Remember the fox-and-tiger board game? The tabletop 志怪 (zhìguài, “records of the strange”) revival has a second act, and this one puts you on payroll.
The Yin-Yang Errands (《阴阳差事录》) builds its entire board around two figures lifted straight out of Chinese folk belief. The first is 走无常 (zǒu wúcháng, “walking as the wuchang”)—an ordinary living person whose soul is conscripted after dark to work as an unpaid temp constable for the underworld, only to be sent back to their body by morning for their day job. Talk about the ultimate gig-economy side hustle.
The second is 掠剩使 (lüè shèng shǐ, “commissioner of seized surplus”), a supernatural auditor whose entire purpose is confiscating whatever wealth you earned beyond your fated cosmic cap. Basically, the underworld’s anti-corruption IRS agent.
Play the game, and you get warrants, quotas, a salary for passing the starting square, and the highly realistic option to burn money for a ghost to make a problem go away. It highlights a fascinating historical quirk: the Chinese underworld has always been modeled on the imperial civil service, complete with departments, paperwork, and middle management.
Players on Xiaohongshu keep landing on the same existential reaction: how is there still a 9-to-5 grind down there?
All images via Xiaohongshu.
