Have you ever heard static coming out of an old TV in the dead of night? That crackling hiss of white noise.
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I took over Old Liu's scrap stall last autumn. It sits on the edge of a village-in-the-city district in the east of town, most of it already torn down. The stall isn't big—a ring of corrugated iron around a yard full of old fridges, broken washing machines, and rusted metal frames. Every morning at six I pedal the three-wheeled cart out; every night at seven I'm back sorting the haul. The days run like someone hit repeat.
A little past three that afternoon, I met the TV seller at the corner of Mingguang Road. A man in his fifties, gray-streaked hair, wearing a drab gray jacket, standing next to an electric three-wheeler. In the cart bed crouched an old CRT television—21 inches, silver-gray casing—screen facedown, pressed against the floor of the cart.
I braked and took a look. No dents, no scratches on the casing. All the screws in the back panel. Looked almost new. I did the math in my head—cleaned up, that kind of old set could sell for eighty to a hundred. Thirty, forty yuan profit, easy.
"Hey boss, this TV for sale?" I pulled my cart up beside him.
The man looked up at me. His eyes were a little unfocused, like he hadn't slept. He said: "It's yours if you want it."
I hopped off, walked around to the back, and reached for the TV. My hand had just touched the edge of the casing when the man suddenly spoke: "Don't turn it around."
My hand froze midair. "What's wrong?"
"The screen," he said. "Leave it facing in. Don't turn it around."
I looked at him, then at the TV. The screen had a little dust on it, and I could see a few streaks where fingers had wiped across it. It struck me as odd, but I didn't think much of it. Some sellers had their quirks—embarrassed their goods were old, wouldn't let anyone see the front.
"Fine, won't turn it," I said. "How much?"
"Thirty."
At that price my doubts doubled. Thirty yuan, and in this condition? Either it was stolen or something was wrong with it. I took another look at the TV. On the back panel was a white label with three red characters—Changhong brand. Below it, the model number and the manufacture date: March 2001.
"Thirty?" I asked. "Does it work?"
"Works fine," the man said. "Just... don't turn the screen around."
I figured the guy was a little off, but thirty yuan was too cheap to pass up. Even if it was broken, the parts alone were worth twenty. I pulled three ten-yuan notes out of my pocket and handed them over. He took them, pushed his cart away, and didn't look back.
I hoisted the TV onto my own cart, screen side down. On the way back, hitting a bump at the vegetable market entrance, I heard a *thud* from inside the set, like something had come loose.
At seven that night I finished sorting the haul. Old cardboard stacked under the tin shed, scrap iron piled against the east wall, and along the west wall the appliances that still worked, or half worked—two washing machines, a microwave, three televisions. That silver-gray Changhong I set in the deepest corner, screen to the wall, backside out.
I threw an old canvas tarp over it.
That night I went to bed early—ten o'clock. My rented place sat behind the yard, a single flat-roofed room Old Liu had lived in when he minded the stall. I'd moved in after taking over. It wasn't big. A bed, a table, an induction cooker. A length of wire nailed to the wall for clothes.
In the middle of the night I woke up needing to pee. I sat up, half asleep, and heard a sound outside.
*Shhhh—shhhh—*
Like the white noise of a radio between stations. Or wind moving across a plastic sheet. I threw a jacket over my shoulders and walked to the door. Pushed the wooden door open. The sound got clearer. It was coming from the direction of the yard. From the tin shed.
I stood at the door listening for five or six seconds. The hiss came and went. Sometimes it sounded like someone turning a knob—a *zzzt*, then back to steady static, then another *zzzt* a moment later.
I shuffled over in my slippers. A bare bulb hung under the shed roof, casting a sickly yellow light that turned the piles of scrap into misshapen shadows. I went around the cardboard stack to the west wall. The sound was coming from the Changhong in the far corner.
I stopped two or three steps away, not daring to get closer. The tarp was still over it. The screen side faced the wall—even if it were plugged in, there was no way to see the picture. But the hiss was coming from there. No question.
I reached out to pull the tarp off. My fingertips hadn't touched the edge before the hiss stopped, sudden.
The whole yard went silent. So quiet I could hear the drain pipes of the next compound dripping.
