Dragonworld
Thirteen year old Zhaishao, whose soft cheeks have yet to witness their first spot, and who has yet to develop a life he can call his own, keeps all his assets on his hard drive: pirated movies, music...
View ArticleWhere Did I Lose You?
Wang You had long forgotten when it was that he was first given somebody’s name card. Nor had he the faintest recollection of the occasion, whose card it was, their job title, what the person looked...
View ArticleThe Northern Border
This is how he passes through the town: you see his thin, stooped shadow emerge from the sidelong glance of the sunlight – it is the first month of the lunar new year, and the flashing sun has just...
View ArticleTwo Young Women From Fuyang
In the early winter of 1971, our army was looking for new recruits in Fuyang, Zhejiang Province. Although an intake of 120 was planned, the actual number ended up being 128. Our Chief of Staff assigned...
View ArticleThe Path to Freedom
“Imagining the worst tomorrow makes me happy.The gloom of the future lights my path.”The children’s laughter penetrated the walls. They were playing in the garden downstairs. I never opened the...
View ArticleDad Your Name is Field-Keeper
I was this old before I remembered my father. Before, I didn’t know his name and had no memory of him. My mother never told me. In any case, she’s dead now. As she lay dying, I sat at her bed–side,...
View ArticleForty-Nine Degrees
She sat in a taxi, stuck on the main road in the Old Town district. White lines of paint clearly marked six lanes of traffic, but none of them were going anywhere. The road signs reflected the harsh...
View ArticleConvince Me
There were three of us in the lab, and our goal was to extend the life of white mice. To be more precise, we were researching the flaws in the DNA of each mouse, and finding ways to repair them....
View ArticleSaint Marie
I didn’t get on with my landlady. Why? Because she was too nice. Perhaps I should explain.The morning light was pouring through the window into my bedroom and the lamps in the flat were blazing...
View ArticleMetro Line Five
Shi Yu changed into a pink slip then lay down on the massage table. She hadn’t seen Zhu Xiyan this time. When she closed her eyes, the beauty treatment finally began. Just as the beautician was...
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Three Sketches of Peter Hessler
Hessler’s here. He has had three books published in China since 2011, and this is his first major meet-and-greet session with his readers here. Some say he’s the voice of the proletariat; the author of...
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The Spices of Life
Before Pi County New Town was built, the county town, Pitong, used to be so small it was like a yeerba– a sticky-rice bun filled with minced pork and greens – with all the townspeople squashed together...
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Letter to My Mother
I am in Baan Mae village, Sanpatong County, Chiangmai, Thailand. The sun has just gone down and night is drawing in. Darkness seeps across the rice fields, the bamboo forests, the banana palms and rape...
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Small Town
1You can find the same kind of park in every small town. They’re all identical: a park with a small lake covered in water lilies, a few wooden boats that nobody rows tied to the so-called jetty, bright...
View ArticleA Fortuneteller in a Modern Metropolis
Xian Yi wears brown-framed glasses and a permanent smile, holding a strand of prayer beads in his hand. While he talks, eats, and walks, the beads slip silently through his fingers. Something in the...
View ArticleSearching for Bodies
Under the moonlight, it seemed like they were all sleeping.On October 11th, the village hosted a big show. This was always the most lively time of year in the village. Stalls selling mutton soup, beef...
View ArticleLessons in the Law
Confucius had three thousand disciples, seventy-two of them truly masterful scholars. Zhao claimed the same was true of his classes: 2.4 percent were masterful scholars. 'They came to class with fire...
View ArticleMarch on Beijing - The Picun Writers Group Part 1
Introductionby Wu Qi, editor of One-Way Street MagazineA few years ago, the Picun Writers’ Group caught the attention of Chinese society and the wider world of letters. This was not simply because of...
View ArticleMarch on Beijing - The Picun Writers' Group Part 2
The Workshop Mouseby Guo FulaiI’ve been working in Picun, Beijing for almost half a year now, and my most vivid memory is of the mice we share our workspace with.Our main task was making counters and...
View ArticleMo Yan's Country
On the afternoon of 12 October 2012, Mo Yan appeared at a press conference in a hotel meeting room that has since become famous worldwide. The hotel was in Gaomi, Mo Yan’s hometown, a small city in...
View ArticleSilent Children
One weekend while in Shanghai, I accompany some volunteers to Red Buds Foster Home for Children in the suburban Baoshan District.Red Buds is in an old two-storey building surrounded by an iron fence. I...
View ArticleThe Nursing Home Rightist
I alight at Beigao bus station and cut through the tunnel under the airport expressway. Tractors and tricycle carts trundle past me beneath the low ceiling – entirely another world to the one atop the...
View ArticleHide! Hide! Hide!
In faraway Wuhan, the springtime has clothed the banks of the Han River in green. But it is a springtime that many people will not see. It is a springtime when the dying could not receive a last kiss...
View ArticleView from a Window
I have never spent twenty-four hours a day cooped up with someone in a room less than thirty square meters (if you don’t count the bathroom), for sixty days without a break. Until 21st January, 2020....
View ArticleA Message Held to the Flame
I lack the knowledge and scientific expertise to offer any opinion on the new coronavirus epidemic. I have been watching the numbers, trying to grasp what experts are saying, and observing the...
View ArticleSplit Spring
Translator’s Note: “Split Spring” is a literal translation of 春分 chunfen (Spring Equinox), the fourth of the twenty-four solar termsThis spring has truly been split in two. One half in the old year,...
