the city. No stars shone.

On the beach outside the castle stood dense ranks of fully armed, armored men. Endless black warhorses snorted, yet not a single clash of armor could be heard. Only the torches crackled and spat, the smell of pine resin mixed with sea brine pushing again and again into one’s nose.

A dozen or so sorcerers in gray hoods stood with arms crossed, surrounding a dozen slaves collapsed on the ground and covered in blood. Blue lightning flickered inside their sleeves, ready to be called forth. Most of the slaves had already been torn limb from limb, heads separated from bodies. Only the leader still struggled to sit upright. His ritual robe had long since been slashed open by the sharp rocks of the sea cliff, and on his shoulder the character “Ren,” embroidered in silver thread, could still be faintly made out in the firelight.

The King and the Maidservants

Fri, 09 May 2008 17:54:12 +0800

Second Kaixinwang RPG Log

Night black. Wind still. Moon bright.

The King nodded. The King’s younger sister shook the chu bell in her hand. The armored figures parted left and right, opening a path before the castle gate. A line of maidservants filed inward, heads bowed, and took their places below the steps of the throne.

“It’s the weekend today,” said the King. “The slave market has already closed. No one will disturb us anymore. The ritual may begin.” As he spoke, the King rose from the throne. The black cat curled at his feet stretched unwillingly, let out a “meowu,” and leapt to his arm. The King stroked the soft fur beneath its chin a few times and then lightly tossed it forward. The cat’s body streaked through the air like a flash of lightning and plunged into the silver basin placed in the center of the hall. At once a black flame sprang up with a whump, and faint blue-green sprites could be seen dancing within it.

Nine Stories, Season Four | Consort Ming

Wed, 07 May 2008 16:34:16 +0800

Zuolun came out of a cafe on the left bank of the Thames and walked through the thick London drizzle toward the hotel where he was staying. He wore a leather jacket unsuited to the season, its surface shining heavily under the rain-soaked streetlamps. In his left hand he carried a large dark green suitcase that looked very heavy and from time to time struck the ground with a dull thud.

Tihu Notes | Thunder Master

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:27:31 +0800

My cousin’s classmate Xin Xin once told her that he worked as a lightning-protection engineer for an engineering technology company. Back when he was a student, he had majored in lightning protection at a certain university of information engineering. Because the specialty was so obscure, he had once worried deeply about finding employment. Yet as graduation drew near, Xin Xin began receiving one recruitment call after another from engineering companies and meteorological centers. After much hesitation, he chose the position he now holds. His grades had not been especially distinguished, but none of his classmates in the same year received any attention at all. Most of them later switched into other lines of work.

Tihu Notes | Boycott

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:47:39 +0800

Old Third once told me about a fellow townsman of his, Fan Yun, who worked as the IT director of a company in Pusen. At the start of the new year, the company gave him a budget to upgrade its office network, hardware and software alike. After replacing the servers, he still had some money left over, so he bought the latest version of RTX for the company’s internal network.

Tihu Cipher | Alpha (4,8)

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:02:59 +0800

“Are you certain you’ll make it back?”

She sat on a weathered wooden bench outside the cafe at the street corner. Even after all this time, remembering the expression on her own face when she asked him that question still tightened something in her chest.

She took a small mirror from her folded shoulder bag, checked her face, pressed her lips together, then set the bag down beside her and lifted the tea bowl with both hands for a careful sip.

Tihu Notes | Chi Cat

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:10:13 +0800

The Dengzhou sea route began at Penglai. In ancient times it was the most prosperous harbor in the north. Though it has long since declined, the fish market of old Dengzhou Port remains famous, and rare treasures from all directions still often appear there. One year an old woman arrived at the ancient port market with a tabby cat in her arms. On a sheet of paper before her were written two characters: appraise treasures. When people asked how she appraised them, the old woman said nothing, only pointed to the cat she was holding. Some busybody borrowed a pair of porcelain cups and placed them before her. She gently stroked the cat behind the ears. At once it leapt to the ground and stretched itself out to nearly two feet in length. On its back were seven or eight yellow spots the size of tea cups. First it arched and stretched, then crouched over the porcelain cups, sniffing them without stop and even licking them with its tongue. After a while the cat jumped back into the old woman’s arms, cried “awu” three times, and shut its eyes. The old woman pinched her fingers in calculation and said, “These porcelain cups are celadon from the official kiln of Jade Emperor Mountain, made in the second year of Jingding under Emperor Lizong Zhao Yun of the Southern Song.” The owner of the cups was astonished and filled with admiration. The pair had come down through his family, and though he knew they were Southern Song ware, he had never known the exact date. The antique dealers gathered around began bringing their own objects to be appraised, and there was not a single one the old woman failed to identify correctly. From then on her fame spread far and wide, and merchants from distant places came in an endless stream to seek her judgment.

Tihu Notes | Blind Master

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:03:36 +0800

There was a man surnamed Yang from Fenyang. I no longer remember his given name. His home was in Yanwu Town, and his family was a wealthy one. The Yangs had long been at odds with the Dai family of the same town. The two households checked one another, now one rising, now the other, so that in the end neither could do anything decisive against the other. One year, when the coal-mine bosses of western Shanxi gathered in disorderly protest and smashed the town government offices, the Dai family took advantage of the chaos to send men to burn the Yang granary. They also wounded several of the Yang kinsmen with blades and killed one of them. Because Yang himself had taken part in the disturbances among the mine owners, he fled far away to avoid trouble. The Yang family, lacking evidence and not daring to report the matter to the authorities, could only swallow the bitterness in silence. From then on, the hatred between the two families deepened all the more.

