Just as I was beginning to grasp exactly what was wrong with this skeleton, Grandpa interrupted my thoughts with a question.

“Tell me, my boy,” he said, “what do you think this person’s life was like before death, and what was the cause of death? Was this person a male or female? If female, did she bore any children? And how old was this person at the time of death? Did they have any illnesses? Tell me everything you know.”

“Is this a test, Grandpa?” I asked.

“You can put it that way,” answered Grandpa plainly, blowing a puff of smoke.

What a strange method of testing, I thought. Did he have to wake me up late at night and drag me here to this old graveyard just to test me? I couldn’t think of any other grandfather in this world who would do such a thing!

“Hurry up,” said Grandpa, tapping his foot with impatience. “This place has a lot of yin energy. If we stay here too long my bones will get chilled.”

I calmed myself down and focused my attention on the bones. Once in a while, some mysterious sounds would come out from the woods, and I could feel how heavy and oppressive the yin energy in this place was. Either way, I really had a hard time! However, my nerves slowly calmed down, and all of these distractions in the surrounding environment were gradually pushed to the back of my mind.

The bones I had just connected into a body had a height from head to toe of about 180 centimeters, which meant that the person used to be tall. Yet their thigh bones were small, which made that scientifically impossible. The proportion between the length of the foot to the height would always be about one to seven in human beings. So the taller the person was, the bigger their feet. A notable exception, of course, was the case of foot-binding practiced by Chinese women in the past.

I temporarily pushed the fact to the back of my mind and started to analyze the person’s sex. From the size of the joints, this was definitely a male, but when I turned my attention to the diastolic pelvis bone, it was obvious that there were scars left by childbirth!

I lifted up the skull to determine the age at the time of death. Judging from the degree of wear on the teeth, this should be an adult in their thirties. But when I lifted up the thigh bone, it was so noticeably light — a sign of calcium loss due to old age. In fact, because of the bending, it was obvious that the person had experienced a hard life and did a lot of physical labor, which must’ve put a lot of pressure on his thigh bones. These characteristics matched that of a body belonging to a very old person, so how could that be?

What’s even more puzzling was that the joints of the arms were coarse and big, characteristic of the joints of the legs — did it mean that this person used to walk on four legs then?

This skeleton, from head to toe, just made no sense at all. The more I analyzed it, the less I was sure of what to make out of it. But I suddenly realized that it must have been Grandpa’s intention all along! It was just like him to test me with something completely out of the ordinary! Knowing that, I finally had an answer in my mind!

I had been squatting for a long time, so when I finally got back up on my feet, I felt a little dizzy and I couldn’t see anything for a moment. My feet went numb. They felt as heavy as boulders. Grandpa tossed his cigarette butt onto the ground. I checked the time and realized that I had been at it for half an hour.

“How is it then, my boy?” asked Grandpa.

“This person was about thirty years old at the time of death,” I answered. “This body was both male and female, and lived in a harsh environment all its life. It walked on four legs, and ate crude food. It even gave birth to seven or eight children. The cause of death is both drowning and decapitation.”

“Is that your final conclusion?” asked Grandpa, cackling.

“Yes,” I answered, “because this isn’t a body of one person!”

“Oh, is that so?” Grandpa was intrigued. “Then tell me why it couldn’t be just one person.”

Apart from the skull, there was not a part of this skeleton that was human. Everything was all ‘borrowed’ from some animals. The legs were from a goat, the arms were from a pig, while the pelvis was from another sow. The bones that formed the hands and feet were made up of conjoined bone fragments, probably from cats and dogs.

As for the cause of death, judging from the fracture on the neck bone, this person was decapitated with a sharp weapon.

As I was explaining, Grandpa nodded along silently with a content smile on his face.

“You’re a worthy student, my boy,” he said. “There is an old saying — better not teach someone at all than to teach them to follow the books blindly. If you couldn’t even differentiate animal bones from human bones, then it’s pointless for me to teach you anything about being a Traditional Coroner. Excellent, now the Song family will have a worthy successor!”

“But, Grandpa… What happened to this body?”

Grandpa inhaled his cigarette and began to relate the history of this corpse in detail.

It all began thirty years ago.

At the time, in a village near the provincial town, there was a villager called Huang San. He was a good-for-nothing loafer who couldn’t do anything except drinking, gambling, and fooling around with women. Before he even reached twenty years of age, he’d already worried his mother so bad that she died.

No one would marry the bastard, of course. Apart from that, he’d always be running around begging to borrow some money from the villagers, but they knew the money was as good as burnt if they gave it to Huang San so they just ignored him. Huang San couldn’t find any work within the village, so he had to move elsewhere. He finally found work at a restaurant, but after only working for two days he immediately used the little money he earned to gamble.

Then he owed the gambling house 5000 yuan and fled, and the mafia came to the village asking for the money, but that amount of money was no measly sum at all. It was enough to cover a few households, so Huang San’s friends and family all pretended they never knew anyone with that name.

A few days later, someone found a black plastic bag beside the road to the hills, and inside was the bloody head of a man! It was reported to the police immediately and they took photos of the severed head and posted a notice in the newspapers to let anyone who knew this face to come up and give more information. One of Huang San’s distant relatives saw it on the newspaper and recognized him, but he thought that Huang San only had himself to blame and got what he deserved, plus the villagers all agreed that it would be safer not to report anything, for fear of any trouble from the mafia. Therefore, no one provided any further information to the police other than the identification and Huang San’s murder was archived as an unsolved cold case.

Huang San’s head was sent back to the village. Everyone felt that he was a pitiable man who led a sorry life and died so soon and so horribly. He didn’t even have his whole body intact — and the villagers were worried that this might cause his ghost to haunt the village!

Someone found out that Huang San’s mother was a Teochew person, so they formed a ‘surrogate body’ for him by patching up body parts from different farm animals and gave him a proper funeral according to the Teochew tradition, in the hope that he could find peace after death.

As Grandpa finished the story, he told me to place the bones back into the grave and bury them just as I found them before. After I was done with that, he took out a stack of joss paper[1] from his jacket and struck a match to burn them.

“Forgive me, Huang San,” said Grandpa. “I had to trouble you again. I know you died a gruesome death and you had no children to give you any offerings in your afterlife, so please receive this meagre offering for now. On your death anniversary next year, I’ll make sure to invite monks and Daoist priests to perform ceremonies for you so your soul can ascend to a higher place.”

Just as Grandpa finished his sentence, a sudden cold gust of wind blew the flame that was consuming the joss paper. I thought I heard a faint sobbing sound, and just like the ashes of the burnt joss paper, it was carried by the wind up into the sky.

I was so shocked and afraid that I didn’t know how to react. Grandpa pressed on my head to make me bow and ordered me to apologize to the dead person.

When I finally got up to my feet, the eerie, chilly wind was gone.

“A-Are g-g-ghosts real, Grandpa?” I asked, not exactly in my most courageous moment.

“They are if you believe them to be,” answered Grandpa vaguely. “Always remember this, my boy — examining a corpse the way coroners do is an affront to the dead person. Never take the task lightly and never forget to pay your respects!”

“Yes, Grandpa,” I nodded.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that Grandpa’s words just now implied that he would allow me to become a coroner and work with the police now!

“Grandpa,” I said, “since I passed your test, does that mean that I can catch criminals with Uncle Sun now?”

“Never!” answered Grandpa. “This is a strict rule of the Song family! All members of the family must obey it!”

1. Sheets of paper that are burned in traditional Chinese deity or ancestor worship ceremonies, also known as ghost money.