My hand hung frozen in the air. I stared at the tarp. Under it, nothing. Not a sound.
I waited maybe half a minute, then lifted a corner of the tarp.
The screen was dark.
But it was on. A faint glow coated the surface of the screen. It faced the wall, so I could only see a thin sliver from the side.
I pulled the tarp all the way off, crouched down, and craned my neck to look into the gap between the wall and the screen.
The wall was red brick, smeared with cement. The screen sat about a fist's width from it. The gray-black glow spilled across the brick, like a wash of thin ink.
I straightened up. Didn't touch the TV. Turned and walked back.
I'd taken two steps when the hiss started again behind me.
This time it was different. Not the diffuse hiss of static—it had the feel of something being tuned. Like someone slowly turning the channel dial. *Zzt... zzzz—zzzt—zzzt—*
Then the sound stopped.
I stood at the door of the shed and looked back.
The screen faced the wall—I couldn't see the picture. But I could see the glow on the bricks had changed. No longer an even gray-black. It flickered, light and dark passing across it. Like something was playing on the screen, the light bleeding through onto the wall.
Against my better judgment, I walked back.
I crouched down, put my face close to the gap, and looked in sideways.
The screen was on.
Nothing but static. Dense black-and-white specks jumping across the screen. No channel logo. No sound. Just picture, like a TV with no signal.
I watched for four or five seconds. The static flickered twice, like someone had touched the antenna. The picture warped, then the static slowly steadied.
Then the picture changed.
The static cleared as if someone were wiping it away with a hand—starting from the center of the screen, peeling back in rings to reveal what lay underneath.
It was my place.
The very room I was living in. Judging by the angle, someone had fixed a camera in the opposite corner of the room, aimed straight at my bed. In the picture the blanket lay thrown open. The pillow pushed to one side. The induction cooker on the table was plugged in, its power light a green dot.
Empty.
The camera moved in a slow pan. From the foot of the bed to the head. From the head to the table. From the table to the door.
Like someone was carrying a camera through my room.
Every hair on my back stood up.
I stood up and ran for the yard entrance. Two steps in I stopped. My room was only a dozen meters behind the shed. The door was still open, and inside it was dark.
But I hadn't turned off the light when I came out.
No. I'd turned it off when I left. I remembered pulling the cord—that ceiling light was the pull-chain kind, and I'd pulled it.
But the room was lit now.
The green dot of the induction cooker's power light. And the alarm clock on my nightstand, its luminous hands glowing a faint green.
I stood on the concrete between the yard and my room, feet nailed to the ground. From the shed, the TV let out a faint hum, like a living thing breathing.
I gritted my teeth and walked toward the room. At the door I reached in, found the pull cord, and yanked it. The ceiling light came on. The white glare showed everything clear—blanket thrown open on the bed, pillow crooked, induction cooker plugged in with its green power light.
Exactly as I'd seen on the TV.
I stood in the doorway, not entering, and swept every corner of the room. Under the table. Under the bed. Behind the door. No one.
I backed out slowly and pulled the door shut, leaning against it to catch my breath. Then I went back to the shed. The Changhong sat quietly against the wall, screen to the wall. Not on.
I put the tarp back over it. Two layers.
I didn't sleep again that night. I sat on the seat of my cart and smoked half a pack, until dawn.
The next day I hauled the TV out of the shed and onto my cart, screen still facedown, and pedaled to the biggest secondhand market in the west part of town. An old man surnamed Zhou bought appliances there. We'd done business a few times.
"Master Zhou, tell me what this is worth to you." I set the TV down on the concrete in front of his stall.
Master Zhou crouched down and reached to flip the TV over. I caught his hand: "Don't turn the screen."
He looked up at me, eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Look at it like this. Back side. You name a price."
He pulled my hand away and flipped the TV over anyway. Screen up.
Pure black, cracked like a spider's web. The screen had shattered into dozens of pieces, fissures radiating from the center outward. Completely. Cleanly broken.
Master Zhou clicked his tongue. "Screen's smashed. This isn't worth much. I'll strip the casing and sell the plastic. Ten."
I said nothing. Last night I'd seen that screen lit up. Clearly lit. With static. With a picture.
I took the ten yuan, left the TV there, and left.