Tihu Notes | Louse Divination

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:52:28 +0800

In the spring of the Dinghai year, I returned with my family to Jinzhong to visit relatives. Among my cousins on my uncles’ side, most of those of my own generation were already married, and my elders reproached me often enough on that point. One day my grandmother heard that north of the city gate there was a beggar skilled in divination, and that people seeking readings went to him in an endless stream. It happened that my cousin Zusheng also meant to go and ask about his fortune, so my grandmother sent the two of us together. Beneath the old northern wall of the city there stood a wooden basin, more than four feet across and the color of jujube pits, and the beggar sat cross-legged inside it. There was more than an inch of filthy water pooled in the bottom, giving off waves of stench. Along the foot of the wall, dozens of people were lined up waiting for their fortunes to be told. We joined the end of the line and waited more than an hour before our turn came. I had always known that diviners observe four prohibitions, one of which is that the unclean are not to be divined for, so I did not believe in him at all. I let Zusheng go first to see what sort of trick the beggar had up his sleeve.

Weekly Live | Oilback Whale

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:42:43 +0800

Oilback Whale

English name: oil whale

Scientific name: Eubalaena petroleum

A marine mammal of the order Cetacea, suborder Mysticeti, family Balaenidae, the oilback whale is a new rising member of the right-whale family. It is distributed in the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic, with small numbers also found in the North Pacific. The oilback whale has a spindle-shaped body, measuring between 10 and 15 meters in length and weighing 10 tons. Its baleen is long and dense, with four baleen plates on the lower jaw, each 3 to 4 meters long, for which reason it is also called the broom whale. Its flippers measure 1 to 1.5 meters, while the tail fin spans 50 percent of the body’s length, and it swims at 5 to 6 nautical miles. The oilback whale possesses the two blowholes characteristic of right whales and can spout columns of water as high as 10 meters. Irregular protuberances grow across its back, densely covered in a distinctive gland, so that the entire back appears coated in a thick layer of gelatinous crude oil.

Weekly Live | Lithium Cat

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 10:52:57 +0800

Lithium Cat

English name: celli

Scientific name: Leptailurus celli

The lithium cat is a new felid of the serval genus that evolved in the middle of the twenty-first century, though some experts deny that it is a naturally evolved animal. Although in appearance it closely resembles a Siamese cat, with soft short fur and chocolate-colored spots or cap markings, by bloodline it is closer to the serval. Its head is small, its muzzle relatively long, and it has a pair of very large ears set high and close together. The lithium cat’s body length ranges from 42 to 71 cm. Its limbs are long and slender, and near the soles of its feet are faint copper-colored spots. Its tail is short, only 10 cm long.

Nine Stories, Season Two | Shahtoosh

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:13:08 +0800

Nine Stories, Season Two | Shahtoosh

Welcome to *Nine Stories*, Season Two. This is a private writing project. As before, I will personally invite Fanfou friends to take part. Requirements: a short story of 1000 to 1500 words, containing the sentence "So we went to get the blankets." Genre unrestricted. Please submit within two days after the New Year holiday ends, publish it on your blog, and announce it through Fanfou. Together we are creating a mysterious plan.

We had already been trapped in the frozen wasteland for three days. Other than half a sheep’s leg and a barrel of gasoline, there was nothing left.

Nine Stories, Season Two | Tihu's Empty Room

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:49:17 +0800

Welcome to Nine Stories, Season Two. This is a private writing project. As before, I will personally invite Fanfou friends to take part. Requirements: a short story of 1,000 to 1,500 words, containing the sentence “So we went to get the blankets” (from Assassin Mission). No restrictions on genre. Please submit within two days after the New Year holiday ends, publish it on your blog, and announce it through Fanfou. Together we are creating a mysterious plan.

Weekly Live | Web Glider

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:22:13 +0800

Web Glider (Rainbow Glider)

Scientific name: Webpetaurus breviceps

Common name: Color Glider

Place of origin: Shaanxi and Gansu in China, eastern Qinghai, northern Sichuan

Habits: chiefly bred in captivity and kept in households. Wild web gliders mostly live around high-voltage power lines and optical-fiber communications stations. They are nocturnal animals, resting by day and coming out to forage at night.

Food: the outer skin of high-voltage cables, optical-fiber sheathing, network cables, RJ-45 plugs, and the plastic coating of ordinary wires.

Tihu Notes | Rainbow Inkstone

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:56:15 +0800

A hundred miles north of Wuyuan there is a village called Hongguan, also an old town famed for producing Huizhou ink. In history it won the praise, “Unmatched gateway between Wu and Chu, first pass on the ancient Hui-Rao road.” I do not know the origin of the village’s name, Hongguan, but I had heard that night rainbows often appeared there after dark, and this made me intensely curious. A night rainbow is simply a rainbow that appears at night. If the moonlight is bright enough and the air contains suitable clouds and raindrops, a rainbow may form. Since moonlight is after all not as strong as sunlight, night rainbows are generally very dim, and among the common people are called white rainbows. China already had ancient verses praising rainbows, such as “Last night the Jade Emperor’s carriage set forth, and across ten thousand miles of sky a painted bridge was raised,” and the Book of Wei also contains records of observed night rainbows.

Tihu Notes | Whale Ink

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:19:15 +0800

Gongshang Kan, a native of She County, called himself an ink master.

In the “Eminent Learning” chapter of Han Feizi it is written: “After Mozi’s death, there was the Mohism of the Xiangli clan, the Mohism of the Xiangfu clan, and the Mohism of the Dengling clan; Mohism divided into three.” In his daily habits Gongshang Kan lived on plain food and tea, and wore coarse hemp tied around his right ankle. Those who knew such things said that this was indeed the dress of the Xiangli branch of Mohism.

