Yin Yang Diviner

I heard the news about Lao Liu buying a house on Wednesday afternoon.

He didn't say it himself—his mother called him while he was having tea at my place. The phone was on the other end of the coffee table, and the sound leaked out like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Aunt Zhou's voice on the other end of the phone was shrill and bright, each word sounding like it had just been pulled from a frying pan: "Has your old house been rented out yet? If not, hurry up! I found one for you in that new development in the east of the city, a three-bedroom, two-living room apartment, with good ventilation. Your dad and I have scraped together the down payment, so you can go sign the contract tomorrow!"

Old Liu held the phone a little further away, waiting until the sound on the other end had cooled down to a lukewarm temperature before bringing it back to his ear.

"Mom, my old house isn't haunted—" He glanced at me, swallowing the words "haunted house," "but something happened there, so it's not that easy to rent out."

"What's there to be afraid of after what happened! Didn't you say Grandpa Qin's grandson cleaned it up for you? A clean house is a good house! Listen to your mother, rent out the old house, buy a new one, and you can manage both. What are you going to do living alone in a three-bedroom, two-living-room house? Get married!"

Old Liu's ears turned red at a visible speed. He stammered as he hung up the phone, picked up his teacup and took a big gulp, grimacing from the burn.

"That's just how my mom is," he put down his teacup and wiped the tea stains from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Everything she talks about is 'hurry up.' The year I graduated from university, she said 'hurry up and take the civil service exam.' When I passed the exam, she said 'hurry up and buy a house.' When I bought a house, she said 'hurry up and get married.' In her eyes, my life is like a candied hawthorn skewer. She's in charge of sticking the fruit onto the skewer, and I'm in charge of swallowing it."

"So, has your old house been rented out yet?"

"No. It's been listed with real estate agencies for two months now, and quite a few people have come to look at it, but as soon as they hear it's—" He glanced at me again, "as soon as they hear it's that particular place, none of them rent it anymore."

"Then why are you even using a real estate agency?"

"Let's wait and see. Let's wait for someone who doesn't believe in superstition."

Those who didn't believe in superstitions arrived on Thursday.

When Lao Liu called, his voice was filled with the excitement of "I've finally waited for you," like he had found a bargain at an antique market.

The couple who came to rent the house were from out of town, both in their early forties. The man, surnamed Wei, operated a tower crane at a construction site in the east of the city, while the woman did not work and had a seven or eight-year-old daughter with her.

Master Wei's face was tanned a dark brown by the sun, and his hands were as rough as two pieces of old ginger, sharp and uncomfortable to hold. He stood in the living room of Old Liu's house, where the fresh latex paint on the four walls still smelled of paint. The potted green ivy on the windowsill was the one I had placed there last time, and its vines had already drooped to the floor.

The bedroom door was open. On the wall above the bed, there was a crack that Second Grandfather had split open with the Five Thunder Talisman. Old Liu hadn't patched it up—not because he forgot, but because he left it on purpose.

He said he kept it to remind himself that the room had come alive.

"Did someone really die in this house?" Master Wei stood in front of the crack, his hands behind his back, his voice low.

"I've never died. A family of three used to live there. The woman was suicidal, but she was rescued." Old Liu stood next to him, the copper coins and ink marker in his pocket pressed against his stomach through his clothes. "Later, another woman was trapped inside the wall, and she was rescued too."

Master Wei didn't say anything. He turned around, walked to the window, and opened it.

A breeze blew in, and the pothos vines swayed on the windowsill, a leaf twirling as it fell to the floor. He stared at that leaf for a while.

"My daughter keeps saying at night that someone is watching her outside the window." His voice came from the window, thinned by the wind. "The window of the rented bungalow faces an old locust tree. She says there's someone squatting in the tree, there as soon as it gets dark. I climbed up and looked, but there was nothing there. She doesn't lie, my daughter never lies."

Old Liu took out the seven copper coins from his pocket, strung together with a hemp rope, the ruyi knot swaying gently.

