I've been knocking down walls for eight years. From the Third Ring Road north to the Fifth Ring south, from crumbling old flats to brand-new developments—I've handled no fewer than eight hundred walls, maybe a thousand.
Demolition isn't exactly a skill. You swing a sledgehammer, you chew through with a breaker, you bring out the cutter for reinforced concrete. Dust everywhere, sweat flying off you like rain.
The pay isn't bad. But it's tiring, dirty, and dangerous. Last month Old Zhou slipped off the scaffolding and broke his shin. He's still lying at home.
That afternoon I picked up a job. An old neighborhood in Hepingli—an eighties brick-and-mortar walk-up, six floors, no elevator. The owner wanted the wall between the living room and the bedroom knocked down to make one big open space.
Old Zhao assigned it. Small job, he said. One non-load-bearing wall, done in a day, eight hundred yuan. The sun was brutal when I rode my e-bike over. The stairwell stank of dust and old leftover food, the walls plastered with drain-cleaning and locksmith ads.
The owner was a woman in her thirties, beige trench coat, hair pulled up tight. Polite, but her eyes were tired. She handed me the keys, gave me a few instructions, and left, saying she'd check on progress in the evening.
I hauled the sledgehammer and the breaker up to the fifth floor, to the south-facing room. The door swung open on a blast of stale air that had been sealed in God knows how long. The furniture had been shoved to one side under plastic sheeting. In the middle stood that wall—gray and grimy, painted over at least three times, the bottom layer that old-fashioned pale green.
I set down my tools, lit a cigarette, and sized the wall up. Brick, twelve centimeters thick, non-load-bearing. One hit and it opens. Eight years in, I know with my eyes shut exactly where to swing to get the most out of every strike.
Halfway through the cigarette, I remembered something Old Zhao had once mentioned. With old houses like this, he'd said, knock three times before you break the wall, and say "passing through." A rule handed down from the old-timers. He'd said it casually over the phone, and I'd gone "mm" without giving it a second thought.
Passing through? It's not like I'm walking into somebody's house. A wall is a wall—brick and mortar. You think knocking three times is going to keep it from collapsing? Superstitious nonsense.
I stubbed out the cigarette and swung the sledgehammer.
First hit. A dull thud, a sheet of plaster bursting off, dust blasting my face. I squinted and moved in. Cracks ran out from the impact point like a spider's web.
Something was wrong. The crack's edges were wet, seeping a dark red liquid. Thick and sticky, it ran down the wall, dragging livid streaks through the gray-white dust.
There's no pipe in this wall. It's not a bathroom. I took half a step back, and the first thought through my head was that something inside the wall had rotted. A rat? Or something worse. The dark red liquid kept seeping, running down the crack, and a few drops hit the floor. Drip. Drip.
I put everything I had into the second swing. Bricks flew, and the wall gaped open in a washbasin-sized hole. Dust and rubble scattered. I bent down to look inside. Empty. The cavity between the bricks was clean—no pipes, no rot, nothing.
The cross-section was dry. The old mortar in the joints had gone hard as stone, not a trace of damp.
Then what had I seen?
I reached in and touched the edge of the hole. My fingertips came away dry. Only dust. The dark red drops were still on the floor. I crouched, rubbed one with my finger, and brought it to my nose.
No smell. Just water, stained rust-colored. Maybe some old paint in the plaster had turned liquid with moisture. I stood up and looked into the hole again. There really was nothing inside.
Maybe the old damp-proof layer in the plaster had broken, and years of trapped moisture had bled out with the rust. Looks terrifying, but harmless.
That's what I told myself. But I couldn't shake the feeling. Every so often while I worked I'd glance at that hole—black and empty, like a door shrunk down to nothing.
I finished the whole wall that afternoon. Bricks stacked in the stairwell, debris bagged. By the time I was done it was almost dark. As I packed up my tools I looked at the floor. Those dark red marks from the afternoon had long since dried, turned into brown stains set into the concrete. Easy to miss.
Then I saw the footprints.
