Chapter 442: Mobilizing the Entire Village |
A full meal was by no means an unreasonable request, but rather a somewhat humble one. Liao Daqiu was deeply moved and bowed with clasped hands in a deeply respectful gesture.
“Rest assured, brave warriors, I, Liao, will definitely fulfill your request. I will definitely accomplish it!”
The surrounding ghosts also bowed to Liao Daqiu.
“Benefactor, remember to quickly find a paper craftsman to make weapons and battle flags, remember!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll definitely get it done, I’ll definitely get it done…”
In the inner room of Liao Daqiu’s house, Old Liao was gripping the quilt tightly with both hands, shouting incessantly.
“I will definitely get it done, I will definitely get it done, I will definitely get it done…”
The noise woke his wife up. She squinted at the curtains outside the room and saw a sliver of white light shining through the cracks in the wooden window, indicating that it was already dawn.
The woman turned over to look at her husband, and heard him constantly shouting “I will definitely get it done.” She nudged him twice, finding his body tense and his clothes damp.
The woman sat up in bed and shook Liao Daqiu vigorously, finally waking him up. He shuddered and woke up with a cry of “Ouch!”
“Haah…haah…haah…”
Liao Daqiu was slightly out of breath. He looked at the ceiling, then scanned the room with a somewhat blank expression, before finally focusing on his wife.
“Honey, did you have a nightmare? You kept saying you’d definitely get it done… It was kind of scary!”
The woman found a handkerchief on the bedside and wiped Liao Daqiu’s sweat as she spoke.
Old Liao took the handkerchief from his wife, touched his face, and realized that his face and body were covered in sweat. Even the quilt was damp.
“A nightmare? I guess so…”
Liao Daqiu remembered everything in his dream clearly. He saw so many ghosts, but they were all good ghosts, so it couldn’t be considered a nightmare. However, what he heard was far more terrifying than a nightmare.
At this moment, Old Liao came to his senses and suddenly asked his wife.
“Honey, do you know where I can find a good paper craftsman?”
Liao Daqiu’s question puzzled his wife. In the village, there were blacksmiths, carpenters, and bricklayers, but paper craftsmen specifically referred to those who made items for the dead.
“Could something have happened to one of our relatives?”
The woman tensed up slightly, and Liao Daqiu quickly shook his head.
“No, no, it’s because of a dream I just had, I dreamt about…”
Liao Daqiu paused, then thought for a moment and said.
“Go and bring me the kettle first. I’m really thirsty. I’ll continue talking after I drink some water.”
“Yes, yes, we need to drink some water first!”
The woman quickly got out of bed and went to the outer room to fetch the kettle, but she also checked on her son first. Seeing that he was fast asleep, she took the kettle and teacup and returned to the room.
“Here, the kettle.”
Old Liao took the kettle and teacup, poured the water, and gulped it down. He finally quenched his thirst after three cups, unlike in his dream, where no amount of drinking seemed to help.
“Have you snapped out of it now?”
“I’ve snapping out of it!”
By this time, it was much brighter outside. The sun was rising above the horizon. Liao Daqiu composed himself and told his wife.
“Last night, I dreamt about…”
When Liao Daqiu told his wife about his dream, she was indeed quite frightened, repeatedly questioning whether it was truly only a dream.
But the dream was so vivid that Liao Daqiu dared not be negligent. After the sky brightened a bit, Liao Daqiu ate some porridge with pickled vegetables at home and then hurried out.
As soon as Liao Daqiu stepped outside, he saw his neighbor, Old Zhang, who was squatting at his doorstep, slurping down his porridge.
“Hey, Old Zhang, let me tell you, I had a dream last night…”
Liao Daqiu originally planned to go directly to the old village chief, but now he was filled with the urge to confide in someone, especially to his close friend Old Zhang, so he simply blurted out the entire vivid dream he had that previous night.
Old Zhang frowned as he looked at Liao Daqiu.
