Ken Liu - Invisible Planets - Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

But I look seriously and nod. “Beautiful,” I say.

Actually, I can’t really see very well. Unlike the ghosts, I cannot see in the dark.

Xiao Qian is happy with my affirmation. She takes my basket and goes into the kitchen to cook. As I sit and work the bellows next to her, I tell her about my day. Just as I get to the part where the Monk hit me on the head with the ferule, Xiao Qian reaches out and lightly caresses my head where I was hit. Her hand is cold and pale, like a piece of jade.

“You need to study hard and respect your teacher,” Xiao Qian says. “Eventually you’ll leave here and make your way in the real world. You have to have some knowledge and real skills.”

Her voice is very soft, like cotton candy, and so the swelling on my head stops hurting.

Xiao Qian tells me that Yan Chixia found me on the steps of the temple when I was a baby. I cried and cried because I was so hungry. Yan Chixia was at his wit’s end when he finally stuffed a handful of creeping rockfoil into my mouth. I sucked on the juice from the grass and stopped crying.

No one knows who my real parents are.

Even back then, Ghost Street had been doing poorly. No tourists had come by for a while. That hasn’t changed. Xiao Qian tells me that it’s probably because people invented some other attraction, newer, fresher, and so they forgot about the old attractions. She’s seen similar things happen many times.

Before she became a ghost, Xiao Qian tells me, she lived a very full life. She had been married twice, gave birth to seven children, and raised them all.

And then her children got sick, one after another. In order to raise the money to pay the doctors, Xiao Qian sold herself off in pieces: teeth, eyes, breasts, heart, liver, lungs, bone marrow, and finally her soul. Her soul was sold to Ghost Street, where it was sealed inside a female ghost’s body. Her children died anyway.

Now she has white skin and dark hair. The skin is light sensitive. If she’s in direct sunlight, she’ll burn.

After he found me, Yan Chixia had walked up and down all Ghost Street before he decided to give me to Xiao Qian to raise.

I’ve seen a picture of Xiao Qian back when she was alive. It was hidden in a corner of a drawer in her dresser. The woman in the picture had thick eyebrows, huge eyes, a wrinkled face—far uglier than the way Xiao Qian looks now. Still, I often see her cry as she looks at that picture. Her tears are a pale pink. When they fall against her white dress, they soak into the fabric and spread like blooming peach flowers.

Every ghost is full of stories from when they were alive. Their bodies have been cremated and the ashes mixed into the earth, but their stories still live on. During the day, when all Ghost Street is asleep, the stories become dreams and circle under the shadows of the eaves like swallows without nests. During those hours, only I’m around, walking in the street, and only I can see them and hear their buzzing song.

I’m the only living person on Ghost Street.

Xiao Qian says that I don’t belong here. When I grow up, I’ll leave.

The smell of good food fills the room. The insects in my stomach chitter even louder.

I eat dinner by myself: preserved pork with stir-fried bamboo shoots, shrimp paste–flavored egg soup, and rice balls with chives, still hot in my hands. Xiao Qian sits and watches me. Ghosts don’t eat. None of the inhabitants of Ghost Street, not even Yan Chixia or the Monk, ever eat.

I bury my face in the bowl, eating as fast as I can. I wonder, after I leave, will I ever eat such delicious food again?

After night falls, the world comes alive.

I go alone to the well in the back to get water. I turn the wheel and it squeaks, but the sound is different from usual. I look down into the well and see a long-haired ghost in a white dress sitting in the bucket.

I pull her up and out. Her wet hair covers her face, leaving only one eye to stare at me out of a gap. “Ning, tonight is the Carnival. Aren’t you going?”

“I need to get water for Xiao Qian’s bath,” I answer. “After the bath we’ll go.”

She strokes my face lightly. “You are a foolish child.”

She has no legs, so she has to leave by crawling on her hands. I hear the sound of crawling, creeping all around me. Green will-o’-the-wisps flit around like anxious fireflies. The air is filled with the fragrance of rotting flowers.

I go back to the dark bedroom and pour the water into the wooden bathtub. Xiao Qian undresses. I see a crimson bar code along her naked back like a tiny snake. Bright white lights pulse under her skin.

“Why don’t you take a bath with me?” she asks.

I shake my head, but I’m not sure why. Xiao Qian sighs. “Come.” So I don’t refuse again.

We sit in the bathtub together. The cedar smells nice. Xiao Qian rubs my back with her cold, cold hands, humming lightly. Her voice is very beautiful. Legend has it that any man who heard her sing fell in love with her.

When I grow up, will I fall in love with Xiao Qian? I think and look at my small hands, the skin now wrinkled from the bath like wet wrapping paper.

After the bath, Xiao Qian combs my hair and dresses me in a new shirt she made for me. Then she sticks a bunch of copper coins, green and dull, into my pocket.

“Go have fun,” she says. “Remember not to eat too much!”

Outside, the street is lit with countless lanterns, so bright I can no longer see the stars that fill the summer sky.

Demons, ghosts, all kinds of spirits come out of their ruined houses, out of cracks in walls, rotting closets, dry wells. Hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, they parade up and down Ghost Street until the narrow street is filled.

I squeeze myself into the middle of the crowd, looking all around. The stores and kiosks along both sides of the street send forth all kinds of delicious smells, tickling my nose like butterflies. The vending ghosts see me and call for me, the only living person, to try their wares.

“Ning! Come here! Fresh sweet osmanthus cakes, still hot!”

“Sugar-roasted chestnuts! Sweet smelling and sweeter tasting!”

“Fried dough, the best fried dough!”

“Long pig dumplings! Two long pig dumplings for one coin!”

“Ning, come eat a candy man. Fun to play and fun to eat!”

Of course the “long pig dumplings” are really just pork dumplings. The vendor says that just to attract the tourists and give them a thrill.

But I look around, and there are no tourists.

I eat everything I can get my hands on. Finally I’m so full that I have to sit down by the side of the road to rest a bit. On the opposite side of the street is a temporary stage lit by a huge bright white paper lantern. Onstage, ghosts are performing: sword-swallowing, fire-breathing, turning a beautiful girl into a skeleton. I’m bored by these tricks. The really good show is still to come.

A yellow-skinned old ghost pushes a cart of masks in front of me.

“Ning, why don’t you pick a mask? I have everything: Ox-Head, Horse-Face, Black-Faced and White-Faced Wuchang, Asura, Yaksha, Rakshasa, Pixiu, and even Lei Gong, the Duke of Thunder.”

I spend a long time browsing, and finally settle on a Rakshasa mask with red hair and green eyes. The yellow-skinned old ghost thanks me as he takes my coin, dipping his head down until his back is bent like a bow.

I put the mask on and continue strutting down the street. Suddenly loud Carnival music fills the air, and all the ghosts stop and then shuffle to the sides of the street.

I turn around and see the parade coming down the middle of the street. In front are twenty one-foot-tall green toads in two columns striking gongs, thumping drums, strumming huqin, and blowing bamboo sheng. After them come twenty centipede spirits in black clothes, each holding varicolored lanterns and dancing complicated steps. Behind them are twenty snake spirits in yellow dresses, throwing confetti into the air. And there are more behind them, but I can’t see that far.