View ArticleSu Volunteers Diary
Editor’s note: After Wuhan went into lockdown on 23 Jan, and before any temporary hospitals came into operation, the city’s healthcare system was under enormous strain. The hospital admissions system,...
View ArticleForty Days: Growing Closer to My Parents during Quarantine
He sat waiting for me in the lobby of the clinic, wearing a facemask. As soon as I went over, the doctor raised a thermometer to take my temperature. He glanced to check that it was fine before he...
View ArticleGoing to Tang Village to Build a Coffin
It was completely dark by the time he reached Tang Village. The massive trees lining both sides of the road made it feel like a cave. He couldn’t see the trees clearly enough in the darkness to tell...
View ArticleThe West Window
What could be viewed through the west window were sights from the very edge of the city: the turbid but broad city moat, the ground stretching away to the site of the ancient city walls, also a few...
View ArticleMother
One Wednesday evening, drunk as a skunk in a Beijing eatery, I got a call from an unknown number. While the call didn’t stun me into sobriety in the exaggerated way you might see on TV, it really did...
View ArticleOne Night on the Wharf
The meal, which began at three in the afternoon, was not really lunch, nor was it dinner, but they all ate with hearty appetites. Half an hour went by, they began to slow down, and, an hour later, they...
View ArticleWhat's There to Do on a Friday Night?
Just as he was about to get off work, he called his girlfriend and arranged to meet her later in front of the People’s Theatre, thinking they could go get a bite to eat together. Even just a McDonald’s...
View ArticleDragon
Nothing about my cousin Zhang Degui suggested any special talent.My aunt stressed more than once in her later years that, when pregnant with Degui, she had had no special dreams, nor had anything else...
View ArticleThree Poems by Zheng Xiaoqiong
Memory suffuses the dusk, a girl weeping far from home in the calm air in the back garden, time is like a far-flowing afternoon river, smashed scales sparkle youth cries out from the water, the autumn...
View ArticleWu Ang – Four Poems
A tongue from a developed country Falls into a developing mouth There, it finds the hygiene problematic The dentists irresponsible A cotton-ball from years ago Still exuding residual warmth in a cranny...
View ArticleSelected poems from Following Huang Gongwang through the Fuchun Mountains
In 1350, hand scrolls were cinema you lean over and unroll it towards me ink and scene unfold in a leisurely rhythm the lens tracks, pans over the space between fingers and palmsMoving past a colophon...
View ArticleFour Poems by 玉珍 Yu Zhen
I had such a precious past the abrasions of poverty made these sparks glowback when I lay in the fields breathing in the scent of nature a gentle wind enveloped me and the scent on the wind drew...
View ArticleThe Cure-all
The Cure-all By Xu Xiaobin Translated by Megan CopelandThat new Suzhou noodle bar had been on his mind for days.It took him forty minutes to cycle to the restaurant. It was all the way over in the east...
View ArticleTaste Test
Taste Test By Sabrina Li-Chun Huang Translated by Andrew RuleWhen performing a food tasting, you must always cover every inch of the table with food. Even if you and your wife are the only ones there...
View ArticleThe Bug Princess
Historical note: Geidan 藝旦 (gē-tuànn in Taiwanese Hokkien) were female entertainers active in Taiwan from circa 1870 until the end of WWII. Like Japanese geisha, geidan provided musical entertainment...
View ArticleFood and Memory
Food and Memory by Hong Ying Translated by George Dudley On a small slope above the south bank of the Yangtze River in Chongqing, there is a 13-unit housing compound where 13 families lived, sharing...
View ArticleLunch for Two
The entire sum of human ambition is evident in trivial romance. People are always conspiring to change each other; it seems so much easier than changing the world.Lunch for Two By Zheng Zhi Translated...
View ArticleWinter is Coming
Winter is Coming By Wu Ang Translated by Kelly Zhang Winter is coming. Inside the one-bedroom apartment where she lives alone, she feels chilled to the bone. The newly renovated unit is still in a...
View ArticleNotes from the Consulting Room
I’ve always thought of consulting rooms as somewhere mysterious. From my observation, records on such places – such as Notes from Underground, Notes from the Dark Room, etc. – are like those private...
View ArticleThe Lost Deer
I should head home now.Yeah, the time has come, and I really should go back. I find myself wandering down a cold and dreary street in the early morning, feeling cold and hungry. How can I describe it?...
View ArticleAt Home
The calendar has gently closed the broken-cornered wooden gate With the approaching Chinese New Year The man-eating monster is snoring with a whistleA smile like a tung tree blooms on Grandma’s face In...
View ArticleOne Who Loves Doors Will Always Be Loved
The man says, I want to make a gate this big.The woman asks, what gate?The gate was in a colorful two-page insert. It was a resplendent Qing dynasty hanging flower gate, the kind with a front door,...
View ArticleAt Night I Rise to Mop the Floor
At night I rise to mop the floor and write to let life’s love and beauty carry onOthers are awake, not far away, to mop up—what? Bodies and evidenceHere on the mainland’s endless cutting edge I still...
View ArticleThe Home of a Spare Child
The Home of a Spare Child Under the rays of moonlight, missing dad, Tear after tear trickling down my face. I’ve learned to bear my hardships alone, I’ve learned to wipe my tears alone, To give however...
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