“I’m telling you, Old Liao, this was just a nightmare. We’ve been burying the remains of strangers for years, and now you mean we have to start burning offerings for them and holding memorial services as well? None of us are well-off, and we don’t ever even get a full meal. Let’s not make things harder for us…”
Old Zhang earnestly advised. It was good to do good deeds, but one should only act within one’s means.
Burying a corpse and erecting a tombstone only required some effort. Farmers might lack many things, but they had plenty of strength. This much was manageable. At most, they might add a tattered straw mat or some dry grass.
But to burn food for the dead in the cemetery, to cook for them? How could they live like that? There were quite a few corpses in the cemetery!
“Hey Old Zhang, that’s not what I meant! These are all things the ghosts in the cemetery told me. There’s a plague going around outside, burning these things is helping ourselves!”
Old Zhang was getting a little angry.
“You, Old Liao, had a dream, and now you expect me to contribute money to make paper items and host a feast with you? The paper craftsman’s prices aren’t cheap!”
Of the major events in life, weddings and funerals were undoubtedly the most expensive and time-consuming. The exquisite paper offerings made by paper craftsmen were often only affordable to the wealthy.
“I said… Old Zhang, this money should of course be pooled together by everyone in the village, how could our two families possibly…”
Upon hearing this, Old Zhang’s temper flared up immediately, and he shouted loudly.
“Who said ‘our two families’? I didn’t agree to that!”
After finishing his sentence, Old Zhang ignored Liao Daqiu and continued drinking his porridge. The latter looked conflicted, fidgeting with his clothes, and stomping his feet.
“Hey, I’m going to find the old village chief!”
Seeing Liao Daqiu leave, Old Zhang called out again from behind.
“Go ahead, go ahead, the old village chief will never go crazy with you!”
Even his closest brother had this attitude towards his suggestion. Although Liao Daqiu was a farmer, he wasn’t stupid; he knew that others would probably disagree even more harshly. So, although he really wanted to tell every acquaintance he met about the dream, he kept quiet and walked straight to the village chief’s house.
“Good morning, Uncle Liao!”
“Good morning!”
The young man who had dug the pit with him to bury the corpses greeted the hurried Liao Daqiu, only to see that the usually talkative Uncle Liao simply replied and continued on without stopping.
“That’s strange, what’s wrong with Uncle Liao today?”
Liao Daqiu walked towards the old village chief’s house. The old village chief lived at the end of the village, not far from the village’s Land God temple. When he saw the old village chief’s courtyard from afar, he breathed a slight sigh of relief, but a sense of unease lingered.
Although the old village chief was always reasonable, experienced, and knowledgeable, what if the old village chief held the same attitude as Old Zhang?
Before Liao Daqiu could come up with a good solution, the old village chief, seeing him approaching from afar, put down his bowl, quickly walked out of the fenced yard, and jogged towards Liao Daqiu, shouting as soon as he reached him.
“Old Liao! Let me tell you, the local Land God appeared to me in a dream last night! It’s true!”
The old village chief was even more agitated than Liao Daqiu, startling Old Liao, who was deep in thought.
“Huh?”
Liao Daqiu asked in a daze, making the old village chief anxious.
“Oh dear, last night I had a very vivid dream. In the dream, I suddenly had a stomachache and woke up needing to pee. So I put on my clothes and went to the outhouse. On the way, I passed by the local Land God temple and saw the Land God sitting outside. He called me ‘Xiao Maoqiu,’1 which was my childhood nickname. I’m over sixty years old now, and these days, almost no one remembers it, let alone calls me that anymore…”
The old village chief looked towards the end of the village.
“Let me tell you, the local Land God is really short, just as rumored… Oh, and he told me that plague demon might come to our area soon, and he plans to help us fend it off with the ghosts from the cemetery, but whether they can actually succeed is another matter…”
Liao Daqiu, who had been listening in a daze, slapped his thigh hard upon hearing this.