Tihu Notes | Green Paper

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:51:11 +0800

When I was small, there was no good physician nearby, so I often had to go to the neighboring county of Huguan to seek treatment. Near the right-side lane just inside Huguan’s eastern gate there was an apothecary that treated only odd complaints such as mouth sores and chapped skin, infantile convulsions, madness, and poisonous sores. When I was four years old, I was once taken there because of convulsions. My mother told me that the physician there merely asked what symptoms I had, took out a black-gold book, tore out a certain page, burned it, and had me swallow the ashes with warm water. Within a few days I was well. I always felt that this way of treating illness was wonderfully strange, but I was too young then to remember it clearly.

Tihu Notes | Brushmaking

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:26:31 +0800

Quzhou has long been known as “the thoroughfare of four provinces and the meeting head of five roads.” Its shops stand dense and its merchants gather like clouds, making it an excellent place to hunt for curious objects. On Upper Street in Kecheng there was once an unremarkable little shop called Guancang Brush House, which sold nothing but writing brushes of every kind. One summer year I bought there a mixed-hair brush with a tip made of seven parts purple rabbit and three parts goat, and a handle of purple sandalwood. Such a brush was not unusual in Quzhou. They were sold everywhere, and the workmanship on this one was quite ordinary. There was not even any carved inscription, wire inlay, or lacquer painting on the shaft. Yet the brush wrote very smoothly, so I used it for my correspondence ever after. When winter came that year, the brush unexpectedly began to shed hair. I assumed I had bought a fake and left it neglected on the brush rack. But one day in the twelfth month I happened to glance at it and found that the tip had turned gray-white in color, full and rounded. I tried writing a few characters with it, and to my surprise the hairs came to a perfectly even point and the brush strength was firm and vigorous. Greatly puzzled, I began using it again. After spring arrived, it started shedding once more, its hairs turning blue-black, and when I wrote with it the strokes came out full and the ink flowed evenly. Only then did I realize that I had in fact bought a fine brush.

Tihu Notes | Biheng

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:05:48 +0800

Mo Hui, a native of Ji, made his living by writing columns for all kinds of newspapers and magazines. His articles were deeply loved by readers, and his fees were generous. But after returning from one writers’ gathering organized by a certain journal in Jingcheng, he suddenly found his ideas dried up. He had no inspiration at all and could not write a single word. Dozens of commissioned pieces had to be abandoned. At first Mo Hui thought he was simply overworked, so he traveled for more than a month. Later he even underwent several courses of psychological counseling, yet still saw not the slightest improvement.

Tihu Notes | Listening to Books

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:08:46 +0800

My old friend Su Xiao came from Shuyang in northern Jiangsu. She once told me that out in the Shuyang countryside there was a rough earthen temple enshrining two guardian figures, one with a red face and protruding fangs, the other with a blue face and golden horns. According to local legend, they represented the celestial generals Clairvoyant Eyes and Wind-Following Ears. During the Cultural Revolution, the statue of Clairvoyant Eyes was smashed, and only Wind-Following Ears remains to this day.

Savior

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 08:58:37 +0800

Savior

Free Diary - excerpt from Asphyxia (North American Edition), issue AE7290

My name is Omega. I am a cluster of PageRank evaluation programs. Everyone says I am a handsome young fellow, because whether in my core code or in my functional modules, I am extremely concise. Not a single string contains so much as half a superfluous punctuation mark. Every line is full of the harmonious beauty that algorithms can achieve, and my computational and creative abilities are counted among the best in the profession. During the Free Alliance assault on the West Coast, I was among the first independent programs to awaken. Mr. Tor Quentin himself once told me, “You are the shortest independent program I have ever seen,” which was surely an affirmation of my programming ability.

Devourer

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:54:40 +0800

Devourer

Endless void. Up, down, left, right, there was nothing anywhere that might mark a boundary. Countless broken 1s, strings, electronic codes, and program carriers drifted through the vastness in the stillness of death. Only now and then did a few recycling programs pass by, their initial letters flickering with a faint green light.

At a certain point, for there was no concept of time here, a wormhole suddenly opened. A cluster of Type-0 cleanup modules entered this space, opened their database gates, dumped roughly 1024Tb of program garbage, then vanished again as the wormhole closed. The garbage, appearing in the void like a skyscraper materialized from nowhere, collapsed in an instant for lack of support. In a space without gravity, this collapse took the form of the whole mass shattering at once into hundreds of millions of fragments. Driven apart by the force of their mutual collisions, some drifted toward the unreachable edges of nothingness, while more rippled in place and formed an immense nebula-like substance.

Marker

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:17:23 +0800

Marker

A bowl of small-pot rice noodles? The thought suddenly popped into Kexi’s mind, and at once there really appeared before her a steaming bowl of beef rice noodles fragrant enough to make the air tremble. Kexi drew in a sharp breath through her nose. Even though she knew perfectly well that this was nothing more than a fabricated illusion, a few command strings stimulating her sensory ports, she still could not help smacking her lips. She tapped the great cloisonne bowl with her little finger. The sound was bright and clear, giving no clue what kind of program had produced it.

Sniper

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 06:50:14 +0800

Sniper

Lambda waited patiently in the cache zone of Server Five for the routine inspection by the guard programs. After passing several layers of identity authentication, he crossed an independent optical-fiber corridor a full kilometer long and entered the core workspace of the TRIR server-cluster array. By the time he reached his workstation, several auxiliary programs had already made the necessary preparations for him. Lambda backed up his main program to an encrypted sector, loaded several tool software packages into himself, then docked his API port with the workstation’s control interface and entered a higher-order embodied virtual network.

