YEYE’S GIRL BY OHNE RE [AN EXCERPT FROM ZHIGUAI: CHINESE TRUE TALES OF THE PARANORMAL AND GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX]; TRANSLATED BY YI IZZY YU AND JOHN YU BRANSCUM

12/8/2021

[CONTENT WARNING: ALCOHOLISM, SUICIDE]

Yeye’s Girl by Ohne Re [An Excerpt from Zhiguai: Chinese True Tales of the Paranormal and Glitches in the Matrix];
Translated by Yi Izzy Yu and John Yu Branscum

In China, many people believe that the dead visit their loved ones, especially shortly after death. Sometimes when they do, they hurt the living. They don’t mean to. But dying is a big shock, and the minds of new ghosts are often cloudy and damaged. Even those new ghosts who retain their wits can accidentally hurt you.
In my family, for example, the ghost of my yeye [grandfather] would sometimes visit us. We could always tell who he had come to see because that person would get violently nauseous, and their stomach would hurt in a very particular way. This, my grandmother said, was a result of ghosts being made mostly of yin energy, while human beings were made mostly of yang energy.

Whenever we would suspect my grandfather might be visiting, we would do “the chopstick test” to make sure. This is where you stand three chopsticks up in a bowl of water, while calling out the name of a spirit that you suspect is in the room. If they are in the room, after you remove your hands from the chopsticks, they will remain standing. I saw this happen several times. It was very unsettling. The following story is even more so. —YIY

When I was three and a half, my yeye drank pesticide and killed himself. To understand why, you first have to know this: from the day I was born, Yeye loved me dearly. He fell in love with me, he said, as soon as he saw my tiny face. And on that very day, he asked my parents to move in so that he could watch me while they worked.

In China, it is common for one grandparent or another, or even an aunt or an uncle, to move in with new parents to help look after children. But my grandfather had a characteristic that worried my parents. He was addicted to liquor and drank it every day. A lot of it. Because of this, my father denied Yeye’s request.

Yeye’s feelings were hurt but not enough to quit drinking. Not at first. After all, my dad still let me stay with him and my grandmother during the Lunar New Year and Autumn Festival holidays. So for a while, he was able to have liquor and me both.

However, my parents eventually started to worry about this unsupervised time too. And my dad picked me up from these visits earlier and earlier.

When Yeye noticed that our time together was dwindling, he devised a strategy to avoid my father. As soon as he saw my father’s car, he would hoist me on his back and race up the mountainside behind his house to hide and play until my dad gave up looking for us.

But Yeye knew his trick would not last forever. After all, my dad could just refuse to drop me off. So finally Yeye did it. He went to my parents and solemnly promised not to drink liquor anymore.

At first, my parents didn’t believe him. But when he didn’t touch a drop for several weeks, they talked. Afterwards, my father called Yeye and told him that he could move in for a year and watch over me. And he could begin this new role on his birthday. That would be their present to him.

Yeye’s eyes filled with tears at the news. He was so full of excitement that it was very hard for him to wait until his birthday. Nevertheless, he managed to be patient until the day arrived.

But then the whole plan fell apart.

It happened like this:

My third uncle, who ran a bus business, was supposed to drive the couple of hours to my yeye’s village and then get him to our apartment in time for Yeye’s birthday celebration and first night as my caretaker.

That was the plan.

But my uncle started in a game of cards with friends early that morning and got lost in that. By the time he remembered Yeye, it was too late.

Today, of course, everyone would be constantly calling everybody else to check on everything.

But this all happened before there were cell phones. True, we were one of the few families with a landline. But we could only afford one. And my dad kept it in his office, which was located in another apartment in our building.

That’s why when it started getting so late that something was obviously wrong, my dad decided to walk to my uncle’s. He thought that maybe my uncle had misunderstood the plan and driven Yeye to his place to wait on us. Just before my dad got out of the building, the phone in his office began ringing—over and over—and would not stop. When he answered it, he heard my grandmother’s voice.

“Your father’s gone,” she said.

* * *
My yeye waited for my uncle a long time.

He waited until he became convinced that no one was coming and that my dad had changed his mind.

Sad to lose my dad’s trust again, and his chance to be with me, Yeye drank a glass of alcohol. Then another—all the while crying his heart out.

When the alcohol didn’t dull the pain, he drank a bottle of pesticide.

My grandmother watched him drink the pesticide—but she thought he was just drinking more alcohol. Even when she went out a little later to go shopping and came across him completely still on a sofa, she just thought he had fallen asleep. But then she came back home and tried to shake him awake.

* * *

The first seven days after Yeye died were filled with funeral preparations. My mom had to use up all her sick days from work to get everything done. My dad was very busy with the preparations too. So neither of them had time to look after me. That’s why on one of these days, they sent me to a daycare.

