Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

think she's up to something.”
    But Hong Xi was too taken with his wife's beauty to share his mother's concern. She had a long face, fine eyebrows, a high nose, and slanted eyes like those of a phoenix. But when she spotted Hong Xi's face, she stopped in her tracks and, after a long quiet moment, let out a screech and took off running. The bridesmaids reached out to grab her by the arms, and rip , tore her red gown to reveal the snowy white skin of her arms, her slender neck, and the front of the red camisole she wore underneath.
    Hong Xi was stunned. Rapping him on the head with her cane, his mother shouted, “Go after her, you fool!”
    That snapped him out of it, and he staggered after her.
    Yanyan flew down the street, trailing her loosened hair like the tail of a bird.
    “Stop her!” Hong Xi shouted. “Stop her!”
    His shouts brought villagers swarming out of their houses into the street and drew frantic barks from a dozen or more big, ferocious dogs.
    Yanyan turned down a lane and headed south into the field, where wheat stalks bent in the wind, their flowered tips dipping like waves in an ocean of green. Yanyan crashed through the waist-high waves of wheat, their green contrasting with her red camisole and milky white arms, a lovely painting in motion.
    A bride fleeing from her wedding disgraced all of Northeast Gaomi Township. So the village men took up the chase with a vengeance, coming at her from all sides. The dogs, too, which leaped and bounded in the waves of green.
    As the human net closed in, Yanyan dove headfirst into the waves of wheat.
    Hong Xi breathed a sigh of relief. The pursuers slowed down, breathing heavily; grasping hands, they moved with great care, like fishermen tightening a net.
    As anger gripped his heart, all Hong Xi could think about was the beating he'd give her once she was in his grasp.
    All of a sudden, a beam of red light rose above the wheat field, startling and confusing the mob below, who fell to the ground. Then they spotted Yanyan, her hands flapping in the air, her legs held together like a gorgeous butterfly, as she rose gracefully out of the encirclement.
    The people froze like clay statues, gaping as she flapped her arms and hovered above them, then began to fly, slowly enough for them to keep stepping on her shadow if they ran after her. She was only six or seven meters above their heads, but, oh, so graceful, so lovely. Just about every oddity you could think of had occurred in Northeast Gaomi Township, but this was the first time a woman had taken to the sky.
    Once the shock had passed, the people recommenced their pursuit. Some ran home and returned on bicycles to take up the chase of her shadow, waiting for her to land so they could grab her.
    The flyer and the people below acted out an engrossing drama of pursuit and capture amid the shouts of people all across the fields. Out-of-towners joined passersby in craning their necks to watch the strange event in the sky. The woman in flight was mesmerizingly graceful; her pursuers below, always having to look up as they ran, stumbled through the rutted fields, falling and crashing into one another like a routed army.
    Eventually, Yanyan settled into a grove of pine trees surrounding the old graveyard on the eastern edge of town. The black pines, covering nearly an acre, kept watch over hundreds of mounds under which Northeastern Gaomi ancestors lay. The trees, all very old, stood straight and tall, their tips piercing the low-flying clouds. Together, the old graveyard and the grove of black pines were the township's scariest and most sacred spot. Sacred because it was the resting place of the township's ancestors; scariest owing to all the ghostly incidents that had occurred there.
    Yanyan settled onto the tip of the tallest and oldest pine tree, in the very center of the graveyard. The people below followed her there, then stood and looked up to where she rested lightly on the slender topmost branches of the tree, which easily supported her, even though she must have weighed over a hundred pounds; it was a cause of wonderment to all who were gazing from below.
    A dozen or more dogs raised their heads and bayed at the levitating Yanyan.
    Hong Xi shouted, “Come down, come down from there this minute.”
    The dogs’ baying and Hong Xi's shouts fell on deaf ears. Yanyan sat there nonchalantly, rising and falling with each passing breeze.
    The crowd below soon grew weary of standing there helplessly, except for a