Right at the base of the wall, less than half a meter from the hole. Two bare footprints pressed clearly into the concrete, toes you could count. The left one was a little smaller than the right. The heel was deep, the ball shallow—like someone had walked out of the wall on tiptoe.
The prints started at the wall base and went step by step across the dust-covered concrete, heading for the door. Seven steps in all. They ended at the door.
I stood there without moving. The sun was down. No lights on in the room. Gray dusk light came in through the window, and the line of prints stood out gray-white against the dark concrete floor, impossible to miss.
I swallowed and told myself they were mine. I'd walked through the dust while I worked, leaving prints all the way to the door. But I looked down at my boots. Work boots, thick soles, heavy tread. Whatever I stepped in didn't look like that. Those were bare footprints, the gaps between the toes clear as day.
I rushed to the door and yanked it open. The hallway sensor light flicked on, throwing dim yellow light in. I looked back at the floor. The prints were still there, from the wall base to the door, neat and even.
I crouched and measured one with my hand. A size smaller than mine. A woman's foot, or an older child's. The deepest toe marks were the big toe and the second toe; the rest were faint, like this person walked with their big toe driving the step.
I stood up, thought about it, crouched back down, and wiped the whole line of prints away with my sleeve. The dust came off easily, the concrete back to its original surface. Then I carried my tools downstairs, rode the e-bike home at full speed, the evening wind pouring down my collar, my head replaying that image—footprints walking from the wall base to the door.
That night at dinner my mother called and asked if I was coming home for the weekend. I said I had work, next week. After I hung up I remembered Old Zhao's rule again. Knock three times. Say "passing through."
If I'd knocked, would nothing have happened? Then I thought, don't be an idiot. It's just a footprint. Maybe a worker who painted the walls long ago left it—paint or glue made a mold on the floor, and dust settled in and showed it.
I've seen all kinds of strange things in this trade. Old houses give up all sorts of things—old photos, yellowed newspapers, once even a box of commemorative medals.
I thought it over all night, and in the morning I went to work as usual.
The Hepingli job was just finishing up—clear out the bricks, sweep the floor, wait for the owner's inspection. I got there just past eight. Someone was walking a dog in the stairwell and gave me a look as they passed, saying nothing.
I unlocked the door. Same stale smell. Sunlight came through the east window, dust swirling in the light beams. I glanced at where the wall had been. Everything that should be gone was gone, leaving only the mess on the floor.
Then I saw the hole.
The hole I'd knocked open yesterday had been bricked back up.
The bricks were laid perfectly neat—plumb and level, joints lined up, corners squared, mortar troweled smooth, like no one had ever touched it.
Just that one patch stood in the middle of the wall, its color newer than the old wall around it. Red bricks, bluish-gray mortar, running from floor to ceiling. About eighty centimeters wide, a meter eighty tall. The shape of a door, plain as day.
I stood there, my tools slipping out of my hand and landing on my foot. I didn't even feel the pain.
Yesterday I had taken that wall down. The whole thing. All the bricks had been stacked in the stairwell, half a man high. Now the wall was standing again—except for that patch of wrong-colored brick, the rest was intact, even the plaster painted back to the same pale green.
I backed to the door and looked again. No. Not the whole wall was back. Just "the wall." The part I'd demolished yesterday was fully restored, but there was a fine seam between it and the original wall, like two panels joined together.
I walked over and touched the new brickwork. The surface was cold, the mortar joints hard as rock—my fingernail couldn't dig in. It had been built a while ago. I got down on my hands and knees and looked at the wall base. The concrete floor was clean. Yesterday's line of footprints was gone. The spot where I'd wiped was a shade lighter than what was around it.
And the bricks in the stairwell?
I ran out the door. The corridor was empty. The neat stack of broken bricks from yesterday—not a single piece left. All gone. I ran downstairs. The dump point was clean too, nothing beside the bins.
Old Zhao's van was parked downstairs. He'd said he'd come by to check on the job. I jogged over and rapped on the window. He was dozing in the driver's seat, woke up dazed, and rolled the window down.