About a week passed. That week I ran my route as usual, sorted as usual, slept as usual. But every night before bed I bolted the wooden door from the inside and wedged a chair against it.
For a week, no more static.
On the eighth night, coming back past Mingguang Road, I saw a sheet of paper on a lamppost, its edges curling in the wind. I glanced at it as I rode by. Four black characters at the top: MISSING PERSON.
I braked and wheeled back.
The paper had a printed photo. A man in his fifties. Gray-streaked hair. Wearing a gray jacket.
The man I'd bought the TV from.
According to the notice, his name was Sun Degui, fifty-six, living in Jianxin Compound on Mingguang Road. He'd gone out to sell scrap on the afternoon of September 3rd and never come home. Missing eight days.
September 3rd. The day I'd hauled the TV home.
I stared at the photo for a long time. In it the man was smiling, eyes brighter than when I'd met him, the corners of his mouth turned up. I remembered his back as he'd pushed his cart away—a patch of gray dust smeared on the back of his jacket.
I parked the cart, took out my phone, and dialed the number on the notice. A woman answered. Her voice was hoarse. She said she was Sun Degui's daughter.
I said I'd met her father while I was out buying scrap. Bought a TV off him.
Silence on the line for a moment. Then the woman asked me: "Did you take that TV home with you?"
"Yes," I said. "Silver-gray Changhong. Twenty-one-inch."
She went quiet again. I could hear heavy breathing on the other end, like someone holding their breath.
"Miss?" I said.
"That TV," she said. "You'd better get rid of it."
"What do you mean?"
"My dad's mind wasn't right for a while. He kept saying he could see things in the TV. It started after my mother died. We took him to a doctor—they called it mild hallucinations. Medication held it down for a while. Then he stopped taking it on his own.
"That TV—he smashed the screen the first day he brought it home. Smashed it beyond watching. We don't know where he got another one exactly like it later, and we don't know who he sold it to."
I held the phone to my ear, feeling the muscle at the back of my neck jumping. "You're saying... the screen was smashed?"
"Yes. Smashed to pieces. The one in his room is still sitting there, broken glass never swept up. He said there was a person in the screen. He couldn't sleep until he smashed it."
I hung up and stood under the streetlight. The late-August night wind carried damp. Cold sweat broke over me in layers.
I'd seen the shattered screen with my own eyes—when Master Zhou flipped it over it had been cracked like a spider's web. But the screen I'd looked at that night had been whole. Lit. Full of static. Full of picture.
I got on my cart and headed for the secondhand market. It was closed, iron gate drawn, black inside. I gripped the gate and peered in. Master Zhou's stall sat at the far end, covered with a blue plastic tarp. Bulges under the tarp, God knows what.
I stood there a while, then turned and left.
Next morning I went back. The market had just opened; Master Zhou was setting out his goods. I walked up to his stall. He looked up. "More stuff to sell?"
"That TV from yesterday," I said. "Where is it?"
"Which one?"
"The Changhong with the smashed screen."
Master Zhou thought a moment. "Stripped it. Casing went as plastic. The picture tube nobody wanted—took it to the dump."
I stared at him. "Where's the dump?"
He pointed.
The west waste transfer station was two streets past the market. As I rode up, a garbage truck was dumping into a big pit. I told the old gatekeeper I was looking for something. He told me to go in myself.
Stripped parts were piled around the pit—circuit boards, power cords, metal casings all mixed together. I dug for over an hour and turned up a heap of old-TV fragments. Among them, a corner piece of silver-gray casing still holding a torn scrap of the red Changhong label.
I didn't find the picture tube.
A whole picture tube that size couldn't just vanish into thin air. I asked the old gatekeeper if anyone had come for an old picture tube the day before. He said no—nobody came to dig around this place for ten or fifteen days at a time. Too filthy.
I crouched at the edge of the trash and lit a cigarette. My phone rang. Sun Degui's daughter.
She said: "I thought about it last night. You'd better give that TV back to me."
"I already got rid of it."
"How?"
"Sold it as scrap. The guy took it apart."
She was quiet a moment. Then: "Master Li, when you moved that TV, the screen was facing in, right?"
"Right."
