The Bone Hairpin
Peddler Shen Er passes through Qinglu village by night and trades a measure of rice for a warm white hairpin from a pale old woman—only to learn the village perished in plague the year before.
There was a peddler named Shen Er of Linhuai, who carried his wares on a shoulder pole through the villages, selling needles, thread, and such powders and trinkets as women used.
One autumn he passed through the village of Qinglu. It held barely a dozen households; no cock crowed, no dog barked, and weeds grew to the knee. Shen Er knocked for water. An old woman came out, her face white as paper, and led him in. In the hall hung a white funeral banner; there was no scent of incense, only the bubbling of congee on the stove.
The old woman said, “My daughter-in-law is newly widowed and would trade for her keep. Is this hairpin worth a measure of rice?” She produced a pin, white as jade, carved with twin lotuses, warm and pleasing to the touch. Shen Er gave her a measure of rice and took the pin, then went on his way.
After some miles he met a woodcutter, who paled at the sight of the pin. “Is that not bone?” he said. Shen Er looked closely and indeed saw threads of red within it, faintly warm. The woodcutter said, “Qinglu village was struck by plague last year. All who lived there perished, and the magistrate sealed it. None dares enter. What you saw was a ghost.”
Shen Er’s hair stood on end. He flung the pin into the wild. That night, at an inn, he dreamed of a young woman who knelt by his bed and wept. “My husband died of the plague. I could not bear to leave and stayed to keep the house. The pin was my own hair ornament, not human bone. Now that you have cast it away, I have nothing left to give the brides of the village.” Then she was gone.
The next day Shen Er returned to Qinglu. The village was sealed and shut; the well had collapsed, the walls were broken. Beneath the door he found the measure of rice, untouched as before.
The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: Men fear ghosts, yet ghosts too have what they cling to and cannot forget. A measure of rice—the savings of half a life. A single hairpin—the thought of one not yet gone. The living so often prove faithless and cold, and are worse in their constancy than the dead. Alas.