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.
At the age of twelve, Ma Sheng left home for school one morning and never came back that afternoon. He never returned at all. His family reported the case, but it was never solved. The uncanny thing was that neighbors, and even members of his own household, would sometimes catch sight of Ma Sheng from a distance on the street, looking exactly the same as before. He would smile faintly and vanish in an instant.
Twenty years passed like that. Then Ma Sheng suddenly came home. He was wearing the very same clothes he had had on at twelve, now so tattered that they barely hung from his neck. When his family questioned him, he said little beyond this: he had gone off with a master to learn skills. They took him to the hospital for examination and even had his mental state assessed, but nothing appeared wrong. Yet now a man in his thirties, Ma Sheng still did not go out to work. He simply stayed at home, and whatever skills he had acquired were not obvious.
One evening the whole family was eating dinner. As always, Ma Sheng kept his head down and ate in silence. His grandmother muttered, more to herself than anyone else, that she was craving loquats from Longquanyi. Ma Sheng’s ears twitched. He set down his chopsticks and went out without a word. The family called after him, but he did not answer. Not long later he returned, still with his head lowered, carrying a basket. He placed it at his grandmother’s feet. It was full of loquats, some of them hurriedly torn off with twigs and leaves still attached. From Wenjiang to Longquanyi is at least seventy kilometers. At that time there was no expressway. Even by car it would have taken two hours or more.
Later Ma Sheng’s father wanted to open a shop, only to be cheated out of his money. Ma Sheng had his father remain seated at home, asked for the debtor’s name and address, then took out a thick stack of paper and wrote characters on it with a brush before tossing the pages into a brazier. The paper burned and the fire went out. From the ashes he drew several gold ingots, took them to a gold shop, and exchanged them for exactly the amount that man had owed. Swindles were common in those years and the victims were many, so Ma Sheng used the same method to help several other relatives recover debts they had long since failed to collect. Not long afterward the police came to the house. A few days later came the news that Ma Sheng had been executed by firing squad.