"What's up, Mengzi? Job done?"
"The wall." I was panting. "That wall. Somebody bricked it back up last night."
Old Zhao looked at me like I was an idiot. "What wall?"
"The one the owner hired us to knock down. I finished it yesterday. I came in today and it's standing there again, bricked up solid. Go look."
Old Zhao stared at me for a few seconds, got out, and followed me upstairs. He stood in front of the wall, and I waited for him to say something. Instead he reached out, touched the new patch of brick, then looked at the intact old wall beside it, and turned to me: "You took it down yesterday?"
"Took it down. Clean down to nothing. Bricks all stacked in the stairwell."
Old Zhao rapped his knuckles against the new brickwork. Thunk, thunk. Solid. Then he knocked on the old wall beside it. Different sound—the old wall was hollow. He fished out a cigarette, handed me one, lit his own, took two drags, and said: "Stop the job for now."
"What do I tell the owner?"
"I'll handle her." Old Zhao patted the wall. "Don't come back this afternoon. I need to tell you something."
We sat on the steps downstairs, the sun up now, burning the back of my neck. Old Zhao smoked his cigarette down, lit another, and then slowly started talking. He said he'd been doing renovations for twenty years and had seen plenty of these old houses. The rule wasn't made up.
Knock three times and say "passing through" before you break a wall—it started with the carpenters, and the bricklayers picked it up after. Not because there are ghosts in the walls. Because a house lived in this long can have "things" inside its walls.
Things didn't have to be ghosts. Could be a rat, a snake, something else. You give it a heads-up, it hears and leaves. You break your wall, it goes its way. No debts between you. But if you don't say anything, and the first swing startles it—then it can't get out.
"Can't get out?"
Old Zhao looked at me. "It's trapped in the wall. You've sealed off its way out. Now it has to find a way out."
I thought of yesterday's footprints, walking from the wall base to the door.
"The footprints—" I started.
"You saw them?" Old Zhao's voice dropped. "You really saw them?"
"I saw them. Barefoot. From the wall base all the way to the door. I wiped them away with my sleeve."
Old Zhao was quiet for a long time. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it out. "Don't try to figure out who bricked up that hole. You won't figure it out.
"Let me tell you something. Don't be scared. I used to have a coworker, surname Wang, a few years older than you. Around 2005 he was demolishing a wall over in Jinsong. Also an old neighborhood. Also forgot the rule.
"First swing, water seeped out of the wall. He didn't think twice. Next day he came and found the hole plastered over from the inside—not with cement. With mud. Yellow mud, straw mixed in.
"He didn't think twice about that either. Scraped the mud out and kept going. On the third day his wife came to bring him lunch and found him talking to the wall—having a full conversation with it, back and forth. After that he wasn't right. Said there was someone in the wall calling to him. Didn't go home at night, slept on the site. Then..."
Old Zhao paused.
"Then what?"
"Then he built himself into the wall. Right in that hole. Laid the bricks on himself, one by one. By the time they reached his neck, somebody spotted him and pulled him out. The hospital said schizophrenia. He's still in the psychiatric ward."
Sweat broke out on my back, cold in the wind. "So you're saying—my first swing yesterday let something out?"
"Or locked something in." Old Zhao stood up and brushed the dust off his pants. "When you went in and out, did anything on you feel off?"
I thought about it. "No."
"Your feet?"
I looked down at my feet. Work boots, thick soles, covered in dust. Nothing wrong. But suddenly I remembered: yesterday, when I'd wiped away that line of footprints, I'd used my right sleeve. And after I wiped... I think I reached into the hole with my left hand. I couldn't remember clearly anymore.
"You should go see someone who knows," Old Zhao said. "I don't know this stuff, but I know someone who does. There's a flea market in the south part of town. A watchmaker there, surname Sun. Go find him. Tell him Old Zhao sent you."
I didn't go back up that building that afternoon. I took the half day off and went home. Lying in bed with my eyes shut, all I saw was that wall—that neat, bricked-up rectangle, like a door sealed shut forever.