"Master Wei, I've cleaned this house. The things inside the walls have been removed, and no one will be squatting outside the windows. Your daughter will be able to sleep soundly at night if she lives here."

Master Wei turned around and looked at the string of copper coins in Old Liu's hand.

His gaze shifted from Shunzhi to Kangxi, and from Kangxi to Yongzheng, examining each one like counting the steel bars beneath a crane.

"I don't understand any of this." He looked away from the copper coins and into Old Liu's eyes. "But you're an honest man. If there's something in the wall, just say so. I believe the copper coins in the hands of an honest person."

Old Liu put the copper coin back into his pocket. A section of hemp rope peeked out from the pocket, dark and grimy, like a small piece of hanging rope taken from the stove.

On Friday, Mr. Wei and his family moved in. Old Liu helped them carry their luggage, making trips up and down the stairs.

Master Wei's wife's surname is Chen, she is Sister Chen, she is not tall, and there are two red spots on her face that have been blown by the wind.

Her daughter's name is Wei Xiaoman. She has two pigtails and is holding a cloth rabbit in her hands. The rabbit's ears are wrinkled from being squeezed by her.

Xiaoman stood at the bedroom door, staring at the crack on the wall above her bed for a long time.

"Uncle, who used to live in this crevice?" She turned around, her pigtails swinging.

Old Liu squatted down to look her in the eye. "There lived a few very, very small people. They had nowhere to go, so they lived inside the walls. Later, someone took them away, took them to the riverbank, and they went downstream."

"Will you give it back?"

"I'm not coming back. There are reeds and pebbles by the river; it's better than inside the walls."

Xiaoman pulled the cloth rabbit's ears closer to her chest. "That's good. It's too dark inside the walls."

In the evening, Old Liu rode his bicycle, which was out of gas, to Liuhe Town.

The bicycle chain creaked and groaned all the way, like a tireless cicada.

When he entered, his second grandfather was sitting at the stone table opening a letter.

The letter was covered with rough-edged paper, and on it was written in calligraphy: "To Qin Banshan of Liuhe Town." The characters were thin and firm, and the finishing stroke of each character carried an uncompromising decisiveness.

It is Zhang Huaijing's calligraphy.

Second Grandfather pulled out the letter. The letter paper was also rough-edged, folded into thirds, and when unfolded, it was only the size of a palm. There was no salutation, no signature, only one line written on it—

"I want that young man who wrote the word 'wait'."

Second Grandfather placed the letter on the stone table, picked up his teacup, and took a sip.

The tea flowed down the thick rim of his cup and into his mouth. He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Zhang Huaijing never speaks when accepting disciples."

His master, Mr. Su, accepted him without saying a word.

He would write a letter to whoever he fancied, and the letter would only contain one sentence.

The person who receives the letter should show it to the person they've chosen. Whether or not to go after reading it is their decision.

He pushed the letter in front of me.

The writing on the rough-edged paper shone faintly in the twilight, the ink seeping into the paper's texture like old tree roots sinking into the soil.

"That young man who wrote the word 'wait'"—that was me.

I wrote three words for him.

The first character, "镜", has the radical for metal (金) with a pause, and the bottom part of "竟" (竟) with a pressure.

The second "mirror" has passed, with both falling and pressing.

The third character, "等" (děng), has the bamboo radical (竹) and the temple radical (寺). He only kept "等".

"What should I learn from him after I go there?"

"Learning character divination. It's not him who teaches you, it's the character that teaches you. You write the character out, he reads it for you, and tells you what he sees. If you understand, you've learned it. If you don't understand, just write it again."

Old Liu squatted nearby, copper coins dangling from his pocket, the hemp rope swinging back and forth. "And Grandpa Qin, you've always studied character divination with Zhang the Fortune Teller, what about the Yin-Yang lineage?"

Second Grandfather put down his teacup. "Yin and Yang are the roots, and character divination is the leaves. The deeper the roots, the stronger the leaves will grow. The character divination of Mr. Su's lineage is not fortune telling, but observing people. To observe a person, one must observe their characters to know their heart."

