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The Lamp Maid
A maid whipped to death for letting a lamp go out keeps a self-lighting flame through the ages, waiting only to light a poor scholar's way.
New Liaozhai: The Umbrella
A widow's oil-paper umbrella shelters a traveler from more than rain; each plum-rain season it remembers him, and in the grave only the umbrella remains.
New Liaozhai: The Lady of the Pear Tree
A pear-tree spirit asks an old flower trader to carry one branch north before her tree is felled; years later, when his son would cut it down, the trunk bears the marks of a woman's grieving hands.
The Watchmaker's Night Call
An old watch repairman's disconnected phone rings at three each night with the sound of ticking. He realizes it is a watch looking for the owner who never came back.
Midnight Records: The Watchman's Drum
Old Fan keeps the night watch for forty years; on snowing nights a second drum keeps the third watch for him — from a red lacquered coffin in the Bai family yard.
The Night Shift at the Convenience Store
A man buys a bottle of water at 2:13 every night and never drinks it. The clerk learns he is only waiting by the window, for someone who used to stand there.
Midnight Records: The Night Ferry
Old Cui ferries a red-coated woman across the misty Qinghe River one night — a woman who had no bus to miss, and who leaves behind his late wife's brass locket, not a footprint.
The Empty Seat on the Last Bus
For eleven years Lao Zhou has driven the last 307 bus. Every night a woman in a red coat boards where the stop no longer exists, and keeps the window seat he never lets anyone fill.