Bio á Bioé (Ask of Ancestor)

This is the *jiao*—a ritual every Fujian kid grows up knowing, like tying shoelaces or dodging rain.

It’s two smooth, crescent-shaped wooden blocks—carved from camphor wood, some say, though most just call them “the cups.” You cup them in both hands, close your eyes, whisper your wish straight to the gods, then let them fall.

One flat side = yin. One rounded side = yang. If you get one of each? That’s a “sheng jiao”—“holy throw.”

The god’s nod. Yes. Done.

We do it twice a year, Qingming and Winter Solstice, same altar, same setup: whole chicken, steamed fish, braised pork belly, sticky rice cakes, candied kumquats, three cups of tea, three cups of rice wine, and yes, even a bowl of noodles for longevity. And right in the center? Those two little wooden cups, waiting.

Light the incense. Kneel. Press your forehead to the cool floorboards. Let the smoke rise slow, thick, fragrant and carry your wish up, up, up... Then? You wait. Not too long. Just long enough for the smoke to curl, for your breath to settle. Then—you throw.

I’d brought thick gold paper and fat red incense sticks, offered them to the ancestors and household deities in the *gongma* hall. Held the cups tight, whispered my heart out—then tossed. *Clack.* Both landed flat-side up.

*Xiao jiao.* A “laugh throw.” Translation: *Nah. Try again.*

An old man with a cane and one leg shorter than the other shuffled over, squinted at the cups, then nodded toward the gold paper stack. “Two more layers,” he said, voice raspy but kind. “Then it’ll be *hao shi*.”

(That’s Minnan for “it’ll get done” – not magic, just momentum.)

So I added them—folded, stacked, lit the corners and knelt again. Hands pressed together. Breath held. Tossed.

*Clack.*
One flat. One round.
*Sheng jiao.*

The god didn’t shout. Didn’t flash lightning. Just... nodded. Quietly. Like He’d been waiting all along.

Damfool writes before he blends. Each release starts as a person — a place, an era, a life with something unresolved in it — and the formula follows the character rather than the other way round. Lord of Tree is drawn from an Ah Cheng novel. Most of the rest are his own.

Nothing in the line shares a signature, and none of them is the lead. The recurring figures are altar keepers, aunties, and people coming home after too long away, closer to the characters met at the edge of a world than to anyone at its centre. The seasons make it literal: Cantonese memory in the first, Fujian in the second, a Macau port town in the third, three generations of one timber family in the fourth.

Behind all of it is one Macanese perfumer at one bench in Chengdu. He builds his own components and tinctures instead of buying them ready-made, and works with materials that are hard to get or specific to one place — aged nutmeg paste from a Penang spice factory running for over a century, Tibetan yak extract that took a year to render.