Hair-raising tales, not for the fainthearted

His latest book The Fraud Has Come to the South, which was published in late April, is a collection of eight short stories, a novella and four fables.

The eight short stories are divided into three categories-mini stories, short stories and story adaptations, one of which is based on the first chapter of Iliad, another on a short story by Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) writer Pu Songling, and a story by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar.

All of the stories were written between 2015 and 2019 after Wake Me Up at 9 AM, when A Yi was exploring a new direction in his writing while collecting ghost stories. Instead of "trading his life for writing", he started writing for fun and without limitations.

This free spiritedness is shown in the varied lengths and topics in the new collection.

He does not set any word limits so that a story can end at 800 words, just like those by Kafka or Chekhov. Or it can run as long as several hundred thousand words.

When story ideas come to him, he will use his mobile phone or notebook to jot them down in case he forgets.

"I got 200 to 300 story ideas that I haven't developed-little temporary ideas. Some can grow to be porkers, and some as big as elephants," he says.

"If you look at folk tales from Tibetan ethnic people, Indian people or West Asia, they are very short. If a folk story ends, we won't think there's a need to add more to it. That's how I consider those mini stories."

The diverse topics in the collection also show the freedom that A Yi has as a mature writer.

The mini story Leftover Dregs is a quasi sci-fi story of a young healthy man falling in love with a rich older woman. The woman will turn young and beautiful once she draws vigor from her willing lover through a pipe connecting their bodies. To satisfy his beloved, the man was eventually drained to death.

In the short story Lifestyle, A Yi created a seemingly illogical loop of character Bi Guichou's fate. Jealous of his neighbor Pan Xuefu, whose son-in-law Que Chunsheng brings home a good chunk of imported beef, Bi rejects Pan's offer of beef and leaves home to buy meat in town. However, Bi is crushed by passing cars and trucks in the pouring rain.

In the fable A Kid Who Wanted to Learn Magic, A Yi borrowed the concept of four-eyed people from a ghost story he collected. A boy wanted to learn magic and his master told him to look for a four-eyed person, who turned out to be the form of a weird pregnant woman.

"I just want to scare children," says A Yi laughing.