I got up, drew the curtains, and only felt steady once the room was dark. My phone buzzed. The owner had messaged, asking about progress. I replied, "Continuing tomorrow."
I put the phone down, then picked it up again and searched "wall demolition rules." A pile of random results came up—"pay respects before construction," "groundbreaking ceremonies," people saying you had to burn paper offerings before tearing down an old house. I scrolled for a while, more confused the more I read, then turned the phone face down and went to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, my shoes were wrong.
My work boots sat on the shoe rack by the door. Yesterday when I'd taken them off, the toes had pointed outward. Now the toes pointed inward, heels out, set down perfectly neat, like someone had turned them around. And there were gray marks on the uppers—like bare feet had stepped on them.
I crouched down to look at the mark. The toes were clear as day. The left print was a little smaller than the right.
I took a photo with my phone, put the boots on, and went out. Rode the e-bike to the flea market in the south. Just past nine and already bustling—used furniture, used books, old trinkets, stalls packed shoulder to shoulder.
Sun's Watch Shop sat at the end of the last row, in the corner. A small shop. Glass cabinets full of old clocks, walls hung with more clocks, all ticking at once in a chorus. Behind the counter sat an old man, sixty or seventy, hair white, wearing a watchmaker's loupe, nudging a pocket watch with tweezers.
"Master Sun?" I stood in front of the counter.
The old man looked up and took off the loupe. "Old Zhao sent you?"
"Yes. Old Zhao said you know—"
"Take off your shoes."
I blinked. "What?"
"Take off your shoes. Put them on the counter."
I bent down, took off the boots, and set them on the counter. Master Sun looked at the dust on the soles, then at the marks on the uppers, and nodded. "The left foot."
"You can tell?"
"Telling is one thing." Master Sun reached under the counter and pulled out a bundle of incense wrapped in yellow paper, then a brass bell. "You shouldn't have touched it with your hand. Touching leaves a mark. Now it recognizes you."
My throat went dry. "The footprints... the thing that walked out of my wall. It's following me?"
Master Sun didn't answer directly. He lit three sticks of incense in a small burner, set the brass bell next to my boots, then pulled a sheet of paper out of a drawer and wrote a few characters on it with a fountain pen. He handed it to me.
"Go back and tape this to the wall. That wall—the one you broke open. After you tape it, don't go near that house for three days. On the third day, go back. If the hole in the wall is still there, you're fine. If it's been bricked up again—"
"What if it's bricked up?"
"Then it's not your problem anymore. It's your family's."
I stood outside the flea market holding the paper and read it. Eight characters, written vertically, in traditional script: "Each goes its own way. We'll be at peace." The ink had soaked into the rice paper, and the edges were singed with burn marks.
I folded the paper carefully and put it in my pocket, got on the e-bike, and rode back. The wind was strong, stinging my eyes, my head spinning with Old Zhao's story—Wang, building himself into the wall, brick by brick, up to his neck.
I got to Hepingli just before noon. Upstairs. Opened the door. The wall was still there. The neat square of new brick blocked it solid, joints lined up, corners squared. I pulled the paper out of my pocket, found clear tape, and stuck it in the exact middle of the brickwork. The moment the paper was up, I felt someone watching me from behind.
I turned. The door was shut. I was alone in the room. Sunlight came through the window, dust churning in the air. The phantom ticking of all those clocks was still ringing in my ears. I stared at the paper for a few dozen seconds. Eight characters, quiet and still. Yellow paper, red characters, like a couplet.
I backed out of the room, locked the door, went downstairs, and rode off.
Three days. Master Sun said three days. I went home, scrubbed my boots clean and put them in the shoe cabinet, showered, and sat on the sofa in a daze. My phone buzzed—the owner asking when it would be done. I said there was a situation, it would take a few days.
The owner wasn't happy. Said she could raise the pay, but she couldn't delay her move. I fended her off and hung up. At dinner my mother called about the weekend again. I said I'd come, definitely come.