I seemed okay when my father dropped me off that morning. But when he came to pick me up later, he couldn’t wake me. Not completely. I’d mumble and stir but immediately drowse off again.

Worried, he asked the daycare attendant how long I had been sleeping.

“Most of the afternoon,” she said. “She was asleep during snack time and also when her grandfather visited.”

The attendant told my father that she was so concerned by my deep sleeping that she asked the daycare nurse to take a look at me. The nurse said that I was probably just catching a cold, and my body was fighting it.

The attendant’s words didn’t make my father feel better. Not only did he still find my deep sleeping strange, but the comment about my grandfather visiting unsettled him. Since his father was now dead, this grandfather had to be my mother’s dad. But neither my dad nor my mom had mentioned to anyone that they were going to drop me off at the daycare. So how did my mom’s father know I was there? And why had he even visited?

Confused, my dad asked the attendant what my grandfather looked like.

She gave him a long careful description that included the wearing of a unique black fedora.

My dad was so shocked he couldn’t breathe. She had described his dead father, my yeye, perfectly.

My dad rushed me home, and he and my mom tried everything to wake me.

Pushing pressure points.

Slapping my feet.

Pricking my middle fingertips with an acupuncture needle.

Nothing worked.

Suspecting my problem was related to the daycare visit by my yeye’s ghost, he and my mother carried me to a psychic.

The psychic confirmed their worst fears. “Yes,” she told them. “You’re correct. Your daughter’s problem is her grandfather. He’s attached himself to her. He loves her very much and doesn’t mean harm. Nevertheless, the attachment is draining your daughter’s strength.”

Frightened, my parents begged for the psychic’s help. She agreed but said that she couldn’t help until the next morning. That’s when the sun was powerful enough to give her the yang energy she needed to fight the ghost.

When morning came, the psychic set up a square table in our living room. She sat in front of it, meditating and chanting, while my father—per her directions—walked around our yard, holding a black umbrella and shouting my name. After they’d done a bit of this, the psychic took a chicken out of a wooden carrier, cut its head off, and used the bloody neck stump to paint magical symbols on a stack of yellow papers. These she pasted all over the walls. When she finished with the last one, I woke up.

The unhealthy bond between my yeye’s ghost and me was broken, the psychic explained. But I would still be vulnerable to ghostly influences for a long time. So the paper talismans should stay on our walls.

The talismans stayed up until I turned eight.

* * *

Some people question whether the psychic and her rituals really helped. Maybe I would have woken up anyway, they say.

Maybe.

But I’m convinced that they worked. This is because of what I remembered when I awoke.

After Yeye walked into the daycare that day, he led my spirit away from my sleeping body to a Western-style carnival. (It’s important to say here that all of this was very real and not like a dream. To this day, for example, I can still recall how things felt, tasted, and smelled at the carnival.)

The carnival surprised me. I had never seen it before in our town. And, at this time of my life, I had never even been to a carnival or encountered one on TV. This was 1993. Just like phones, televisions were still rare and so were Western-style carnivals.

Nevertheless, I had a really good time there.

I ate a big strawberry candy, rode on a Ferris wheel, then in a bumper car, and finally on a giant car-shaped ride that swung in the air.

But there was one bad thing. Or at least strange.

The weather.

Ever since Yeye and I left the daycare, the sky looked wrong. It was an odd, ashy gray—stained with purple. A very scary kind of color, as if a big storm was about to break.

It didn’t rain though. So we kept playing and eating delicious food.

But even carnival fun can last too long. And after what felt like two days passed, I was so exhausted that I could barely stand.

When I complained to Yeye, he hoisted me on his back and took a couple of steps forward.

Suddenly, we were no longer walking on the carnival grounds but on the mountain road next to his and my grandmother’s house. Trees lay to the sides of the road. Icicles hung from several. Yeye and I took turns snatching them off the branches and eating them like popsicles (people in the mountains did this all the time when I was a kid).

I had just about finished one of these tree-sicles when abruptly I found myself back at my parent’s place, fully awake, my opened eyes taking in my parents, the psychic, and the talismans all over our walls.

This is how I know the rituals really helped.

* * *

After I woke up that day, I rarely saw my yeye—just a dream every year or so. Three dreams were especially vivid. I think these might have been actual visits.

In one, Yeye was digging a hole in the ground—a deep one as tall as a person. When he looked up from his work and saw me, he handed me some candies.

“Why are you digging?” I asked him.

He told me the hole was part of a highway and that he was part of a work crew. He could have chosen other kinds of work, but the highway construction project was the closest to me. He intended to stay on it another twenty years. That way, he said, he could watch out for me.

The second dream occurred when I was grown up and just starting college in another city—far from where I and Yeye had once been so close.

