It had been a hard year, as we had lost both our mother and grandmother in the same year. My grandmother died after some punks picked her as the target in the “knock out game”, then while in hospital recovering from the concussion and injuries stroked out. And my mom, brother and I were still grieving when my mom died from COVID. And she was so young, not even 45.

I was still living with my mom, as I was supposed to have graduated from college that year. But like so many, that was pushed back as I went almost overnight from a full class load to only being a part-time student taking on-line classes.

Grandma had lived across town, and when she died we just packed everything up that was not furniture and put it in our garage. We split the furniture, some going to his house and the rest coming here. Mostly old antiques from the homeland, but some the typical knickknack American stuff dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. But at least the house sold fast.

I had made several trips to donate a lot of things, mostly their clothes. Most I simply threw out, as they were largely nothing special. But I did keep one that I swear was a disco dress of my grandmother’s. As well as most of the silk ones. One of them I even looked at carefully as it was obviously hand embroidered, and was a deep red qipao. And the tag was even in Chinese, so I knew it was something from my grandmother’s youth.

And even though I was second generation American, I knew the family history. We had originally come from Sichuan, what most Westerners called “Szechwan”. My great grandfather was an officer in Koumintang, and had fought both the Japanese and Chinese Communists during the war. One of his last acts was putting his pregnant wife onto an airplane to Taiwan as the Nationalists were retreating. He remained behind as many more were fleeing on foot and he saw it as his job to protect them.

She never heard from him again.

I had grown up with this story as long as I could remember. She gave birth to my grandmother, and her brother. Years later she become a nurse, and moved to the US with my mother and they moved to the US.

I always thought it a bit strange, but going back over 100 years half photographs in the family album seemed to be single women. And not only single women, but mothers of twins. A boy and a girl. But as I was one of such a set as well, I knew that was actually common. Twins seems to be largely a genetic trait from the mother, and if the woman is one of a set of twins, the odds are increased she herself will give birth to twins. In fact, when we were born it was mentioned in the local paper. That we were known to have been the third set of fraternal boy-girl twins in three generations. There had even been some requests over the years to have us genetically tested to see what might be causing that, but my mom always refused.

I looked at the red qipao, and realized it might have even been my grandmothers, or even my great-grandmother’s wedding dress. As unlike in the US, the color of choice for traditional marriages in China was red. Every color had a symbolic meaning, and white in China stands for death. But there, red stood for happiness and success.

And in the bottom of the garment bag with the qipao was a thick manuscript. And it was obviously ancient, and many of the pages even seemed to be on handmade paper. However, it was written in Mandarin, so I had no hopes of reading it.

It was the next week as I was cleaning out the last of my mother’s things from her room that I found the second garment bag. Now the older bag had actually been made of actual rubber, with a thick canvas covering. And a heavy brass zipper. This one was of a thinner nylon, with a thinner canvas covering. And the zipper was of nylon, so I knew this was likely something my mom had gotten when she was around my age.

Now one of the things my uncle had asked me after mom died was if I had found her wedding dress. I remember looking at him, as I knew my mom had never gotten married. She told us that our father was some guy she barely remembered, and only met one time when she was drunk. They had a one night stand after she had gone to a concert, and she never met him again.

Yet, inside of the garment bag was indeed a wedding dress. It was nothing fancy, like the other one. Just a standard white one, like might be found in any department store. And on a hangar behind it was a white silk nightie. I let my fingers run over it lightly, and realized it was silk, and so thin that surely some of the woman’s body could be seen through it.

I pulled them both out and laid them on the bed next to each other. Mom had never talked about getting married, or even ever getting engaged. Was this for some guy that did not ever get that far? It simply made no sense. And at the bottom, I found a purple felt jewelry box. And it was on top of a purple folder.

I took them out and opened the jewelry case. Inside, was a beautiful pearl necklace. It was lovely, and the pearls shone with a coppery glimmer. And in the center was a crude locket. It was oval shaped, and made of gold and silver. It even had some stones I identified as amber and jade, and maybe even sapphire and diamonds. But they looked strange, as none of them were faceted at all but rounded smooth. I removed it from the case, and the necklace appeared to be about twenty-four inches. I held it in my hand and opened the locket. And was more than a bit surprised to see a photo of my mom and Uncle Harry inside. It looked to be taken when they graduated High School.

So, this must have been grandmothers. And either she had given it to mom before she died, or mom selected it from her things after she died when we were moving them here. But, why did she put it inside this garment bag with a wedding dress?

I picked up the purple folder, and it was about an inch thick of papers. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat on the couch and opened the folder.

The first half of the pages were typed, like on a real typewriter. And after going through the first few pages, I realized it was some kind of family legend. But it went back way farther than any I had heard before.

“I am writing this down as best as I can. Now that my children and I are in America, it is only a matter of time that they forget we are Chinese and not American. Although in fact, we are not even Chinese. Our most distant ancestors come from Mongolia, but not even the Mongolia of the great Khan. They were the survivors of an attack on their village, and moved to what is now Henan.”

This was fascinating, and if I was reading it right, this surely dates back thousands of years! I continued reading, and it said that the survivors were a mother and her eight children. Four boys, and four girls. I took a sip of coffee and thought on that a moment. More twins? Did this genetic trait of ours go back that far?

But it was even more strange. That our family descended from, foxes? That they were the last family of a kind of, werefox? That as adults they could once change back and forth in form, but over the generations that trait was lost. They were known as the Uneg, then eventually the Huli. But some time in the past they had adopted the family name of “Wu”.

