In our parts, summer arrived early and lingered exceptionally long. By May, the sun was already scorching, the asphalt roads softened by the heat, making your soles sticky when you stepped on them. The air was filled with the sweet fragrance of gardenias and the reek of rotting waterweeds from the riverside. Back then, the cicadas hadn't started their chorus yet, but the afternoons always made one drowsy.
Lao Lei, Lei Zhendong – quite a resonant name. But this past month, he felt more stifled than a sealed gourd. The little things at the company snowballed from sesame seeds to watermelons, then to winter melons, crushing him till he could barely breathe. The numbers on the reports were like rows of baring-fanged imps, constantly invading his dreams at night. People nicknamed him "the second Lei-Jobs," but the taste of being "second" now was nothing but bitter Coptis root. He himself grumbled, "This past month, damn it, has truly been the toughest time since I started the business!"
Lao Wang, Wang Shouyi – a plain name for a down-to-earth man – had been a clerk in the sub-district's "Comprehensive Governance Office" for what felt like an eternity, nearly twenty years. The office window faced the central garden: flowers in spring, cicadas in summer, fallen leaves in autumn, and the longing for heating in winter. Life, well, it was like the seasons outside his window, one after another; bustling on the surface, but not much real difference underneath.
The day was stifling, like a sealed soy sauce vat. The Start of Summer had just passed, and the real summer heat hadn't truly arrived, but in a place like Shanghai, once the crowds gathered, the warmth rose up on its own accord, like from a stove. Old Wang, Wang Deshun, retired for nearly five years, had been pestered endlessly by his little grandson today. Giving up his usual chess game at the alley entrance, he'd reluctantly trailed along to this confounded "Happy Valley."
Li Jianguo's name was forged in molten steel. Amidst the tide of Reform and Opening Up, driven by a raw determination that "dared to command the sun and moon to change skies," he single-handedly built a vast steel empire from a barren mudflat. His "Jianguo Group" was not just a pillar of the local economy, but also a symbol of the convergence of individual struggle and epochal opportunity in that turbulent era. Wealth flowed like molten iron from a blast furnace, accumulating into dazzling figures and erecting an invisible fortress around the Li family.
Wang Er felt this year's spring was stickier than usual, even the wind carried a dampness, feeling like an unwiped rag against his face. He huddled in his small, north-facing room, staring blankly at the black, square block on the table—what they called a "smartphone." This gadget was his eyes, his ears, and sometimes, it seemed, his brain.
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.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
My name is Li Ming, an ordinary office worker, shuttling daily through the city's cold concrete jungle. The cubicle is my fortress, and the food delivery app is my armory. I used to think that this was the progress of the times, where with a tap of a finger, delicious food would arrive. That was until a news report hit the surface of my calm life like a pebble shattering a tranquil lake – "Undercover reporter at Huang Men Chicken warns not to order takeout before 11 am."