For those three days I did nothing. Stayed in, watched TV, ate takeout twice. On the third night I couldn't take it anymore, went down to the corner store and bought a pack of cigarettes.
On my way back I passed the decorative wall at the entrance to the complex. One of its tiles had lifted, showing raw cement underneath. I stared at that cement for a few long seconds, my back going cold, and hurried away.
On the fourth morning I went to Hepingli.
My legs were weak on the stairs. Five flights took me forever. My hand shook putting the key in the lock; I twisted twice before it opened. I pushed the door. Same smell. Sunlight in, dust everywhere.
The wall was there.
The bricked hole was there.
The yellow paper was still there. But the characters on it had changed.
"Each goes its own way, we'll be at peace" was eight characters. Now only four remained. "Each goes" was still there. "We'll be at peace" was gone. The paper was water-stained, the ink smeared, like something had licked or rubbed it.
The crease down the middle was unmistakable—like someone had torn off the bottom half. The tape holding the paper was intact, the corners unpeeled, but the bottom half was simply gone, the cut edge clean as if sheared with scissors.
I stood in front of the wall, keys clutched in my hand, the nail clipper on the keyring digging into my palm. The square hole in the brickwork was still there, but its edges looked a little narrower than two days before.
I couldn't say. Maybe my imagination. Maybe the plaster had dried and shrunk. I reached out to touch it—and stopped my hand mid-air. No more touching.
My phone rang. Old Zhao.
"Mengzi, you went?"
"I'm here."
"Is the hole there?"
"It's there."
"Did the writing on the paper change?"
I stared at the half-gone yellow paper. "It changed."
Old Zhao was silent for a moment on the other end, then lowered his voice: "Have you looked at the floor?"
I looked down. On the concrete floor, between the wall base and the door, there was a new line of footprints. Fainter than last time. Gray-white, barely visible. But the direction was reversed. Last time they'd gone from the wall to the door. This time they went from the door toward the wall. The prints stopped in front of the hole, toes pointing at the wall, heels toward the door.
It came back.
"I see them," I said.
"Get out now." Old Zhao's voice was urgent. "Lock the door, go downstairs. Don't look back."
I didn't look back. As I locked the door I heard a "clack" from inside the room, like something falling from a height onto the floor. I gripped the keys and ran down—five flights in seconds—and my e-bike took three tries to start.
I transferred that job afterward. Old Zhao had someone else finish it up. I never asked how the wall ended up, and Old Zhao never said. The owner messaged me once, saying the wall was down, she was happy, did I want to come pick up the last payment. I didn't reply. I wrote that eight hundred yuan off as a loss.
But it wasn't over.
After I threw out those work boots I switched to new shoes, mostly slippers. But every morning, the shoes on the rack had been turned around. Toes pointing inward.
I turned them back. The next day they were turned again. Once, getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I passed the shoe rack and watched a slipper move by itself—turning from toes-out to toes-in, silent, like an invisible foot had slipped in and turned around.
I moved. From my old rented place to a new development outside the Fifth Ring. High floor. Twentieth floor. No old walls. On moving day I threw out every pair of shoes and bought five identical pairs of new slippers.
For two months, nothing.
Until the night before last, I had a dream. In the dream I was knocking down a wall. I swung the sledgehammer hard, the wall cracked open, dark red water seeped out. I dropped the hammer and backed away, retreating to the door, and turned to look.
Crouching at the base of the wall was a figure, its back to me, barefoot, laying bricks one by one. The bricks stacked up in its hands—plumb and level, joints lined up, corners squared—all the way to the top of the wall. When it was done, the figure stood up and turned around—
I didn't see its face.
Its face was a wall.
A gray, dusty brick wall, with a hole in the middle. Square and neat, like a door.
I woke up, sitting bolt upright, cold sweat all over. The screen on my phone on the nightstand was lit. 3:17 a.m. I reached for the phone to check the time, my fingers brushing the edge of the cup—it toppled off the nightstand with a "clack" onto the floor.
I looked down.
On the floor, from the bedroom door to the bed, two lines of footprints.
Gray-white.
Bare feet.