Tihu Notes | Keystories V

1. 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

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.

Tihu Notes | Keystories IV

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

1. 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.

Tihu Notes | Keystories III

1. 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

1. 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

1. 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.

2. 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

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.

Tihu Notes | Thunder Master

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

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 Notes | Chi Cat

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.