Hu Shuzhen

In the early 1990s, "Public Order Defence Squads" in China — usually made up of discharged military personnel, unemployed young adults and local hooligans — were supposed to maintain public order in villages and towns. Most of the time, however, they ended up dealing with all sorts of mundane matters in their towns. The story begins with a mysterious case of serial dog killings. LI Lizhong, leader of the local defence squad, starts an investigation into the case, following a set of strange clues and studying them using piecemeal knowledge of primitive criminology and ichnology. After a string of hijinks, the squad catches the dog killer. However, the evidence also shows that the case is closely related to the accidental death of Lizhong’s father.

TANG Zhijun, editor-in-chief of Space Exploration magazine, together with his fellows, went to investigate the collective sighting of an unidentified flying object in a village called Burning Nest, where a stone ball disappeared from the mouth of a stone lion.

After her college graduation, Yezi comes back home to spend her last summer vacation with her grandmother. The house is filled with grandma’s memories that gradually begin to take shape in reality. Her grandma slowly slips into the abyss of amnesia and time begins to lose meaning. Haunted by those memories, Yezi finds herself wandering among fragments of her family history.

Northern China, 2004. When miner Zhang Baomin returns to his home, a small and isolated mining village, his wife tells him that their son has mysteriously disappeared while shepherding his small flock.