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Stuck at Six
Achang has fixed elevators for ten years. One old mixed-use building keeps calling him at midnight — the car jams at the sixth floor, yet the sixth-floor tenant never calls up.
The Faithful Dog
A blind beggar keeps a yellow dog, and the two depend on each other in their begging. When the beggar dies by the road, the dog guards the body, carries coins to buy food and lays it before him, and howls day and night. When the villagers bury the beggar, the dog lies on the grave, refuses food, and dies on the seventh day; moved, the people bury it beside him.
The Ancient Locust Tree
An ancient locust tree has stood at the village mouth for centuries; the villagers pray for rain and blessing beneath it. A rich man means to fell it for timber; when the axe strikes, blood-like sap bursts out and he falls gravely ill. The villagers tend its roots; the withered tree blooms anew, and when plague comes, that village alone is spared.
The White Turtle
A fisherman catches a white turtle; townsfolk vie to buy it for soup, but he pities it and releases it into the river. Years later the dyke breaks, and as flood swallows his family by night, a giant white turtle rises bearing his boat to high ground. When the waters fall, it is gone.
Keeping the Bedside
Xiao Lin works nights as a hospital aide. In the ward at the end of the corridor, an old woman in a blue cloth shirt is always there at night, tucking in the blanket and giving water to a dying stranger. The nurse says that ward was emptied long ago — there is no such person.
The Red Lantern on the Mountain Road
Lao Han hauls freight at night over an old mountain. At one hairpin bend, an old man in a raincoat always stands waving a red lantern, slow — and in the seconds after, the road beyond is either a rockslide or a stalled truck. He later learns a road-mender once died on that bend.
The Tea Maid
The woman who brews tea at the south-market house shows each drinker, in the cup, the one they cannot forget.
The Rain Mistress
A flower-selling crone in the west of the city brings fine rain with a sigh; a youth begs for a downpour, is refused, and learns why when the flood comes.