{"id":1616,"date":"2014-05-18T05:36:06","date_gmt":"2014-05-18T12:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2016-06-24T21:30:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T04:30:37","slug":"this-is-not-a-ghost-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/this-is-not-a-ghost-story\/","title":{"rendered":"This is not a Ghost Story."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The ghost of Yue Fei<\/p><\/div>\n

When war invades a country like China and many people die before their time, ghost stories multiply. They become part of the landscape. So it was inevitable that in my novel, Tiger Tail Soup,<\/em> I would mention ghosts. They\u2019re not a big part of the story, but I couldn\u2019t avoid them. The unsettled spirits of those who died too soon were just one more thing my characters had to contend with.<\/p>\n

I personally have never seen a ghost or received messages from beyond the grave. But, yes, I have<\/em> experienced something not easily explained by the ordinary laws of science.<\/p>\n

We were living in the Philippines when it started. It was 1976, before email and Facebook and cheap long distance calls. So I kept in touch with my parents who were in the United States by mail, one letter every week.<\/p>\n

\"fear,<\/a>One evening in April (It would have been daytime on the West Coast of the United States.) I was walking through the family room, feeling fine. The kids were in bed. My husband was in Mindanao on a business trip. Suddenly I wasn\u2019t feeling fine. I was sure I was about to die and I didn\u2019t know why. I couldn\u2019t breathe properly. My chest hurt. I couldn\u2019t think straight.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was my husband, calling from Mindanao. I couldn\u2019t concentrate as he talked about his work and his travel plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t you come home?\u201d I asked, interrupting. I knew he couldn\u2019t. I\u2019d never asked anything like that before.<\/p>\n

For the next three months the anxiety attacks continued. They were always with me, rising and falling, striking hard without reason. I got a prescription, which helped \u2026 a little.<\/p>\n

Then it was time for our home leave. My husband, our three daughters and I flew to Seattle. When our plane arrived, we were expecting my parents to meet us at the airport. Instead, my aunt and uncle were there, waiting for us beyond immigration and customs. \u201cYour mom and dad couldn\u2019t come,\u201d Uncle Joe said, grabbing a suitcase. We didn’t learn the rest of the story until we were all in the car.<\/p>\n

Aunt Shirley finally broke the news. My dad had lung cancer. He\u2019d been diagnosed three months earlier, at about the same time that I\u2019d started having anxiety attacks. Mom hadn\u2019t said a word in her letters. She didn\u2019t want to worry us.<\/p>\n

I stayed on in Washington State for a while after my husband and children left. I cooked and took walks and accompanied my parents to doctors\u2019 appointments. All the while I continued to be plagued by anxiety attacks, now with good reason.<\/p>\n

After a few months back in the Philippines, I received a call from Uncle Joe. \u201cThe doctor says you should come back,\u201d he said. I knew what that meant.<\/p>\n

On the plane, I felt the same ever-present anxiety I\u2019d been experiencing since that evening in April and the constant pressure to keep it under control and avoid a full-blown anxiety attack.<\/p>\n

But then, a couple hours before we landed in Seattle, it left me. Just like that. Completely disappeared.<\/p>\n

When I saw Uncle Joe at the airport, I knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he whispered, giving me a hug. \u201cYour dad died a couple of hours ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you have any ghost stories or tales of the unexplained?<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When war invades a country like China and many people die before their time, ghost stories multiply. They become part of the landscape. So it was inevitable that in my novel, Tiger Tail Soup, I would mention ghosts. They\u2019re not a big part of the story, but I couldn\u2019t avoid them. The unsettled spirits of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,155,87],"tags":[372,371,373,370,925,375],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-family","category-war","tag-anxiety-attacks","tag-china-at-war","tag-death-of-a-parent","tag-ghost-stories","tag-tiger-tail-soup","tag-unexplained-phenomena"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-q4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2792,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/a-foreign-ghost-in-a-wartime-cemetery\/","url_meta":{"origin":1616,"position":0},"title":"A Foreign Ghost in a Wartime Cemetery","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"October 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0Do you believe in ghosts? Do you think there are some people who can see spirits that are invisible to the rest of us? Do these so-called \"ghost whisperers\" possess a special sensitivity? Or are they just more imaginative than we are? I don\u2019t know. But if such people do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Eugene and Anna 002","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Eugene-and-Anna-002-e1413832203959.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5596,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/the-true-story-of-a-foreign-ghost-in-a-chinese-cemetery\/","url_meta":{"origin":1616,"position":1},"title":"The True Story of a Foreign Ghost in a Chinese Cemetery.","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"October 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"We're fast approaching that time of year when souls and saints appear. A time for recalling and repeating tales of the unexplained. So come along, I invite you to revisit this true tale of a little boy who encounters a foreign ghost in a Chinese cemetery. My late husband Eugene\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Eugene and Anna 002","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Eugene-and-Anna-002-e1413832203959.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4937,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/translation-is-that-what-i-wrote\/","url_meta":{"origin":1616,"position":2},"title":"Translation: Is That What I Wrote?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"April 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My novel looks so different in translation. I look at all those Chinese characters and I wonder, is this really my novel? If only I could read Chinese! I did study it for a while. 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(How time flies!) People bought it and read it and wrote reviews. And then--surprise, surprise--the publisher went out of business. What to do? I could do nothing and allow it to disappear from the marketplace. I could search for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_2552-1-rotated-e1596057814667.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4434,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/twelve-authors-and\/","url_meta":{"origin":1616,"position":5},"title":"Twelve Authors and Their Books","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"November 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I\u2019m teaming up with eleven other authors for an ebook sale. 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