“Oh, old village chief, I was just about to tell you about this! I also had a dream last night. Many ghosts came out of the cemetery and were waiting for me in front of my house. They told me that the plague demon was coming and that they would fight it to the death to protect the peace of our village. They also said we had to burn some paper offerings…”
The two men, still shaken from their dreams, shared their experiences with each other, confirming each other’s stories. The matter soon became quite clear.
What was left to say? Liao Daqiu and the old village chief discussed it and decided to go to the village together to mobilize the villagers. The latter went back to his yard, quickly finished his porridge, and then grabbed a gong and and went out with Liao Daqiu.
“Clang, clang, clang, clang!”
As they walked, they banged the gong so loudly that the noise traveled from one end of the village to the other, finally attracting the attention of the entire village.
Before long, most of the villagers had gathered at the threshing2 ground in the center of the village. Liao Daqiu even borrowed a table so that the old village chief could stand on it and address everyone. After the old village chief finished speaking, Liao Daqiu would go up and tell everyone about his dream.
The villagers were actually quite superstitious about these kinds of supernatural things. If it were just Liao Daqiu speaking, many people might have reacted the same way as Old Zhang. But when the old village chief and Old Liao spoke together, their expressions were serious and even occasionally showed fear. This, coupled with the effect of the crowd, quickly stirred up everyone’s emotions, and everyone grew fearful.
Finally, everyone decided to consult the local Land God. A large group of people went to the Land God Temple together and used a casting lots divination to communicate with him. They cast the sticks many times, and each time the result was positive.
This made most of the villagers waver. With the old village chief and Liao Daqiu’s combined efforts, they quickly persuaded a majority.
Liao Daqiu and several farmers went to the county capital to find a paper craftsman, while the old village chief was busy preparing food and drink in the village.
To prepare food for over a hundred ghosts, at least a ten to twenty households would need to work together. Moreover, since this was a matter of life and death, they had to put in considerable effort, and couldn’t afford to simply do a perfunctory job. They had to slaughter thirty or forty local chickens and ducks, which was a significant expense for Maotan Village.
The county town was about half a day’s journey from Maotan Village. When Old Liao, Old Zhang, and the others arrived in town, they went to find the owner of a funeral shop. Usually, the owner of such a shop was also a paper craftsman, which turned out to be true in this case.
The villagers of Maotan ordered a collection of paper battle flags and paper weapons all at once, much to the shopkeeper’s delight and confusion. Who would burn these for the dead? But of course, business was business, so he didn’t care too much.
He politely bid them farewell and saw the farmers off before returning to the shop with a smile. Just then, his wife came in and saw him.
“Honey, what big deal have you struck that makes you so happy?”
The people who had just left didn’t seem to be wealthy, so the woman was a little puzzled.
“Hehe, of course. We received a quite large order of paper flags and paper weapons from Maotan Village, and the deposit has been paid in full.”
The shopkeeper weighed the string of copper coins in his hand.
“Wow, I didn’t realize!”
“Yeah, it’s true, the time is tight and the requirements are high, but these things are much simpler than making houses or paper figures. If I rest a little less, I can finish them quickly! Hehehe…”
“Then why don’t you hurry up and get to work? I can watch the shop!”
The proprietress put her hands on her hips and urged the shop owner to get to work. He hurriedly returned to the courtyard behind the shop.
However, as he left, the shopkeeper continued to think about what the farmers had said: there might be a plague demon, and the owner should be careful.
However, in recent years, the government had been very sensitive to what the villagers said. Because they were afraid of being arrested by the government and charged with spreading rumors, the farmers dare not say too much, and quickly left.
- 小 (xiǎo): small/young (diminutive), 毛 (máo): feather/down/hair, 球 (qiú): ball (for playing games). Maoqiu is probably his name, so I left it as is.
- Threshing is the process that separates the edible grain from the surrounding plant material (the chaff). Historically it was done by beating the crop with a wooden flail, or having humans or oxen step on it.
Like Loading…