The Old Man's Uncanny Tales

The old bamboo weaver of Xiangxi lived to the age of ninety-nine, having wandered from village to village all his life, witnessing with his own eyes the eeriest of folk practices—corpse-driving, the Fallen-Flower Cave Maiden, curse-casting, and misfortune-shifting. He said every uncanny tale he told would earn him another year of life, but once the very last story was finished, the listener would have to take his place in that other world. I was his final listener.