It's kinda confused me because all the names are Chinese names, so I looked for key words. Victims, perpetrators, and how it happened.
At the end, Dr. Xu was never existed and Grandma Wang lost her life time saving of $150,000. It really amazes me that she kept such large amount of money at home.
Victim: Wang Jing 61 years old.
Perpetrators: First perpetrator an agitated woman in her early forties rushed up to her. “I’m looking for a doctor called Xu,” the woman said, in rapid-fire Cantonese. “It’s urgent—for my daughter.”
The victim Wang had been to plenty of traditional Chinese-medicine practitioners in the neighborhood, but she’d never heard of a Dr. Xu. “He is very well known here,” the perpetrator went on. “I think he’s my daughter’s only hope.” She said that the girl had begun her first menstrual bleeding two weeks earlier and nothing would staunch the flow. Friends spoke of Dr. Xu as a miracle worker, but no one knew where to find him.
Second perpetrator aka conspirator also a woman passing by overheard and interjected, “Are you talking about the Dr. Xu? He’s a treasure. I have him to thank for my mother-in-law’s incredible recovery.” When the first perpetrator asked for more details, the newcomer shrugged. “He’s become a real recluse in recent years,” she said. “I don’t even know if he sees patients anymore.”
Victim Wang was curious. She’d had her own share of ailments. A decade ago, she had surgery to remove a tumor in one of her ovaries, and, a dozen or so years before that, her husband had suffered a back injury that left him unable to work. She became responsible for supporting their two young children. “I would tell the kids, ‘Mama is not hungry today—you guys hurry up and eat,’ ” Wang, at the time, she made around a hundred and thirty dollars a week, at a garment factory on Grand Street, and the physical demands of the work had ravaged her body.
As Wang and her new acquaintances talked , it turned out that the woman who’d met Dr. Xu was from a village not far from where Wang had grown up. She introduced herself as Liu, asked about Wang’s husband and children, and extended an open invitation to have tea at a bakery she owned with her husband. Wang was touched by her solicitude. It reminded her of life back in Taishan, where you’d constantly cross paths with acquaintances and there was a web of trust, woven over generations, from the reciprocal exchange of favors. If you had an unfamiliar problem, you’d seek out a shu ren, a “familiar person,” to help. In the U.S., however, Chinese people shared less about themselves. “Everything is business,” Wang said.
Wang was talking about her children when Liu called out to a woman (3rd perpetrator pretending to be Dr. Xu's granddaughter) with large sunglasses and a backpack who was walking toward them. “We were just looking for your grandfather!” Liu exclaimed. Dr. Xu’s granddaughter said that he had been very sick and had stopped taking patients. He now devoted himself to good deeds, in order to build Karma as his end approached.
Liu begged the granddaughter to make an exception, and she agreed to try to talk him round. “He will refuse your money,” she warned, as she left. “If he agrees to see you, it will be strictly as friends.”
The granddaughter said that Dr. Xu had lit three sticks of incense at an altar, one for each woman. Liu’s stick burned brightly, because of the good deed she had done by referring the others, but the other two sticks immediately blew out. The mother of the girl which was the 2nd perpetrator with menstrual problems was told that an offended spirit in the underworld was responsible. The news for Wang was even more dire: her son was in mortal danger. Because she had recently crossed a street in the exact spot where a pregnant woman had been killed two decades earlier, the spirit of the unborn child, a girl, had latched on to Wang, intent upon claiming her son for a husband. “My grandfather sees a great white tiger, a very ill omen,” the woman warned. Wang asked if she couldn’t just keep her son safe at home. The woman shook her head. “If the spirit wants him, she can make the most harmless actions fatal,” she said. “Your son might choke on his next sip of water.”
The victim Wang was terrified. Everyone in China knew about ming hun, or ghost marriages. Now Wang listened, as Dr. Xu’s granddaughter told her that, to avoid the curse, her valuables must be blessed immediately. She added a caveat: “You can’t contact anyone. You will spook the spirit into taking action faster.”
“It was my son’s life,” Wang siad. “How could I have taken a chance?” Liu accompanied Wang to her apartment, to fetch her valuables. “Everything will be O.K., sister,” she said. She’d endured difficulties herself, she confided, and Dr. Xu had always seen her through them. “He doesn’t take a cent, a penny” she said. “And, of course, no funny business with your valuables.” She held up her hand to show Wang a gold band set with carved jade. “How else would I still have this ring?” As they reached Wang’s apartment building, Liu offered a last admonition: “Just be careful. Dr. Xu’s eyes are omnipresent. If you try to collect only a portion of your valuables, the blessings won’t work and your son will remain in danger.”
Like many immigrants, Wang had never had much use for banks. Her life savings—around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars—were hidden in a box and in other places around her bedroom. Not even her family knew how much was in it. She took the money and some wedding jewelry she almost never wore, put everything into plastic bags, and placed the bundle in a zippered shopping bag.
The granddaughter was waiting for them on the street corner where they’d met. She held out a large bag and told Wang to put her package inside. Then she spun Wang around and told her to join her palms together in prayer, bow, and recite a chant: “Peace and safety to my child, may the bodhisattva protect him.” Wang vaguely remembers the granddaughter tracing her fingers through the air, as if drawing calligraphy, and at one point holding both hands up to the mute gray sky. But, almost as soon as the ceremony had begun, it was over. The bag was returned to Wang, along with two bottles of spring water. One was to be used to cook rice, and the other was for drinking: everyone in the family must take a sip. The bag should not be opened for forty-nine days or the blessing would be undone.
Liu took Wang’s hands. “It’s fate that we met,” she said, by way of farewell. As Wang walked home, she felt that the bag had become oddly lighter than she remembered. She broke into a run, clutching the bag, and tore it open as soon as she was home. Inside, all she found was boxes of cornstarch and laundry detergent. That evening, her son took her to the police.