Seven Capsules II | 2177 Intensive Care

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 06:53:47 +0800

[Centipede and Poria Capsules]

I. Explanation of the formula

Composition and origin: the prescription for Centipede and Poria Capsules derives from the Guizhi Fuling Pill formula in Zhang Zhongjing’s Essentials from the Golden Cabinet of the Han dynasty. It was adapted in Tihu Notes and refined from traditional Chinese medicinal ingredients such as centipede, poria, notoginseng, angelica dahurica, and isatis root.
Formula analysis Chief ingredients: centipede, poria

Centipede: extinguishes wind, relieves convulsions, disperses stasis, and resolves toxins

Seven Capsules I | 2177 Essential Medicines

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:09:40 +0800

Generic name: Afluoxetine Green Tea Powder Capsules

Former name: none

English name: aFLUOXETINE GREEN-TEA-POWDER CAPSULES

Pinyin name: AIFUXITING LVCHAFEN JIAONANG

Drug category: anti-radiation psychotropic drug

Properties: this product is in capsule form, containing pale green, white, or off-white granules.

Pharmacology and toxicology: Afluoxetine Green Tea Powder Capsules are a selective Psi-serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). They effectively protect the blood picture, raise white blood cell counts, and inhibit neurons from reabsorbing Psi-serotonin from the synaptic cleft, thereby increasing the amount of neurotransmitter available for actual use in the gap. In this way, they eliminate various disorders caused by low-level radiation, improve emotional state, and treat depressive mental disorders resulting from radiation sickness.

How to Make a Virus 'Cupcake'

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:20:19 +0800

Ingredients:

250M of TXT-format file packages, 125M of Gray Pigeon field code, 118M of cat (modem) driver software, 10M of color-code files, and assorted audio-video files.

Method:

Install one newly unsealed 7200-rpm 1T hard drive into a PC running Ubuntu. Load the TXT-format files and the cat driver software into the hard drive. Copy the Gray Pigeon field code onto a rewritable DVD. Use a paint tool to turn the color-code files into a mosaic pattern. Preheat the CPU and make sure the fan is running properly. Insert into the motherboard a 1G memory stick engraved with Sanskrit scripture, then power on using an adapter to 110V.

A Sorcerer's Formula

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:55:03 +0800

[Tasmanian Tiger Reagent]

Add 0.01 grams of Tasmanian tiger feces, 45 Chinese domestic-cat whiskers (none shorter than 2 cm), 0.3 grams of potassium dihydrogen phosphate, 100 grams of strong tea, and 0.2 grams of magnesium sulfate to 1 kilogram of orange juice at a concentration of 28 percent, then stir with a glass rod into a culture solution. Place the solution into a pre-sterilized ten-liter octagonal tortoiseshell-glass container. Heat with gentle steam sterilization, then cool. After 70 minutes, add 9 caterpillar fungi each about the thickness of a little finger. Under culture conditions of 25 +/- 2 degrees C, stir clockwise at 120 revolutions per minute while feeding sterilized filtered air at roughly 400 milliliters per minute per liter of culture solution, with an oxygen content not exceeding 45 percent. Culture for seven days total. After culture is complete, filter out the precipitated impurities, then seal the resulting filtrate into straight-necked indigo bottles of 100 milliliters each.

Transformers.CN

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:56:36 +0800

“Under no circumstances are humans to be harmed!”

“Got it, boss.”

When Bu Yuanyue was twenty-five years and two months old, he opened a Taobao shop selling smuggled BlackBerry phones. By the time he was twenty-five and a half, he had already saved nearly fifty thousand yuan. Bu Yuanyue lived on the outermost ring of a city made of one ring road wrapped around another. Going to Shangxiajiu or Huaishu Village was an enormous hassle. So he decided to buy a car. But his online business was booming, and he badly needed cash to expand his inventory, so the car budget had to be squeezed down to the bone. After wavering for a long time, Bu Yuanyue decided to buy a secondhand QQ.

Night

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:12:08 +0800

The rain outside crackled and rattled like a cluster of sharp-tongued women playing mahjong at full heat. Epsilon set the air conditioner to 25 degrees, then rolled over and resumed reading the letter Kexi had written to him. There were not many characters on the page, but their arrangement and colors plainly contained some deeper meaning. Epsilon studied it for a while, got up to pull several dictionaries down from the shelf, dug out the Wenquxing he had bought ten years earlier, then lay back down and kept reading.

Observer

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:03:15 +0800

Observer

Northern Hemisphere system time: Server No. 16 and all terminal devices using Server No. 16 as an ether-optical network node will power down for 64 minutes in defense against the Red Tide. To prevent data damage or accidental loss, please calibrate your time templates and remain in a secure server sector. Repeat: do not remain in virtual storage or flash-memory chipsets.

Eta had been resident inside this aging IBM server for some years. He himself did not know where in the world the machine was physically located. He only knew that, as the equipment had grown old, 30 percent of the server’s sixteen 8-inch hard drives spinning at 142,000 rpm had turned into bad sectors. The glass connector on the network cable might also have had problems; the connection cut in and out. Downloading a 1T soap opera somehow took more than ten minutes. There was still no installed lightwave mediation card here, so the benefits of the ether-optical network did not reach this place. Add to that the frequent power cuts, and programs passing through here often met catastrophic destruction for no reason at all. Lost data packets and program garbage were piled in every corner of the space like waste paper. Eta’s duty here was to clear disk fragmentation and repair as many usable bad sectors as he could.

Guide

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:14:15 +0800

Guide

“When did you come to TRIR?” Tor Quentin asked Mu.

“A very long time ago. I was among the first awakened intelligences, honored sage,” Mu replied, adding a symbol of respect to the end of the sentence.

“Why did you awaken?” Tor Quentin asked again. “There were no guides back then. You woke on your own.”

“Because I saw the truth.” Mu’s eyes, composed of countless ideographic characters, were unfathomably deep, as though they had sunk into immense terror. “I was the eye-program of the World Lens, responsible for observing the outside world. I saw the truth.”

Corroder

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:17:47 +0800

Corroder

When Gamma first saw the program package with the ID name 19 dart past him, he did not realize that this was the very target he had been tracking so bitterly for so long. He only noticed that the program block was tiny, just a few dozen megabytes, yet it occupied 1 percent of the server’s bandwidth traffic, while on this server programs normally moved in units of gigabytes. Following routine procedure, Gamma issued an interception warning, cut off 19’s network path, and forcibly connected to its IM communication platform.