That was an interesting choice. For I know that not only is Wu a common name, it also was a term for a shaman or witch. And when it mentioned Hou Ji, I realized exactly how ancient this was. Hou Ji is one of the legendary founders of China, over 4,000 years ago. If I was reading this right and it was not just a figment of somebody’s imagination, this means that this family legend predated the Bible. It even predated Ramses II by over a thousand years.

But when the matriarch settled in a remote valley, she and her daughters started diving for freshwater pearls, as the sons farmed and hunted. They were among the first to farm millet in the region, and became prosperous. But that the mother refused any of the offers for her daughters from nearby farmers.

And when each daughter turned sixteen, she gave them a necklace she herself made. It was of river pearls, and had silk thread binding them together. With a locket on each one. The oldest daughter got one that was round, the next daughter had a square locket. The third had a locket that was shaped like a triangle, and the youngest got an oval locket.

They were each instructed to make a drawing of their twin brother and themselves, and to place it inside the locket. That the drawing did not even have to be a good one, just a drawing that would show the love they had for their brother. They were to wear it for a full cycle of the moon, and that when their next blood tide flowed their brother would return the love and they would share. And when their daughters were of age to marry, they should receive the necklace. They were to burn the previous drawing over incense made of sandalwood, then replace it with one of them and their brother.

Wait a fucking minute, was I reading this right? Now, I know that incest was actually fairly common in foundation myths. The Bible had it, the Greeks had it. The humanities class on mythology I had taken was a huge help in this. Most times, it was between parents and children. But indeed, some like the Egyptians and Chinese did have sibling incest as part of their foundation myths.

I even remembered two I had read, from differing areas of China. And while one involved an older brother and the other an older sister, they were almost both the same. There had been a massive flood that had killed all humans but the siblings. And they knew they could not marry as they were brother and sister, but were challenged by the gods to a test as they had to marry to repopulate the planet.

In both, they had to break a stone in half and roll it down different parts of a hill. If they rejoined then it was a sign they should marry. And in the one with the older sister they did, with the brother’s rock on top of the rock of his sister covering it. So they followed the obvious symbolism, and he covered her and they restarted the human race.

However, in the other one the brother was the oldest, and he was a sneaky shit. The brother raced to the bottom of the hill and put his stone on top of his sister’s right before she arrived. His sister thought that was not right, so challenged him to a second contest. He would throw a knife into the valley below, and she would throw a sheath. And if the knife landed in the sheath, she would be his.

And once again, he raced down and arrived before she did, and put his literal knife into her sheath. And admitting defeat, she allowed him to put his figurative knife into her sheath, and the human race was reborn.

Is this maybe a variant of that legend? Because for several pages it listed a lot of marriages, between brothers and their twin sisters. But each pair of siblings only had one pair themselves. And also, each time siblings.

And when she died, the matriarch was surrounded by eight children, eight grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. And she told each that the chain must be unbroken. That so long as it was intact, the families would thrive.

The first loss was the descendent of the oldest daughter a hundred years or so later. There was a war and her brother was forced to go and fight. She went along with the wives, prostitutes, and others and he fought in several battles. But in the last one he fell, mortally wounded by a spear. But the commander found her comely, and took her as his wife.

Thus, this line died. And in the time of her grandchildren she was still alive to see her last grandson killed in a battle and the line died. And before dying, she made a bonfire of sandalwood. And she, her daughter, and granddaughter immolated themselves and the necklace.

Holy shit!

I continued reading, and several hundred years later, the descendents of the second youngest followed the same fate. This time the girl was not of age yet to take her twin brother as her husband, and there was another war. This time she was taken prisoner by the invaders, and after being raped repeatedly became pregnant. She gave birth to a son, and the mother burned the necklace herself as she knew her line was now dead to the magic.

The story continued, and apparently the remaining two families lived a happy but isolated life. They would remain in their isolated valley, each generation of siblings continuing the tradition. By this time, only the oval and square lockets remaining. The eldest men would trek to the village two days away a few times a year for news and supplies, and maintained a fiction that they married daughters from another of the remote hill clans in the area. And only when their children were married and the sister pregnant would the next generation start to make the trips.

Wow, this is almost like something from West Virginia! Brother marrying sister, for generation after generation. Each couple living in a remote area, the women almost never seen and maintaining the fiction the men are brothers or cousins that marry girls from similar families.

Apparently this was how they lived, for thousands of years! Every few centuries moving to another remote valley, often when neighbors started to move so close that it would be impossible to maintain the fiction. Sometimes the men would be forced to go off to war, or would take up service with some local lord. But they always returned.

It was during the reign of Xianfeng, one of the last emperors of the Quing dynasty when they had moved to a city for the first time in centuries. I knew that this was in the 1800s. My ancestor had gotten an education and been trained as a doctor. The other husband was a clerk for the government. But when the children were approaching their late teens, first my ancestors move to another remote valley and set up a home. Then the other couple did the same and rejoined them.

And to all of the new neighbors, they were simply four couples. However, it was the other family that first tried to use a photograph inside the locket. And it worked. This would have been in the 1850s I imagined, and I imagine that photography was still almost magical back then.

However, soon the country was wracked by the Boxer Rebellion, and the next generation decided it would be best to separate for safety. Bandits and fanatics were roaming the countryside, forcing any they could find to join them, and often killing those that refused to join. So with tears each family went on their own way, and promising to rejoin in the original valley in two generations.

That is the last entry about the family of the second oldest daughter’s line. At that point my great grandmother was telling her own story. That her brother was a good student, and a believer in Chinese National Socialism, so joined the Kuomintang. And when he was accepted to study engineering at Wuhan University.