It drizzled the day they moved the grave. The coffin came up and the old pit stood open.
An old man took a radish out of a fertiliser sack — white, a kilo or so, roots still on and dirty — dropped it in, and started shovelling.
He asked why. The old man said the hole cannot be left empty. He asked what happens if it is. The old man handed him the spade.
At Qingming the next year there was a stand of radish tops growing over the old pit. He dug one up. It was about the size of last year's.
The third year that patch was solid with them, growing better than anything else on the hillside. People came to dig them and he did not stop them.
In the fifth year a corner of the new grave subsided. He went to repair it, and the spade struck the coffin lid, and the sound it made was hollow.
He cleared the earth off and levered up a gap.
There was nothing in the coffin. On the base boards lay a radish, white, not rotted, still carrying its dirt.