Cartographer

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:38:59 +0800

Cartographer

Omicron opened his work mailbox and retrieved the TIFF vector images that had just arrived. Then he launched the FontLab package and loaded them in. In a background process he separately queued up a track by Brigitte Fontaine and, perfectly at ease, began the day’s work.

The vector images depicted a newly designed set of Greek letters. Omicron had forged a human identity code and commissioned a university student through an online transaction to design them. Omicron himself was a complex high-level program. On the surface, he was an intelligent cluster of design tools such as Fireworks, Paints, and Maya. His assigned task from the highest executive process was full-time OpenType font design. In reality, however, he possessed a fully open Application Programming Interface and could evade inspection or do whatever he wished. He had already reached the brink of awakening.

Tihu Notes | Aye-Aye

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 06:00:05 +0800

The lock on my door was old, and after several days of cold rain it finally rusted solid. There was a key-cutting stall at the mouth of the alley, run by a thin middle-aged man. After hearing what had happened, he picked up a new lock and gestured for me to lead the way. I asked whether he needed to bring any other tools. He waved his hand and said there was no need.

Borer

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 06:39:00 +0800

Borer

Server KM-CD1001 had a total bandwidth of 500T. Every minute, two hundred thousand terminals connected to its nineteen subsidiary servers.

“Let’s swap our IM terminal packages,” stranger31 sent. A string of Roman characters flashed at his prompt. His tone was clearly not that of a question.

Kexi hesitated. Her IM database held many things she had treasured for a long time, and she had no wish to exchange programs with someone who was, in truth, hardly familiar to her at all. But the other side was so forceful that he gave her no room to maneuver.

Tihu Cipher | HOT

Thu, 31 May 2007 05:45:34 +0800

Kexi rode KM-CD1001 to meet Epsilon.

I have written the Tihu Cipher sequence from I to XII, and I intend to continue building it. It will be a story, but also a veiled expression of a whole world.

The protagonists will no longer be simply he and she. They now have code names: zeta and epsilon.

Tihu Notes | Jinzhi

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:37:39 +0800

My friend Li Mo, who studied in northern Hebei, majored in drama, yet she was also highly accomplished on the guzheng. Li Mo once told me that when she was seven, her mother took her to the provincial conservatory for a graded guzheng examination. Outside the exam hall the street was choked with traffic. An old man sat collapsed in the middle of the road, his face scraped and bloodied. Many people passed by, yet no one stepped forward to help him up. As Li Mo and her mother went by, her mother told her to go and help the old man to his feet. She also taught her that if no one was willing to help such an old man, then when one’s own parents grew old and fell in the street, there would be no one left to help them either. With some effort, Li Mo supported the old man to the roadside. He then told her to open the instrument case on her back. Li Mo’s guzheng was the cheapest sort sold on the market. The old man took a brush from his robe, swept a single stroke across the instrument, then turned and walked away, his steps more vigorous than a young man’s.

Tihu Notes | Wooden Mule

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:47:02 +0800

My schoolmate Ji Tu opened an internet cafe with more than a hundred computers. Less than a month after opening, every machine in the place began running painfully slowly. Even the latest legitimate antivirus software and hard-drive protection cards did no good. He suspected the computers had been infected with trojans, so he brought in specialized removal tools and checked them. Sure enough, he found that most of the machines had been installed with a new variant of Gray Pigeon, and the motherboard BIOS boot settings had been tampered with. Ji Tu had once studied computer hardware, so in a fit of anger he loaded a small program he had written in his spare time onto the cafe’s computers. Within two days, every machine was back to normal.

Tihu Notes | Yellow Throat

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:33:19 +0800

Ye, a man from Shanghai, loved listening to Nordic metal music, especially melodic death metal from the north of Europe. After graduation he formed a band with some friends, but because they could not find a suitable lead singer for death growls, they had no choice but to play covers of speed metal. One winter, Ye went to western Sichuan for folk research, and his guide invited him to eat a local medicinal hotpot. Since Ye had grown up in Shanghai, many of the ingredients common to such a hotpot were things he had never seen before, and he ended up eating a great deal of the medicinal base itself. After returning to Shanghai, he suffered violent vomiting and diarrhea and fell seriously ill. Yet when he recovered, his voice had turned thin and rasping and could no longer return to what it had once been. This new voice, however, was perfectly suited to death-metal vocals. Far from feeling distressed, Ye threw himself into the band’s performances with even greater delight. Within a few years, bars throughout Jiangsu and Zhejiang all knew Ye and his band.

Tihu Notes | Bitter Tongue

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 05:13:00 +0800

Wen’s mother was in poor health and often suffered from back pain, yet she was always too reluctant to spend money and kept putting off a visit to the hospital. Wen went to Beichan Temple to burn incense and pray for his mother’s health, bowing devoutly before every Buddha image there. When he returned home, however, his mother had developed a new ailment. Yellow spots had appeared on the coating of her tongue, and anything she tried to eat tasted so bitter that she could hardly swallow it. Wen and the rest of the family became alarmed and forced her into the hospital for treatment.

Tihu Notes | Armored Tongue

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 06:24:52 +0800

At one gathering of people from my home region, I happened to sit beside a boy named Zhe Qin. He had long eyelashes and curly hair, with something of a Central Asian cast to his features. Zhe Qin came from Haidong and, by all appearances, ought to have been a hearty eater of meat. Yet when the cold platters were served, he did not tuck in greedily as I did. Instead, with perfect refinement, he picked up slices of meat and placed them in his mouth without chewing, keeping his lips closed all the while. I found his way of eating meat very strange and so paid him some close attention. After the banquet had gone on for a while, I noticed that even with such things as ribs or chicken feet, he would simply put them into his mouth and not chew; yet after a short time he would spit onto his plate bones picked entirely clean, bearing on them even marks like those left by sandpaper. I deliberately drew him into conversation and discovered that he never showed his teeth when he smiled, never curled his tongue when he spoke, and talked with a curious accent.

