Dead Man Returns from
His Grave
16
Aril 2007
30-year old Chinese man Tang
Jiangshan (唐江山) has been seen as a
legend for past twenty-four years in some
part of Hainan Province (海南省), the second largest
island of China in the southern tip of the
country, but it is until quite recently his
legendary story becomes widely known in other
parts of China. The reason for him becoming a
legend is not due to the way in which he
lives but the fashion in which he died. We
say he died, because he is alive now
– he died long before he was born.
When he was about 3, that is
year 1979, just 3 years out of the ten-year
Cultural Revolution chaos, he started to show
sign of his linguistic talent: he not only
spoke his mother tongue fluently but could
tell tales in another dialect that he had
never been exposed to.
Little Boy Tang
Jiangshan
But what set him miles apart
from any other child genius is the highly
creative nature of his tale that would make
any fantasy novelist or new age guru look
pale in comparison. “Back then in September
1967,” the three-year old would begin in a
reflective tone, referring to a time at the
fanatic height of the Revolution, 3x3 years
prior to the formation of his current being,
“I was village Youth League secretary and
militia leader, and my name was Chen Mingdao (陳明道) and my dad is called Dandie (三爹). One day we eight guys went
out to buy diesel fuel for village rice-mill
machine, we were ambushed by a gang from a
neighbouring village, and I was stabbed in
the back of my head and the left side of my
tummy, and hit in the back by a bullet. I
died.”
Nobody took his story
seriously even though he indeed bears a
distinctive mark in his belly ever since he
was born that resembles a scar from gunshot
wound. It’s just a birthmark with an
ugly-than-usual appearance, he was told. But
the little boy kept spinning his old yarn for
the next 3 years until he was 6. After
numerous failed attempts at persuading his
father to bring him to visit Sandie, he was
fed up. The self-claimed former militia
leader developed a new fighting strategy: he
began hunger strike. This self-harming
approach has helped many great men and women
in history to secure a victory in their
battle, and when little Tang gave it a try,
the success was equally dazzling. His daddy
gave in.
It was only a 160-kilometre
journey from their Mill-Not Village (不磨村 - think the irony in the name
of the village) in Gancheng Township (感城镇) of East City (东方市) to Sandie’s Yellow Jade
Village (黄玉村) in Dan County (儋县). The trip was at a brisk pace
and proceeded smoothly until they reached
North Gate River (北门江) near the Yellow
Jade. Tang junior suddenly seemed to be
gripped by terror and begged Tang senior to
find a boat to ferry them across the waterway
as fast as possible. “I was killed here,”
the little boy asserted.
When the father and the son
finally arrived at the village, they created
quite a spectacle. The boy went to call an
old man Sandie and told him he was his dead
son. That poor man was utterly unprepared for
a shock like this. His dead son returned,
bringing with him a man who is the dad of his
son – imagine! In Sandie’s memory Chen
Mingdao was a 20 year-old fully grown-up man,
tall and strong, now being face to face with
this mini replica, he was confused, very
confused. So the boy went on to identify the
bed he once slept and the items he once used
to convince the old man he was not an
impostor. Finally he found his memorial
tablet (牌位) in the family shrine and asked
Sandie to throw it away. “I’m no longer a
spirit, I’m a human
again,” he announced proudly.
Eventually Sandie cuddled the
son who returned form the grave, and cried.
And the son cried more. And the son’s dad
Tang senior also cried. When the villages
heard two men and a boy cry, they went to
investigate, and all cried.
While crying, the little boy
spotted among the crowd a thirty-some woman
and said she was his girlfriend in his past
life. The woman indeed was, but now she had
grown old enough to be his mother, so she
kept nodding and kept weeping. What an
extraordinary reunion, all thought to
themselves and all said to one another, so
everyone cried a bit louder and longer.
Chen
Mingdao's girlfriend and Tang Jiangshan
Ever since the sudden death of
his only son, Sandie also lost his grieving
wife and was reduced to a lonely figure
surviving on the charity of the villagers.
But from that day on, his life changed. Tang
returned to visit him frequently, sometimes
with the rest of the Tang family, sometimes
on his own, later, sometimes with his wife
and, still later, sometimes with his kids.
Together, with the help of the relatives and
villagers at the Yellow Jade, Tang and his
family took a good care of Sandie’s
physical and financial needs, until 19 years
later, in 1998, the old man past away. In his
final moment, his bron-again son was by his
bedside.
Tang Jiangshan
toay
