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…
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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…
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…
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…
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…
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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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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.
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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 …
Head full of white snow like white hair,