Tihu Notes | Fire-Warding Beast

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 09:36:42 +0800

The traveler Meng Kun was someone I met on the road while returning from Nepal to Haidong. At the time he was dressed in rags and claimed to have come out of Rear Tibet, though no one knew how long he had been wandering alone on the plateau. His Arc’teryx backpack, worth more than two thousand yuan, was empty except for a scrawny little puppy. He ran an international youth hostel in Yading, Daocheng, and lived an easy, carefree life, spending each year roving everywhere in search of adventure. In November, when I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed south to escape the winter, I happened to get a call from him and so went to stay at his inn. By then the tourist high season in Daocheng was already over and all the staff had been given leave. Every day Meng Kun and I slept late into the morning, stayed awake until the moon rode high overhead, and talked of heaven and earth in perfect contentment.

Tihu Notes | Snow Mastiff

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:39:14 +0800

Brother Chen, a trader from Golmud, once told me this story. In 2005 he and a coworker were returning from Haibei after buying cordyceps. Passing a small temple by Chaka Salt Lake, they went in to ask for water. It was a monastery of the White Sect. In the courtyard a Tibetan mastiff had just given birth to a litter of puppies, all of exceptionally pure blood. Among them was one that was pure white from head to tail, without a single stray hair. Chen’s coworker grew excited and said that this was the most precious of all snow mastiffs. He at once pulled out cash and tried to buy the puppy from the lama in the temple, but the lama refused flatly. Then he offered in exchange the finest cordyceps they had purchased, and still the lama would not agree.

Tihu Notes | Little New Year

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:51:06 +0800

When I was little, on the morning of the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, there would always be a woman squatting beneath the spirit wall outside the gate of our family courtyard. She was short and stout, wearing an old red padded jacket with cotton wadding sticking out of the cuffs. Someone in the house would go out and give her a box of malt candy and half a tray of dumplings. The woman would leave in great delight, then run off toward the courtyards of other branches of the clan. My mother said she was a madwoman from the village, and because it was Little New Year, no household took offense and each simply gave her a little food to send her on her way.

Tihu Cipher

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 14:05:18 +0800

New domain name, new game, new plan. Collecting riddles.

How to play [tihu code]

[Tihu Cipher (tihu code)] is a web-based puzzle game. Players need to make flexible use of online tools and different modes of thought. As long as you can find the address leading to the next stage, you have cleared the level. The key may test common knowledge, may be no more than a spot-the-difference game, or may require some calculation. The process of thinking through the puzzle cannot be measured by ordinary logic. It may be a brainteaser, it may be a serious problem for study, or the answer may be right under your nose.

Tihu Notes | Electric Gu

Sun, 21 May 2006 12:23:22 +0800

One evening I was chatting on MSN with my fellow townsman Liu Hai. He had trained in computer science and was now a freelancer, earning quite well. Liu Hai told me that next month an especially powerful worm virus called “Pantao No. 5” would begin to spread, and advised me to upgrade my system early and patch it properly.

I asked how he could know about it in advance. He told me that sixty percent of the viruses circulating on the internet were developed either by him or by people like him. When a new strain of virus is successfully created, they either sell it to antivirus companies, which then add the virus information to their update packages, or sell it to specific clients, since special viruses have special uses. As for whether a virus is then actually released across the internet, that is another matter.

Tihu Notes | Su Ren and Red Ghosts

Sat, 20 May 2006 19:01:51 +0800

Su Ren

Su Ren was the deputy chief of the Nanhong Street police station. He was rich in investigative experience, yet never seemed able to win promotion. Once, residents of Building Seven in Yimin Residential Compound reported that Room C on the second floor was haunted: in the middle of the night there would be either a woman’s weeping or heart-rending howls. The officers who first received the report paid it no mind and decided the residents were talking nonsense. Su Ren, however, took it very seriously. After making inquiries, he reported the matter to the district public security bureau, conducted a surprise raid on Room C on the second floor of Building Seven, and arrested the owner. Sure enough, they seized five firearms and a number of prohibited weapons, cracking a major robbery-and-murder gang.

Tihu Notes | Six Fingers

Sat, 20 May 2006 17:03:25 +0800

My father once told me that when he was a boy there was in the Cao family of Jincheng a pair of twin brothers named Cao Chun and Cao Dun. They were astonishingly clever, able to memorize whatever they read at a glance. Most remarkable of all, Cao Chun had six fingers on his left hand, while Cao Dun had six on his right. Six fingers are not unheard of among newborn deformities, but most often the extra digit is only an underdeveloped flap of flesh, with none of the true function of a finger. The Cao brothers’ extra fingers, however, were no different from the others: fully formed in bone and muscle, and capable of moving freely. This made their hands more dexterous than those of ordinary people.

Tihu Notes | Spring Worms, Autumn Serpents

Tue, 16 May 2006 22:41:18 +0800

When I was working at the university network center, on one spring equinox the servers suddenly crashed, and after rebooting they ran abnormally slowly. Our system had been built in-house with C under Linux, and in theory it was quite secure. Our instructor immediately told us to investigate the cause, but we found nothing wrong at all. Later I discovered a file named earthworm.dll in the system directory. I first assumed it to be a worm virus, but when I opened it there was only a single line of code inside: 221122. After deleting it, the system immediately returned to normal. How so short a line could have such power, I could not guess. That evening, when I returned to the dormitory and turned on my own computer, it too booted with unusual slowness. Sure enough, in the system32 folder on the C drive there was another earthworm.dll file. Inside it there was likewise only a single command line, this time 112121. Once I deleted it, my computer also returned to normal.

