What is a ghost?
I am sure that if you ask this question, many people will come up with all sorts of different understandings of ghosts, which I won't bother to list here.
The *Book of Rites: Meaning of Ancestral Worship* states: "All living things must die, and in dying must return to the earth; this is what is called a ghost."
This clearly points to where "ghosts" come from.
As a half-baked Taoist, having embraced the Tao, I naturally pursued these supernatural and ghostly matters with great fervor.
As my desires grew stronger, the heavens seemed to hear me and truly opened such a door for me.
The first time I saw a ghost, I was terrified, but once the fear passed and I made sure the ghost meant me no harm, my curiosity became intense.
Back then, I had not been in high school for very long, and because I spent all day studying those mystical things, my classmates gave me the affectionate nickname "Jiang the Guardian."
Of course, I didn't care. After all, it was just a nickname and couldn't cause me any real harm, so I just laughed it off and let it go.
But if anyone dared to disturb me while I was forming finger incantations and pacing the stellar steps, I would flick them right on the forehead.
By the second semester, Qingming Festival was fast approaching. I remember it didn't rain that Qingming; the weather was utterly clear.
Early in the morning, my dad dragged me out of bed and said he was taking me to the countryside to pay respects to our ancestors.
To be honest, I wasn't very willing to go.
From the time I started learning to chant incantations and draw talismans, it had been almost ten years.
If not for my innate temperament combined with a lack of other hobbies, I truly wouldn't have kept it up for so long.
Yet the problem lay right there.
It had been nearly ten years, and I hadn't seen a single ghost, which made me start doubting the authenticity of my notebooks.
If there were no ghosts in this world, wouldn't those spells and talismans be as useless as a dragon-slaying blade without a dragon?
This left me somewhat depressed, and naturally, I couldn't muster much interest in burning incense, worshiping Buddha, making sacrifices, or sweeping graves; I even felt a bit disdainful of such practices.
Still, looking at my dad's hand, which was easily half the size of my face, I followed him back to the countryside anyway.
That graveyard lay among the field ridges. Because of the good weather, the farm paths were dry and devoid of the mud I had imagined, which improved my mood quite a bit.
My grandfather's grave was a new one built with red bricks and tiles, different from the traditional dirt-mound graves of the past.
Here, apart from the first few rows of red-tiled graves, the ones further back were all old graves made simply of piled-up earth topped with an inverted-bucket shape. Some of more recent times had a layer of cement plastered over the exterior, with a ring plastered around the edge.
I remember when we used to come here, my grandfather's resting place was in the very front row of this graveyard, but this time it had moved back to the third row. It seemed quite a few people liked falling back to their roots.
My dad, my grandma, myself, and my second uncle's younger son set out all the prepared offerings, inserted the Qingming paper streamers, and then knelt before my grandfather's grave to burn paper money, gold ingots, and the like.
Usually at this time, my grandma would lean against the tombstone, sorrowfully wiping the dust off my grandfather's photo, and then wiping a blank recessed space right next to it.
I knew that was the spot left for my grandma's photo when the headstone was originally erected.
After burning paper for my grandfather, we would usually burn some paper money at several surrounding graves as well, muttering words under our breath—things like "live in harmony" and "be good neighbors"—in short, dealing with the local social etiquette.
Of course, this wasn't the end of it.
At the very back of the graveyard were the oldest traceable ancestral graves of our Jiang family, along with the tombs of various senior family elders. Those had to be visited and worshiped as well.
Among them, the one that left the deepest impression on me was my second great-uncle's grave. It was the grandest tomb in the entire graveyard.
I had never seen my second great-uncle since childhood, and whenever I asked the family about him, they were reluctant to tell me.
Later, as I grew older and swept the graves more often, I gradually came to understand.
My second great-uncle was a revolutionary martyr who had given his precious life for the great cause of communism.
I felt a sense of release. No wonder his grave was so magnificent and permitted to be buried right beside the ancient ancestors.
Then came a wave of sorrow. Although my grandfather had suffered from cancer, he had at least lived to be over sixty.
While my dad and grandma were talking, I figured the weather was nice and the ground wasn't muddy, so I wandered around near the old graves and soon made my way behind them.
As soon as I walked around there, I felt something was amiss.
By the river dozens of meters behind the old tombs, far off in a sea of rapeseed flowers, a small earthen mound poked out very abruptly.
What on earth was that?
You must know that during Qingming Festival, the rapeseed flowers grew about as tall as me.
I was naturally averse to heavy scents, but fortunately, the fragrance of the rapeseed flowers was tolerable. Driven by curiosity, I stepped heavily through the sea of flowers.
Parting the rapeseed flowers, I saw an isolated grave without a tombstone.
It was just a very simple little mound of earth, covered entirely in green grass without a single rapeseed flower on it.
At the time, I guessed that perhaps the field owner felt it wasn't good to grow rapeseed flowers right on someone's grave—in case it angered the elder and brought bad luck—so they had avoided the mound when sowing seeds, and over time it had simply grown over with grass.
As for me, although I no longer truly believed in these things, I still held a basic sense of awe.
So I bowed and muttered under my breath, saying something about bearing no ill will, and then pulled out a few White Rabbit creamy candies and placed them before the mound. After bowing three more times, I turned to leave.
Just then, I noticed a bucket-shaped lump of earth had rolled down near the riverbank.
I don't know what got into me at the moment, but I actually ran over, picked it up, carried it back, and placed it right on top of the small earthen mound. Heh, it fit perfectly.
Just as I was feeling quite pleased with myself for doing a good deed, my gaze inadvertently swept across the front of the mound, and I instantly felt puzzled, followed by a cold sweat.
The few White Rabbit creamy candies I had placed before the mound had somehow been unwrapped.
The candies inside were gone!
I looked at the pile of candy wrappers, then looked at the earthen mound, and took off running as fast as my legs could carry me.
As I ran, I tried to come up with all sorts of excuses to brush it off.
It must have been some naughty kid from nearby, or perhaps my younger cousin had followed me and eaten the candy the moment he saw it.
Yet that thought was quickly dismissed. Leaving aside the fact that my younger cousin was only four years younger than me and understood just about everything he needed to, he certainly wouldn't take things from in front of a stranger's grave.
Besides, which kid would have nothing better to do than wander around a graveyard?
Field mice, hedgehogs, or some other animal?
If it were that, the candy wrappers would have been chewed to shreds. But I had seen it clearly just moments before: the wrappers had been neatly unwrapped!