18 posts tagged with "Fiction"

I, Wang Er, work in a peculiar place called the "Adolescent Behavioral and Psychological Adjustment Center's Affiliated Specialized Clinic for School Refusal." The name is as long as a train, rumbling over all your romantic notions of teenage rebellion. Spring has arrived, and the poplar catkins outside drift like snow, but the "spring" here consists of kids sneezing, crying, and stubbornly refusing to set foot inside a school. Their numbers are as plentiful as the pollen spread by spring; rumor has it we're nearing the ten thousand visit mark. It truly is one hell of a bumper year.

Beiping's dust, come Saturday, seemed to carry a hint of rest too, lazily tumbling under the sun. But the earth in Old Wang Tou's heart felt like it had been hardened by last night's wind, compacted, unable to breathe.

He huddled in his palm-sized little room in the South City. Old newspapers were pasted onto the window paper, printed with long-outdated foreign company ads, the words almost faded away. Inside, there was a whiff of stale cooking smoke, mixed with a faint scent of mildew. He just sat like that, facing the creaking wooden door, his gaze blank.

Lao Wang finally got his hands on the car. Not by stealing, not by robbing, but in a way more characteristic of these times—you know the kind. A brand new, gleaming metallic, Bavarian-proud, five-letter iron beast. In theory, this thing symbolized success, at least the greasy kind, the kind others could recognize at a glance. Touching the blue-and-white emblem on the steering wheel, Lao Wang's heart felt like it held a rabbit, one that had just popped some pills, kicking frantically with excitement. The feeling was like the first time he held a girl's hand in his youth, soft and smooth, full of infinite possibilities, as if he was about to do something earth-shattering.

K, or let's call him Old Wang for now – names, after all, had long been worn down to vague designations in this endless hustle – rode his creaking electric scooter, navigating the maze-like veins of the city. Today, the system had assigned him a special order, marked "Urgent" and "Medicine." The remarks section pleaded, "Life-saving medicine, please be quick, only an old person at home." The address pointed to an old residential complex on the city's edge, a place like a forgotten fold hidden beneath the glossy surface of the metropolis.

K, weary of the office air thick with a mixture of dust and despair, decided to climb a mountain during the holiday. He'd heard of one on the outskirts of the city, not high, but with views said to cleanse the soul. He needed cleansing, desperately. The city felt like a vast, sticky web, and he sensed he was being slowly digested. The mountain, perhaps, was a pocket of reality outside the web.

Li Ming, an inconspicuous weed in this steel forest, contributed his sweat daily beside roaring machines, just to earn those few banknotes that barely allowed him to stand on the city's edge. His world was small, small enough only to hold the creaking single bed in his rented room, and the sweet smile of his faraway girlfriend, Mei Ling. Oh, right, and his three-year-old phone, and inside it, the Apple account that held all his hopes.

The air in the town was stagnant, as always. The dusty afternoon sun cast a dull glow on the sooty windowpanes of Wang Afu's house. Inside, the air was even heavier. Wang Afu's long sighs and his wife Li Xiujuan's silent resistance stood between them like an invisible wall.

I can't quite recall when I first chewed betel nut. It was probably sometime during a summer in my second year of high school, when the air was thick and sticky like half-melted malt syrup. A friend handed me one, his tone like he was sharing a secret weapon: "It's a pick-me-up, hits harder than caffeine." The thing was coated in a sickly sweet syrup, but inside were coarse, tough fibers. Chewing it gave a primitive, almost violent pleasure. First, a fleeting sweetness in the mouth, then astringency, and finally a burning sensation that shot straight to the top of my head. The world seemed to sharpen for a fraction of a second, then quickly blurred again, like an old, out-of-focus projector.