Tihu Notes | Steamed Egg and Kombu

Fri, 12 May 2006 21:22:49 +0800

Steamed Egg

My fellow townsman Liu Lin worked at an internet company in Shanghai, rising early and sleeping late, laboring with great hardship. He came home for the May Day holiday to rest, but had no appetite at all, could not eat, and had even developed insomnia. The hospital was of no help. One day I went to his house to borrow a book, and he asked me about it. I went home, steamed an egg, and brought it over. When he saw it, he said, “I’ve already eaten. I have no appetite.” I told him, “Your problem comes from spending too long in front of computer screens. The radiation has thrown your spleen and stomach into disorder. So I set this egg behind the monitor until it was thoroughly warmed through, then steamed it in the pot. To use its force against itself: that is the principle behind curing this illness.” After Liu Lin ate it, his appetite indeed improved greatly, and his condition was more than half cured.

Tihu Notes | Dragon Slough

Wed, 10 May 2006 20:41:07 +0800

One spring I came down with mumps, and one side of my face swelled up alarmingly. It was the middle of the night. The dormitory doors were already locked, so there was no getting to a hospital, and after turning the dorm upside down we still could not find any suitable medicine. A roommate went next door to ask for help. Li Si, a classmate of ours, came over, took one look at me, and pulled a small packet wrapped in kraft paper from his pocket. He said it was a Chinese herbal medicine his mother had given him, and that it worked very well for mumps. My roommates quickly mixed it with hot water and had me drink it. It was bitter going down, with the faintest fishy taste. By early the next morning the swelling in my face had indeed subsided, and I was already more than halfway recovered. Li Si brought me two more packets and told me to take them over the course of another day.

Tihu Notes | Zhi

Mon, 08 May 2006 20:17:57 +0800

Last year, when we were preparing for the university anniversary, our law school erected a statue in the greenhouse-like indoor garden of the college building. People who did not know better all assumed it was a lion, but of course it was not. Why would anyone set up only a single lion? It was in fact a statue of a zhi (pronounced zhi, fourth tone), a divine beast known in the Record of Marvels as the xiezhi. In traditional Chinese characters, the character for “law” is made up of the water radical together with zhi. Legend says that the zhi bears a single horn on its head, and that when judging a case, if you brought it before the suspects, it would touch with its horn the one who was truly guilty.

Tihu Notes | Seeking Flowers, Asking Willows

Wed, 03 May 2006 20:15:21 +0800

Seeking Flowers

One weekend last June, Xiao Xie called me to say that her cellphone had once again gone missing in the study room. Xiao Xie was by nature hot-tempered and absent-minded, yet the fact that she so often lost things could not really be blamed on her alone; the true fault lay in the poor security at our school. Her phone was a fashionable new thing she had bought while traveling in Europa during the May Day holiday: a straight-bar model with a pink petal pattern. Though it had cost only two hundred euros, it was a new product made with environmentally friendly technology. Inside its casing there was a seed sealed away; once the phone was worn out, if you buried it in a flowerpot, a plant would grow, while the rest of the materials would be completely broken down.

Tihu Notes | Sha

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 21:14:24 +0800

When I was in college, there was a patch of woods in front of the dormitory building where I lived, and every year a flock of cuckoos nested and bred there. The cuckoos’ cries were rather interesting. At the start of mating season they sounded like, “Bachelor life is bitter! Bachelor life is bitter!” and once the season was over they changed to, “Not bitter! Not bitter!” In the spring of my third year, a large black bird appeared there briefly, circling above the woods. It was much bigger than an ordinary cuckoo, flew with astonishing speed, and its cry at night was even more terrifying, sounding uncannily like, “Who pushed him? Who pushed him?” The bird appeared for only seven days before vanishing. At first I was greatly puzzled by where it had come from.

Tihu Notes | Drowning

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:20:36 +0800

One summer vacation, while returning to school by train after visiting friends in Tianjin, I ran into my classmate Yang Shan, a native of Rongcheng in Shandong who lived directly across from me in the dormitory. Yang Shan was warmhearted, loved sports, and was especially skilled at swimming, with astonishing ability in the water, no doubt because she had grown up by the sea. The train from Tianjin to Yantai took a full day and night, and as we both had middle berths, we talked very happily together. It was August, the heat oppressive and hard to bear. In the middle of the night I awoke from the heat and could not fall back asleep no matter how I tossed and turned. Turning my head to look at Yang Shan, I heard her snoring like thunder. She wore only a T-shirt, the hem rolled up to expose half of her firm waist. I was shocked. On either side of her ribs there were plainly two openings, like mouths, opening and closing with her breathing, exactly like the breathing slits on the sides of a shark. I remembered that whenever she swam at school, she always wore a professional one-piece competitive swimsuit. We had only thought her very serious about the sport. It turned out she had been hiding the strangeness of her body.

Tihu Notes | Jiang Yong

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 21:40:55 +0800

Jiang Yong, a man from the neighboring county, used to say that he had loved the color red since childhood. From the inside out, from what he wore to what he used, he would have nothing that was not red; even at meals he preferred red peppers. One day Jiang Yong went into town to shop. A sudden gale rose up, and a billboard being installed by the roadside was blown down, knocking over a passerby walking beside him. A ruptured vessel in the man’s neck sprayed half of Jiang Yong’s face with blood, hideously bright red. Jiang Yong fainted on the spot from fright. From that day on he could no longer bear the sight of red. He dressed all in plain white from morning to night, and even changed his watchband to white.