"In the future, when you settle disputes for others, you will not only need to know how to suppress, guide, cut, and define boundaries, but also how to observe. Observe a person's handwriting, observe their aura, and observe what is hidden in their heart. This is what character divination teaches you."

He stood up from the stone bench and went inside.

After a while, he brought out a cloth bundle. It wasn't a camphor wood box, but a dark blue coarse cloth bundle with ruyi knots tied at the four corners. He placed the bundle on the stone table and opened it.

Inside was a small calligraphy brush, a stone inkstone, a stack of rough-edged paper, and half a block of old ink.

The inkstone has two characters printed on its side: "Relaxation".

"This set of things was left by your great-grandfather. He learned character divination from Mr. Su's master—the same Mr. Su who wrote the character 'Tao' on the city wall."

Mr. Su left after a short period of study.

My great-grandfather put this set of writing brushes and ink away, saying that if anyone in the Qin family were to learn character divination in the future, they would use this set. He handed me the brush.

The penholder was made of bamboo, polished smooth and shiny by hand, with a small red string tied to the end. The color had faded to a very faint shade, somewhere between pink and white—exactly the same as the red string at the end of the pen that Mr. Su left for Zhang Huaijing.

"Mr. Su had two students back then. One was your great-grandfather, and the other was Zhang Huaijing's master. Your great-grandfather studied Yin and Yang, and Zhang Huaijing's master studied character divination. Mr. Su cut the red string on a pen in two, tied one piece to your great-grandfather's pen, and the other piece to Zhang Huaijing's master's pen."

Second Grandfather put the pen back into his bundle.

"Two pieces of red string, separated for over seventy years, are now both in your hands. You've seen the red string on Zhang Huaijing's pen. This one on the pen was left to you by your great-grandfather," he said.

I tied the bundle up and slung it over my shoulder.

The dark blue coarse cloth was pressed against his chest, inside which were his great-grandfather's writing brush and ink and a red rope cut in two by Mr. Su.

The next morning, I took the first bus into the city.

The street behind the City God Temple was just waking up. The stall selling walnut bracelets was being set up, and the owner of the old books and newspapers was squatting on the doorstep brushing his teeth.

At the end of the street, the side gate of the City God Temple was open, and the scent of incense wafted out, mingling with the morning mist. Zhang the fortune teller's square table was set up in its usual spot, with an enamel teacup on the corner and a small calligraphy brush resting on the stone inkstone.

He wasn't there; the canvas bag was hanging on the back of the chair, its opening open.

I sat down across the square table and placed the dark blue bundle on the corner of the table.

Footsteps came from the other side of the wall.

Zhang the fortune teller walked out from the depths of the alley, carrying a bowl of soy milk in his hand and a fried dough stick tucked under his arm.

He paused for a moment when he saw the dark blue bundle on the table.

Then he came over, put the soy milk on the corner of the table, broke the fried dough stick in two, handed me one piece, and dipped the other piece into the soy milk himself.

We sat facing each other and finished our fried dough sticks.

He wiped the oil off his fingers on his blue cloth jacket and reached out to untie the bundle.

Small regular script brush, stone inkstone, rough-edged paper, pine-core ink.

Take them out one by one and place them on the table.

Finally, I picked up the pen and stared at the red string at the end, which had faded to a pinkish-white color, for a long time.

"Your great-grandfather's pen." He placed the pen back on the stone inkstone. "After he passed away, I thought no one would use this pen again."

The bells of the City God Temple rang out from inside, deep and resonant, striking the mist with each chime.

"What are you writing about today?" I asked.

Zhang the fortune teller spread out the rough-edged paper; the ink ground in the stone inkstone was already half-dry.

He stirred the ink in the inkwell with the tip of his brush, smoothed it out, and handed it to me. "No writing today."

He held the pen above the paper, his wrist motionless.

"Today, learn to see."