In it, I was walking across a field when I suddenly came across Yeye sitting on a stone seat outside a yard with super high walls.

“What are you doing here outside the wall?” I said.

Yeye told me that someone had cut down the shade tree near his house and he was sitting under the wall to get some shade.

The next day I called my mom and told her about the dream. She said it was just a random dream and not to be so serious about it. But then a few days later, she called me back.

“Your dream meant something,” she said. It turned out that my fourth aunt’s husband had cut down the tree in front of Yeye’s grave.

The most recent dream happened in 2015. It was different from the others. While I could hear Yeye’s voice, I couldn’t see him. It was like we were standing in a large dark room.

“I have to leave you, little one,” he said. “It’s time for us to let each other go. You have to look out for yourself now. Don’t fight this. It is the right thing.”

I promised him I would do my best to let go. Since then I have not dreamed of him once.

My yeye really, truly, so deeply loved me. Even more than my dad. No matter his faults, he constantly showed me this.

If I wanted candy, he would buy a big box and then another big box.

If I wanted to eat watermelon, he would get one of those big, twenty-five-pound ones.

If I wanted clothes, he would buy me three outfits and let me switch from one to the other—all on the same day.

Sometimes, his generosity drove my dad crazy. He would yell at me for asking Yeye for so many things. At those times, Yeye would jokingly chase my dad out into the street and threaten to beat him with a stick for scolding me.

Once, a chicken that Yeye raised scratched me. The next thing I knew the chicken was cooked into a soup for me. He never raised any more chickens in his yard after that. My dad sometimes says that if Yeye were still alive, I would have turned out to be a spoiled, rotten girl. I’m not certain that is true.

Anyway, it’s approaching midnight now. I miss my yeye. That’s all I wanted to say.

Further Reading
[Book Review]
ZHIGUAI:CHINESE TRUE TALES OF THE PARANORMAL AND GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX TRANSLATED BY YI IZZY YU & JOHN YU BRANSCUM[Feature Article]
SOME OF OUR FAVORITE HORROR STORIES ARE NOT FICTION: THOUGHTS ON HORROR CREATIVE NONFICTION BY YI IZZY YU AND JOHN YU BRANSCUM

About Yi Izzy Yu

In 2011, Yi Izzy Yu left Northern China for the US, with nothing but $500 in her pocket and a love of Chinese horror and paranormal stories that she'd inherited from her grandmother. Since then, she has acquired a PhD in Applied Linguistics, taught Chinese and English in high schools and universities, DJ'ed a radio show on K-pop, and married John Yu Branscum. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Strange Horizons-Samovar, New England Review, Passages North, Dusie, and Cincinnati Review, been nominated for awards ranging from the Year's Best Microfiction to Sundress Publications' Best of the Net, and has placed as a finalist for the international [Gabriel García Márquez] "Gabo" Award for Translation and Multilingual Literature. Currently, she lives outside of Pittsburgh, where she teaches and translates Chinese and investigates shadows. She loves so many things.

About John Yu Branscum

Egregore, writer, and translator John Yu Branscum has published book-length work with Sarabande Books, Argus House Press, and Empress Wu Books. His short form work has appeared in journals ranging from New England Review and Apex Magazine to Passages North, Samovar, and Cincinnati Review. He is a past recipient of the Ursula Le Guin Award for Imaginative Literature, the Linda Bruckheimer Award for Literature, the Appalachia/Affrilachia Award for Poetry, and the Gabo Award for Translation and Multilingual Literature (as a finalist). He enjoys family rave night, durian fruit, lucid dream vacations, and roaming around his neighborhood in a werewolf costume during full moons. Currently, he is in the middle of a long-term performance art project that involves working as an English professor.

ZHIGUAI: CHINESE TRUE TALES OF THE PARANORMAL AND GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX: 1

In this collection, award-winning writers and translators Yi Izzy Yu and John Yu Branscum share paranormal and glitch in the matrix tales from across present-day China. Confided by eyewitnesses, these true stories uncannily echo Western encounters with chilling dimensions of reality and supernatural entities. At the same time, they thrillingly immerse the reader in everyday Chinese life and occult beliefs.

Zhiguai: Chinese True Tales of the Paranormal and Glitches in the Matrix includes such accounts as:
*The reincarnation of a teenager whose fate eerily mimics his predecessor’s
*A girl who dies in the womb but nevertheless continues to communicate with her twin
*Terrifying shifts into demonic parallel universes
*Walls desperately painted with blood to save a family from tragedy
*Huge populations that disappear into thin air
*The revenge-seeking ghosts of murdered cats
*Weird temporal shifts
*Occult murders
From the terrifying to the uncanny, this collection will not only change your understanding of China but of reality itself.