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Learn more at Airbus.com. This episode contains descriptions of suicide.

Welcome to The Guardian Long Reed, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our Long Reed, go to the Guardian.com forward slash Long Reed. The ghosts haunting China Cities by Andrew Kipnes. On the 11th floor of a suburban Hong Kong Tower, an 86 yearyear-old woman lived alone in a tiny decrepit apartment.

Her family rarely visited.

Her daughter had married a man in Macau and now lived there with him and their two children.

Her son had passed away years earlier, and his only child now attended university in England.

One September evening, the old woman fell and broke her hip while trying to change a light bulb.

She couldn't move and no one heard her crying for help.

Over the next two days, she slowly died from dehydration.

It took an additional three days for the neighbours to call the authorities,

three days for the stench to become truly unbearable.

The police removed the body and notified the family.

A small funeral was held. A few weeks later the landlord had the apartment thoroughly cleaned and tried to rent it out again.

Since the old woman's death was not classed as a murder or suicide,

the apartment was not placed on any of Hong Kong's online lists of haunted dwellings. To attract a new tenant, the landlord

reduced the rents likely, and the discount was enough to attract a university student named

Dai Lee, who had just arrived from mainland China.

On the first night that Dayely slept in the apartment, she saw the blurry face of an old woman in a dream.

She thought little of it and busied herself the next morning by buying

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