Author: County Reporter Lin Huaijin
I. Lights#
On the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month, the main street of Liuchi County lit up.
Newly painted vermilion lanterns hung along the street, their glow blending into translucent patterns like snake skins in the twilight. The girls at the cultural center said this was the "Tail-Biting Golden Scales Lantern" designed by a provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritor, but when I raised my camera, the lantern tassels suddenly swayed in the viewfinder—like thousands of thin snakes mating inside the glass cover. The moment I pressed the shutter, all the lanterns went dark, and a faint sound of scales scraping came from the end of the street.
"The voltage is unstable," said Director Wang from the publicity department, patting my shoulder, his glasses reflecting the dark green glow of the lanterns as they restarted. "Xiao Lin, remember to write in your report... this is an auspicious sign."
II. Family Feast#
On New Year's Eve, I was invited to stay up late at the home of folklorist Mr. Zhou.
The New Year's dishes on the round table were exquisite: a white porcelain plate held "Golden Snake Coiling Pillar" eight-treasure rice, with goji berries dotting the snake eyes, and amber honey seeping through the gaps in the glutinous rice; the cold dish "Spirit Snake Brings Good Fortune" was actually a translucent snake-shaped jelly meat, embedded with twelve green plums at the spine. Mr. Zhou said this was restored according to ancient methods from the "Nanning Seasonal Records."
"Before you move your chopsticks, you must first feed the snake," he said with a smile, placing the jelly meat outside the door, where the bluestone steps were instantly covered in fragrant ash. When Mrs. Zhou brought over the tea cups, I caught a glimpse of her wrist bone protruding like a snake's head, and the red string tied at her cuff held not lucky money, but a faded television station badge inscribed with "1985 Advanced Worker."
III. Night Play#
As the hour approached, Mr. Zhou turned on the old Panda-brand television.
The screen flickered with snowy noise, and the county's Spring Festival Gala program "Golden Snake Dance" was being replayed. Twelve dancers wearing masks waved red silk, the ends of the satin sticking to a pinkish-white flesh membrane, resembling newly shed snake skin. "This is a film we shot in the 1980s," Mr. Zhou pointed to a blurry shadow at the edge of the screen, "Before the prop master Lao Liu went missing, he kept muttering that the snake-bone lady wanted to borrow his scissors to make new clothes..."
Suddenly, the background noise mixed with a rustling sound, like a snake's tongue sweeping across the microphone. When the number of dancers became thirteen, Mrs. Zhou softly hummed a nursery rhyme: "Little snake coils the bowl, grandma adds rice, those who turn around don't eat, and those with eyes open don't look..."
IV. Morning Light#
On the first day of the New Year, I was awakened by the sound of firecrackers.
The door frame of Mr. Zhou's house was adorned with blue and gold spring couplets, which were clearly red paper last night. The upper couplet read "Candlelight Illuminates the Spirit, Warming a Thousand Scales," and the lower couplet "Incense Wraps the Dream Bed, Shedding a New Skin," with the horizontal inscription "Shedding the Old to Welcome the Auspicious." The breakfast shop at the end of the alley was steaming, and the dough snakes in the oil pot sizzled and expanded, revealing unburned yellow talisman paper in the filling.
"Good morning, Reporter Lin!" Xiao Zhang from the cultural center whizzed by on his bike, his basket piled high with "Spring Festival Folk Safety Manual," the back cover printed with a warm reminder:
If you find newly added names in the family tree with wet ink, please do not wipe them, immediately coat that page with realgar wine, and call the Sanxianjiao Cultural Protection Hotline.
V. Echoes#
Before submitting my article, I checked the lantern photos in my camera again.
All the lanterns appeared normal cylindrical in the lens, except for the last one—its extinguished lampshade was covered with a layer of moist sticky film, and the streetlight stretched my shadow into a winding shape. My phone suddenly vibrated; Mr. Zhou sent an old yellowed photo: a group photo from the county television station in 1985, and standing on the shoulder of prop master Lao Liu in the back row was a woman with long hair covering her face, her drooping right hand wrapped with the same red string as the one on my wrist.
(This article was published in the February 2025 issue of "Liuchi Cultural Newspaper," and won the Special Prize for the "New Folk Documentary Literature Award.")
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