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Hok-Pang Tang. A Time of Ghosts
CHAPTER ONE. THE HOUSE OF SORROWS
CHAPTER TWO. THE WORLD OF DUST
CHAPTER THREE. LEARNING
CHAPTER FOUR. THE GARDEN WITHERS
CHAPTER FIVE. THE LIGHT THAT IS DARKNESS
CHAPTER SIX. THE DARK MESSENGER
CHAPTER SEVEN. THE WAY OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN
CHAPTER EIGHT. THE REPOSE OF THE WHITE FLAMINGO
CHAPTER NINE. A LOOK OUTSIDE
CHAPTER TEN. ET IN ARCADIA EGO
CHAPTER ELEVEN. REGRETS AND MISGIVINGS
CHAPTER TWELVE. THE BLACK STRANGER
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. THE TREE IS FELLED
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. AMID THE YELLOW HILLS
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. FIRE WATCH
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. PEOPLE OF THE SAME FORTUNE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. A MADMAN SHOWS THE WAY
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. RIVER WORLD
CHAPTER NINETEEN. BREAKING INVISIBLE THREADS
CHAPTER TWENTY. UNCLE MING
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. SHANGHAI
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. AN ATTEMPTED ESCAPE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. THE HEROINE OF THE TORN BLOUSE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. PLANS
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. A VISIT IN PRISON
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. SOUTH FOR NORTH
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. THE EMPTY HOUSE
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. A TEMPORARY HAVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. UNCERTAIN ACCOMMODATIONS
CHAPTER THIRTY. TO THE FAR NORTH
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. A WOUNDED SOLDIER
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO. THE BLACK DRAGON RIVER
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. TREASURE JADE STRIKES BACK
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR. A BOAT AND A WITCH
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE. ANOTHER ATTEMPT
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX. THE MIST-WREATHED MOUNTAINS
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN. MEETING AND PARTING
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT. THE ROAD TO LHASA
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE. TENDER HANDS
CHAPTER FORTY. IN SEARCH OF A LAMA
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE. THE RUINED TEMPLE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO. INTERLUDE AMONG THE KHAMPAS
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE. ZHANGMU
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR. AN END AND A BEGINNING
POSTSCRIPT
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I was born in the doorway between two worlds. The old China – the China of emperors and mandarins, of bound feet and marvels – had long been dying but was not yet dead. The new China – its coming anticipated with both hope and fear – was not yet born. It happened in the great house of many rooms that the Emperor himself had given my grandfather many years before – a place where only the faintest of curtains separated the living and the dead.
My first memory is of ghosts. I was three or four years old. Near sunset on a spring day I went alone into my parents’ bedroom to use the chamber pot. As I sat there, a sudden chill filled the air, and I was seized by a mingled sensation of emptiness and loneliness. At the same time I felt someone watching me from behind, though my back was to the wall. I turned my head to the right and looked over my shoulder at the surface of whitewashed brick. Out of the flat wall popped two figures in the flowing garments of a hundred years before. They passed behind me, floating half-in, half-out of the wall, in total silence. I jerked my head to the left as they reached that side. Yes, there were two of them. They were facing the wall now, and the one nearest reached back and out toward me, gesturing and grasping like a woman urging a hesitant child to take her hand and follow. I screamed in horror and ran from the room shrieking and weeping.
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Now what is one to make of all this? I can only say that it did happen. I witnessed it, as did the others in the family. We can be modern and scientific and say that the ritual was performed for its psychological effect on us all. One may believe what one likes. But the fact is that from the night of the uncanny storm, all the strange sounds and apparitions within the house ceased, and one could feel that its unhealthy atmosphere had passed away. The living were now the only residents in the old mansion.
There is much more that one could say of the remarkable Ch’ing Yu Chou. I have called him the Herb Doctor for simplicity’s sake, though that was but one of his many skills. He was adept at calligraphy, music, poetry, and was in particular a great scholar of the I Ching, the Book of Changes, in which all that can happen in this world is set forth in the symbolic forms of trigrams and hexagrams. One who learns their transformations and mutations can accurately predict the future, though to do this is far more difficult than Western books on the subject would lead one to believe.
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