Life plays such strange tricks. When Old Shao was around, I never gave him a second thought. Now that he has passed to another world, I’ve become the sole "inheritor" of the stack of magazines he cherished.

Yet, reading was always a tedious chore for me. For someone who delights in collecting stamps, the stories held within them must be captivating, but for someone who detests reading, fiddling with those books and periodicals all day felt like self-inflicted misery. Every time I picked one up, an unwelcome gloom would settle over me; if I forced myself to flip a few pages, my eyelids would start to droop before I finished two pages, and pressing on for more than ten minutes inevitably led to a heavy sleep.

Wen Shu, however, was completely different. She could sit engrossed in those magazines for half a day without uttering a word. Afterward, she would vividly recount the stories to me:

China’s first postage stamp was the "Imperial Dragon" issued by the late Qing government in 1878. This set comprised three stamps, with a five-clawed golden dragon treading on clouds and waves at the center of the design, rendered in three different colors corresponding to the stamp's denomination: one fen silver was green, three fen silver was red, and five fen silver was orange-yellow. Legend held that this Dragon stamp could facilitate not only postal delivery but also passage between the two worlds.

There was a couple, both past fifty, who were childless. One day, the woman went to a temple to worship Guanyin Bodhisattva. The monk ringing the chime before the statue handed her a packet of incense ash, saying the Bodhisattva had appeared to him in a dream the previous night, instructing him to give the first offering of incense ash that morning to the first woman who came to burn incense, telling her to mix it with wugen shui (rootless water) and drink it at home. The woman was ecstatic. She rushed home and swallowed the entire packet of ash. Before long, she became pregnant, and a few months later, gave birth to a robust little boy. The couple, overjoyed at having a child in their old age, cherished the son beyond measure, constantly holding him and never letting him walk on the ground himself. By the time the boy turned three, he still couldn't walk.

Once, the son caught a chill. The elderly couple carried him everywhere seeking medical help, exhausting all their savings, yet his condition showed no improvement. The son eventually died, succumbing to his illness. The old couple was devastated, weeping as they carried their son to the ancestral graves for burial. As they lowered him into the earth, the woman placed all his favorite toys—things he loved in life—into the tomb, keeping only his most cherished boleng gu (a spinning rattle) as a memento. Afterward, the woman sat by the window day and night, neither eating nor drinking, watching the rattle and shedding tears, wasting away daily.

Her husband grew deeply worried, fearing his wife would succumb to grief. He went back to the same temple where his wife had received the incense ash to pray to the Bodhisattva. The same monk sat before the statue, still ringing the chime. Seeing the old man approach, he produced another packet of incense ash and handed it over, saying, "The Bodhisattva visited me in a dream last night, predicting you would come to offer incense this morning, specifically instructing me to prepare the first offering of incense ash for you to take home for your wife to consume." After speaking, the monk returned to his cushion and resumed ringing the chime. The old man, believing the Bodhisattva had manifested again, prostrated himself at the monk’s feet, begging for a remedy for his wife. But no matter how fervently the old man pleaded, the monk did not speak another word.

The old man returned home with the incense ash and prepared it with wugen shui for his wife to drink. That night, after drinking it, the woman had a dream. She saw her son happily playing on a wooden horse. When the son noticed her approaching, his face suddenly darkened, and he said, "Mother, you have caused me such suffering."