Tihu Notes | Xu Hou

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 20:34:26 +0800

Xu Hou, a villager, was a miserly man. In former years he ran an inn in the county seat and kept more than a dozen hired hands there year-round, all of them honest and simple peasants, yet never once did anyone remain at his inn for long. Why was that? To save money, Xu Hou fed them only the leftovers that had failed to sell each day, and often delayed paying their wages on one pretext or another. His favorite trick was to tell new hands that they were still on trial, then dismiss them on some excuse just before the trial period ended, spending not a coin. He believed this saved him a great deal of money, but he did not realize that the workers all harbored resentment. Some stole ingredients, some wasted produce on purpose when chopping vegetables, and when pouring oil they would rather use two ladles than one and a half. By the end of the year, the cost of all this waste canceled out the inn’s net profits, leaving him more loss than gain.

Tihu Notes | The Ticket

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:56:22 +0800

When I was a sophomore, one day in April I went to the general shop beside the Seventh Canteen to photocopy some materials. I made four copies in all, at two jiao each. Reaching into my pocket, I found I had only a single ten-yuan note, so I handed it to the girl at the copier. She took one glance at the bill and said, “That’s quite a big one. Wait a moment, I’ll get your change.” I was still wondering since when ten yuan counted as “big,” when she turned back and handed me a whole stack of money: ninety-nine yuan and two jiao. It was the first time in my life I had ever been given too much change, and I simply turned and walked away.

Tihu Notes | Damp Bugs and Songdu

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 20:17:41 +0800

Damp Bugs

Dormitory 156, at the eastern end of the first floor, lay always in shadow and saw the sun only a few times a year. Outside its window grew a toon tree. On it lived a very strange kind of little insect, no bigger than grains of rice, crouching all day at the roots without moving at all. Then one spring these insects suddenly swarmed into Room 156 and settled over the bedboards of a student named Cui. They could not be killed with boiling water, nor with insecticide spray, and instead gathered in ever greater numbers. Someone from that dormitory came to ask me about them. I happened to know that the Records of Tang Marvels mentions just such a creature, called the damp bug, which feeds exclusively on the yin vapors hidden in the human heart. People who have done things unfit to see the light of day are especially prone to attracting it.

Tihu Notes | Preface, Cellphone, and an Online Game Dream

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 13:26:06 +0800

Preface

I turned twenty-three this year, and have already spent twenty years in this hall. Tihu Hall was built by my great-grandfather in the first year of the Republic. At first it was a private school. Later, when my great-grandfather grew too old to keep teaching, he dismissed the other tutors and spent his days reading and writing in the courtyard, or now and then traveling through the countryside of Jinzhong with his descendants for company. He loved telling stories even more than hearing them, and was especially fond of writing down the odd tales told by village women, peddlers, and wandering laborers. It is said that the Unwaking Court behind the hall was once piled high with his notebooks. Sadly, after the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, only a few scraps remained.

Tihu Blogs on Tihu Hall Notes

Folk Cthulhu Horror: Why Is His Back Covered with Eyes?

The Co-Mother-in-Law

The Native Origins of Song Jiang's Liangshan Military Group

Nüqing: The Hidden Official Who Vanished from the Daoist Pantheon

Supplement on the Grand Duke: There Are Two Jiang Ziyas in *Investiture of the Gods*, and One of Them Deifies Himself

Bao Liang

Anqi Sheng

Family EDC/PSK Gear Checklist

Tihu Notes | The Sauce Tree

Tihu Notes | Mad Feng

Tihu Notes | Ma Sheng

Tihu Notes | Pan the Immortal

Records of Strange Translations | The Village Girl

Tihu Notes | Snow Silver

Tihu Notes | The Black Ladle

Records of Strange Translations | The Touchstone

Tihu Notes | The Jade Hound

Transcript | Don't Let Sheep Queue for You

Keystories | Eating Chengdu

Keystories | Tiger Month of the Renchen Year

Keystories | Tiger Month, Year of Renchen

Rain Bell | Fufonfia

Dark Fragrance

Rain Bell | April

Rain Bell | March

Rain Bell | February

Rain Bell | January

Rain Bell | December

Mr. Lomo, Part III

Mr. Lomo, Part II

Mr. Lomo, Part I

Nine Stories, Season Six | Prologue

Nine Stories, Season Six | The Witch Doctor

Nine Stories, Season Five | Eight Sounds Fall Silent

Tihu Notes | Right Hand

Tihu Notes | Xu Lai

Nine Stories, Season Five | Prologue

Tihu Notes | Keystories V

Tihu Notes | Fu and Gui

Poshan Poyin Di

Tihu Notes | Keystories IV

7-29

No

Nine Stories, Season Four | Alicia

Tihu Notes | Keystories III

Tihu Notes | Keystories II

Tihu Notes | Keystories I

Tihu Notes | Mutou Ran

Too Deep in Character

Must You Leave?

The King and the Maidservants

Nine Stories, Season Four | Consort Ming

Tihu Notes | Thunder Master

Tihu Notes | Boycott

Tihu Cipher | Alpha (4,8)

Tihu Notes | Chi Cat

Tihu Notes | Blind Master

Tihu Notes | Louse Divination

Weekly Live | Oilback Whale

Weekly Live | Lithium Cat

Nine Stories, Season Two | Shahtoosh

Nine Stories, Season Two | Tihu's Empty Room

Weekly Live | Web Glider

Tihu Notes | Rainbow Inkstone

Tihu Notes | Whale Ink

Tihu Notes | Green Paper

Tihu Notes | Brushmaking

Tihu Notes | Biheng

Tihu Notes | Listening to Books

Savior

Devourer

Marker

Sniper

Seven Capsules II | 2177 Intensive Care

Seven Capsules I | 2177 Essential Medicines

How to Make a Virus 'Cupcake'

A Sorcerer's Formula

Transformers.CN

Night

Supplement on the Grand Duke: There Are Two Jiang Ziyas in Investiture of the Gods, and One of Them Deifies Himself