Huang Guosheng

And then his elder brother, sister-in-law, elder sister and nephews burned incense and memory paper and knelt down to worship A’shen.

Zhou then confusedly murmured the elegy:

The relatives probably remained in sorrow,

But the others had already sung the happy song.

What to say to the dead?

Only the corpse is left to be buried under the mountain long.

On a board behind the glass box a poem was engraved:

Inside and outside

In the far and remote village of the west of Canton Province,

When my mother conceived me,

I curled up inside her tummy,

My mother bulged outside.

After I was born, crying,

I often slept in a cradle bearing a mosquito net.

My mother sang baby songs ceaselessly, squatting down outside.

When my mother carried me to transplant the rice seedlings, clout the rice paddies and lay the grain to dry on the ground,

I lay down inside the carrying-belt on her back,

While my mother was busy outside.

When I grew up, during my childhood,

I sometimes wandered, playing with my little friends on the mountains,

While my mother constantly missed me at home.

When I went to study at Changling Primary School,

I sat in the classroom to listen to the lessons.

My mother, who let me grow then,

often watched me from outside.

Afterwards I went alone far away to study, separated from my mother.

Then I stepped into society.

I always struggled outside.

But my mother, who still ploughed in the fields, always kept waiting for me at the village.

I’d always been longing to purchase a house in Shenzhen, in which we would live together.

There was, however, one day before my wish would be fulfilled. It was this day when the relationship between my mother and me changed forever.

It was this day when my 84-year-old mother suddenly passed away.

So from then on, my mother would lie forever inside the “tomb.”

At that time under the heaven the crow was crying, the leaves were falling, and the incense and paper were burning.

We, who were groveling with red and swollen eyes, tremblingly knelt down by the tomb, outside…”

“Alas! A’shen, why did you leave like this?” Zhou exclaimed tearfully. “A’shen, what a tragedy that I never took you to Shenzhen!” He had struggled in Shenzhen for so many years, but he had never taken her there.

At that moment Zhou made up his mind that just before his turn came to die, he would arrange for a grave to be dug on the hillside at the spot where his mother had once cut firewood.

Inside the grave he would later be buried with his mother by the villagers in the same glass box. In this way the two of them would stay together forever.