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墨書 Inktalez
The elders say that a person's soul can be lost.
In times of scarcity during my childhood, the rural areas where my parents grew up were even poorer. Our neighbor, Granny Niu, recounted a year when a severe drought struck, leaving the crops of the poor almost entirely barren. One family, desperate and out of options, sent a woman out at dawn with a tattered basket to a wealthy household's harvested wheat field to collect leftover grains. However, in such a year of famine, the stubble had already been scoured by countless hungry people.
As the woman walked and searched, her harvest was meager, and she became exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. After traversing several villages and walking an unknown distance, she could go no further and rested under a grass shed beside a dry well. The weather turned against her; suddenly, dark clouds rolled in, fierce winds arose, and heavy rain mixed with hail poured down. The small grass shed was instantly flattened by the storm, leaving the woman with no shelter from the deluge. Soaked and chilled to the bone, she fainted.
It wasn't until dusk that her family found her unconscious after inquiring around. A man carried her home and fed her a large bowl of ginger soup until she finally regained consciousness but kept crying out, “I’m cold! The water is almost up to my neck! Pull me up!”
Her family was puzzled and called for a doctor, but he claimed he could do nothing for her condition. In desperation, they sought out a "master." After asking detailed questions and having the family bring an ox-drawn cart to the spot where she had fainted, he declared that the woman's "soul was lost." The storm had knocked her unconscious, causing her soul to slip away into the nearby dry well. However, due to the heavy rain, the well had filled with water. While her body had returned home, her soul was still struggling in the well.
This explained her delirious mutterings: “I’m cold! The water is almost up to my neck! Pull me up!” Her family pleaded with the master and promised him rewards. Finally agreeing to help, he cut off a lock of the woman's hair and placed it in the man's arms while calling out her name: “XX, come home! XX, come home!”
They were instructed not to look back or stop along the way. After performing this ritual, the woman finally returned to herself and ceased her cries of coldness.
Later on, once she fully awakened, she recounted that during the storm she felt as if she were flying. She watched helplessly as her body lay motionless in the rain while she uncontrollably fell into the well. As the rain continued to pour down harder outside, the water in the well rose first to her waist, then to her chest, and finally to her neck... She screamed and struggled desperately but received no response and could not climb back up!
It was only when she heard a man calling her name to come home that she agreed to float out from the endless darkness and coldness, following his voice back home until she reunited with her body beneath the blankets on her bed.
Even today in rural areas, if a child cries inconsolably for no apparent reason, elders will say: "The child's soul is lost." They are not in a hurry; one hand pinches the child's ear while reciting incantations: "Pinch XX's ear," (XX being the child's name), "call back XX's soul" (with an affectionate tone added). This chant is repeated several times; whether or not the child's soul is truly lost or called back is uncertain. Generally speaking, though, they tend to quiet down and stop crying.
In many rural communities, there are numerous taboos. For instance, when eating, chopsticks should only be laid side by side on top of a bowl and never inserted directly into it—especially not vertically—because elders say that chopsticks stuck into rice are meant for feeding the dead: they are akin to incense offered to spirits.
Legend has it that there was once a Troublemaker Child in our village who ignored this advice and constantly stuck his chopsticks into his bowl. Over time he complained incessantly that his food was cold and tasteless while visibly growing thinner each day.
His family called in a master for help. The master explained that because his chopsticks were always stuck in his bowl, wandering spirits thought they were being offered food and rushed to eat first... Eventually, whenever his family saw him inserting chopsticks into his bowl again, they would slap him on the head until he corrected this habit; his health gradually improved thereafter.
Some taboos are even more frightening; for example, when an elder passes away, regardless of how sad or angry their descendants may feel, they must not let their tears fall on the deceased! Elders warn that before seven days have passed since death (the mourning period), tears from loved ones falling on the deceased can cause their spirit to cling to familial ties and earthly matters. This can disrupt both human lives and spirits alike—leading to chaos within households.
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