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The Tame Cat
A childless old widow keeps a yellow-and-black cat. When she falls ill, the cat brings healing herbs; when she dies, it guards her body and bites a thief. The villagers, moved, bury them both.
The Spider on the Beam
A lonely old woman in a riverside Jiangnan house shares her beam with a spider that spins not for flies but for thieves. One autumn night it binds a limping burglar by the cuff and hangs him till dawn; the granny, instead of crying out, feeds him and sends him home with medicine money. A strange, tender tale of an unlikely watchman.
The Empty Room in the Urban Village
Xiao Wu rents a room in the urban village astonishingly cheap. At night he hears a neighbor's chair dragged and a tap dripping — but the wall is solid, and the room has stood empty for years since a lonely old man died in it. He begins leaving a bowl of hot food by the wall.
The Bamboo Spirit
A poor scholar lodges in a ruined garden where an ancient bamboo turns each night into a green-robed woman who dusts his desk and finishes his copying. On the eve of his exams she gives him a bamboo flute; ever after, the wind through the garden breathes her clear, lingering notes.
The Night Shift at the Funeral Home
Lao He has worked the night shift at the north-end funeral home for six years. On the first and fifteenth of every lunar month, the third cold-storage cabinet taps from within — three soft knocks. He later learns of an old man who died alone, and a daughter who comes every Qingming to paste a note on that very cabinet.
The Man Who Collected Footprints
For forty years Old Qiu has mended the shoes of Linhe Town and read its people by their soles. When three of his customers drown one after another in Willow River—each wearing shoes he repaired, each sole caked with the same red backwater clay from where a woman died last year—the cobbler sees a pair of feet keeping count of footprints for the river, and finds his own shoes marked too.
The Lantern Maid
A lantern-maker's paper lamps, when lit at night, throw on the wall the shape of her dead husband; neighbors fear it, but an old servant knows the truth.
The Comb Maker
In Tanxi Town, old Shen Changgeng has carved wooden combs for women for forty years. Years after his bald-headed wife died, a long black strand appears wound in a comb he never gave her - and afterward, every comb he finishes carries a strand that belongs to no living customer. As his hands grow cold as well water, Shen stops fighting it, and combs the empty chair where she once sat.