Fireworks over the Himalayas
For a while, every day at noon I would go to the Regency Café and order a jasmine cold brew. When Fatima brought the coffee, I'd chat her up: "What a coincidence — Fatima again?" Because I made all of…
Tag: #personal essay
28 posts
California Dreamin'
Sometimes, without warning, you walk into a space wrapped in frosted glass — very bright frosted glass. You can see endless lines of rain outside, the sound rolling on and on, the light and sound both…
A Snow Mountain Like an Ice Cream Bar
When you have a four-year-old daughter and a six-month-old son at home, plus a seven-year-old British Shorthair cat, the resolve needed for a family trip is probably equivalent to launching an uncerta…
Bus Route 400: A String of Happy Bullets
In certain cities, on certain evenings, there comes a brief and exquisite interval — when the sky turns a blue that defies description, quiet and seemingly eternal, though in truth it is about to go d…
Let Me Gather All My Courage to Wish You a Happy New Year
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Life Is Elsewhere: The Flood Caused by a Silly Cat
Ever since we moved to Jiaoda Yicun, the place where we used to pay our mortgage every month to maintain the right to live became "the old home." Ma Xiaoyuan calls it "Xi'an," because she's known sinc…
Live an Authentic Life
I wanted to write a few words because of a news story I saw. In short: a woman from the Xihaigu region, from a poor family, graduated from a 211 university in Beijing. You can imagine what a sensation…
Let's Talk About 'Rocket Science'
There is an English idiom — "It's not rocket science" — which roughly means something isn't that difficult. For instance, putting an elephant in a refrigerator isn't rocket science, because it's simpl…
Why I Don't Like the Word 'Involution'
I am a jianbing guozi enthusiast. I have consumed a considerable number of jianbing guozi in Xi'an, Beijing, and Tianjin — you could call me half an expert. But in recent years, I've rarely eaten jian…
On Teacher Huang
It was in the course of growing up that I gradually came to understand the impact a good teacher can have on a student. This made me feel that teaching is truly a profession with a rare opportunity to…
Life, Everlasting
When a newborn arrives, there is so much paperwork. On form after form, we watched Yuanyuan's age go from two hours, to two days, to about seven days, when we finally brought her home. The neonatal wa…
Abstinence
I quit smoking on some day in April 2019. It was in a city in Hebei province, and I felt acutely that my throat had been severely damaged by over a decade of smoking. I resolved to quit, and I haven't…
On the Pandemic
Shock. I remember when the pandemic first started in China, everyone was wary of people from Hubei and Wuhan. A truck driver from Hubei drifted on the highway for several days before our kind-hearted …
Tales of the Western Capital: The Tooth Extraction
First came a big-eyed beauty poking around inside my mouth. Because of the mask and the close proximity, those eyes—which were merely somewhat large to begin with—became as vast as two lakes in which …
The Good Side of All Bad Things
When I was young — younger than now — I didn't believe in dialectics at all. The idea that fortune and misfortune are interdependent? Pure sophistry. And that story about the old man at the border who…
On Worshipping the Buddha
During a vacation I once went to Wutai Mountain but passed through the gate without entering, wasting over a hundred yuan on the entrance ticket. Later, visiting the Shanxi Museum, I learned about the…
On Humility
Back in elementary school, I heard the saying: "Humility leads to progress; pride leads to decline." Then in middle school, reading collections of excellent student essays, a peer argued that humility…
Beijing Tales: The Floor Cat of Line 4
Have you heard of the Floor Cat of Line 4? The Floor Cat of Line 4, rather than being a cat, is more like a kind of tiger—though of course cats are already a kind of tiger. People usually call tigers …
Thank You
On the way home I kept listening to Dao Lang's "Thank You." If there's one last thought before I die, I hope it would be: thank you.
Brother Cat
It was a bright day. My mother called me over to look, and from her arms poked out a small yellow tiger-striped head. A light that contained neither sun nor moon—a brightness like the clarity after wa…
Beijing's Haze
Haze is a rather lovely character—雨中的猫—rain with a cat. Her paw pads soaked with rainwater, she treads across the rain-washed floor and leaps nimbly toward the sky. The elastic return to earth you exp…
A Chronicle of Tooth Extraction
A major event in my personal history. I am still in pain as I write this, though the degree of pain is hard to gauge. I can chat and laugh, but I can't say it's nothing — with things we must endure, i…
Youth Crisis
Reaching thirty one morning startled to find I am not this person nor am I any of the persons who woke in shock each day before to find they were not this person either I suspect I am not the person I…
The Last Day of 2017: Driving 1,100 Kilometers to Beijing
I set off around ten in the morning and arrived in Beijing at eleven at night, sleeping for one hour in between — at a rest stop, of course. The route took me along the G30 Lianhuo Expressway to Fengl…
Driving Around the City on Christmas Eve
On the road I saw several enormous cranes, cordoned off with red traffic cones, hanging lanterns on trees. The area enclosed by the cones seemed to exist outside this world, oblivious to the tides of …
Busyness Is a Disease
I recently read a news story about a PhD in the aerospace system who devoted his life to the country until he literally worked himself to death. This kind of story is all too common in our country's n…
Ways of Drawing Near to Mother
In the end, we must admit that one person's feelings never truly reach another. Even though we rely on that illusion to live. To sympathize with someone is to feel as they feel—but who can truly feel …
The First Snow of 2017
Head full of white snow like white hair,