"Did you ever turn it around?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Sure."
She fell quiet again. This time longer—so long I thought she'd hung up. Then she said something, her voice so small it was like talking to herself.
"My father used to say that a TV with its screen facing in—something lives inside it. Carry it out, and it takes it as you agreeing to keep it."
"Your father was crazy," I said.
"He was crazy," she said. "But then he stopped talking about it. The day he stopped, he smashed the new TV."
I hung up and ground out the cigarette on the concrete rim of the pit. From the pit rose the sour smell of rotten fruit and wet cardboard mixed together, stinging my eyes.
That night I went home, bolted the door from the inside, wedged the chair. I lay in bed with the light off, listening.
Not a sound. The tin shed was still, not even the wind on the plastic sheeting.
I closed my eyes and slowly sank.
Then I heard a faint *zzzt*.
I snapped my eyes open.
In the corner of the room, the little 14-inch TV on my table—its screen was lit.
Gray-black glow. Static dots dancing on the screen.
*Shhhh. Shhhh.*
I sat up in bed and stared at the little TV. Its power cord wasn't even plugged in. The plug lay on the floor where it had fallen.
The static flickered twice, then began to recede from the center outward.
The picture appeared.
My place again. The same angle. The camera panned slowly—from the foot of the bed to the head, from the head to the table, from the table to the door.
It stopped at the door.
The door was shut. Bolted. A chair wedged against it.
Then the door began to move.
The bolt slid open on its own, slow. The metal rod drew back out of its catch with a faint *click*.
A chair leg scraped the floor.
The door opened a crack.
I stared at the door opening on the TV screen, then turned my head to look at the real door of my room.
It was open. The bolt had slipped out at some point. The chair was pushed aside.
Nothing at the door. The concrete outside was empty. The yellow bulb of the tin shed cast a blurred pool of light.
But on the TV, the door was still moving. It swung fully open, and the camera began to drift outward—slowly across the threshold, onto the concrete outside. Then it stopped.
The camera panned, like it was searching for something.
Finally it aimed at the tin shed.
At the door of the shed, under the yellow bulb, stood a person with his back to the camera.
He wore a gray jacket. A patch of gray dust smeared across his back.
I recognized him. It was Sun Degui.
He stood there at the shed door, facing inside. I followed his gaze with my real eyes—through my room's doorway, across the concrete—and looked at the shed.
Inside, the shed was empty. Just a pile of scrap iron and cardboard.
But in front of the Sun Degui in the TV, at the base of the shed's west wall, crouched a television.
Silver-gray casing. Screen facing in, toward the wall.
Sun Degui bent down slowly and reached for the TV. He lifted it into his arms, and turned.
In the moment he turned, the TV screen flickered in front of my eyes.
No static on it.
It was me.
I sat in bed, eyes wide, mouth open, sweat covering my face. The camera shot me head-on—my full face, the wall behind me.
Sun Degui, holding the TV, turned and began walking toward me.
My little TV screen went black, sudden.
The room went silent at once—so silent I could hear my heartbeat pounding my ribs.
I sat on the bed without moving, staring at the patch of concrete outside the door.
The concrete was clean under the yellow bulb's light. No gray jacket. No TV. No one.
But my ears caught a sound.
From the doorway. Faint. Like footsteps on concrete. One step. One step. Drawing closer.
I glanced down at the little TV. The screen was dark. But the power light glowed green.
Then the screen flickered once.
The picture was back.
My room again, but the angle had changed. No longer from the far corner—it was closer now, close enough to make out the edge of the slippers on my feet.
The camera pushed in a little more.
I could see the hairs on my legs.
I jerked my head up toward the doorway. A TV stood there. Silver-gray casing. Screen facing into the room.
Sun Degui had set it there.
Its screen was lit. All static.
The static hissed, like someone turning the channel.
Then the static stopped, and a living room I'd never seen appeared. A plaid blanket draped over the sofa. An enamel mug on the coffee table. A woman sat on the sofa with her back to the camera. Gray-white hair. Shoulders sloping, slightly stooped.
Slowly, she turned her head.
I couldn't make out her face. But her lips were moving. There was no sound. Still, I could read the shape of the words.
What she said was: "Don't turn it around."