Jian’s 告别

My mother and I lived in a tiny metal cage. In Hong Kong’s affordable housing units, bedrooms were split into 4—basically a bed and not much else. Unfortunately, the “coffin cubicle” over us, and I’m not joking when I say this, had a ghost. An annoying, annoying, annoying—and I cannot stress it enough—annoying ghost.

Jian had been a Shanghai merchant that had moved to the Sham Shui Po district after being thrown out of his home for slitting his Chow Chow’s throat. Following a decade of poverty, the man drank a bottle of cyanide made in a toilet and croaked. Now, I know what everyone’s going to think: “Oh my God, this ghost must be insane; a real dangerous fucking spirit.” You would be completely wrong. This, my friends, is the most infuriating and irritating thing on planet Earth.
From rattling the cage all night to stealing (and locking) people’s belongings in his “room,” there was no shortage of aggravating antics that Jian could come up with. The ghost was just fucking bored. He was annoyed at his circumstances and provoking all of us to feel the joy he never could during his life—he was trapped and looking for a way out. Fortunately for him, we wanted to help him reach his “heaven.”

***

Everyone in the “main room” had pitched in to pay Samson, the Taoist priest’s, transportation. The old scrawny pastor had walked in and immediately commented on the smell of shit wafting out through the crisscrossing wire of Jian’s cage. I forgot to mention that; it constantly smells like manure in here.

With the blinds drawn, Samson sat down and drifted into the “celestial world,” where he asked the spirit deity to come and drive Jian out. In the end, it seemed Jian’s cowardice showed right through the ritual—Samson told us that when the Thunder generals came down, he surrendered immediately. What more do you expect from a man that slit a tiny dog’s throat?

***

It’s been a couple months since the exorcism. No smell of shit, metal clanging, stolen possessions. I hope that wherever Jian is, he’s happy. For his sake, I hope there’s no Chow Chows.