The protagonists of In the Steppe are a child and the lower classes. Chekhov reserves his softest brushstrokes for them, not because they suffer more, but because they suffer blindly.

In the steppe of the hot summer, nature’s vitality is intense, almost theatrical in its temperament. People’s everyday life was banal, boring, and uneventful. They nap and dream: the “masters,” compared with the child and the coachmen, are relatively less ignorant and voiceless. The merchant dreams of profit even in sleep, while the priest questions the meaning of life in his dreams. The twenty-year-old coachman is as innocent as a child, and his dream is a kind of transparent emptiness. The steppe contains all: “It was not to blame, but even so, it asked for forgiveness of someone.”

There is also the most detestable prankster—“...waiting for the appropriate moment to sting someone with his mockery and roll with laughter...” He kills for fun, bullies others for no reason and stirs up trouble. Yet Chekhov still gives him a forgiving long shot: the prankster runs up and down holding a whip, begging forgiveness from those he has tormented, crying, “I’m bored. I’m bored.”

The child discovers that the coachmen share a common trait: “they were all people with a beautiful past and a very bad present. All of them, without exception, spoke with rapture about their past, while they greeted the present with scorn.”

And here the middle-aged Chekhov summarizes: “the Russian man likes to remember, but does not like to live.”

And his reader echoes: the Chinese people are good at planning for the future, and at surviving, but we don’t like to live either.

“Why do we live?” or “Why don’t people commit suicide?” (Albert Camus) are two aspects of the same question. Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Grossman, almost all Russian writers, or all post-19th-century writers with even the slightest seriousness in their work, asked the same question. Some answered it, or tried to. But Chekhov, trained as a doctor who might have been expected to diagnose life and death, did not. His writing neither diagnoses nor prescribes.

In the steppe, life is simple: eating, sleeping, traveling on the road, sitting around a campfire telling stories, some fictional, some real, to comfort the soul. The steppe simply goes on its own way: sun, rain, day, night. Sometimes it offers merciful dawns, sometimes it torments its living beings with scorching heat, sometimes it unleashes storms as if it wishes to wipe out everything alive. People toil with it, and with each other. Each suffers their own suffering, remembering either own real or imagined happiness, too busy to ask questions, and lacking the devices to analyze the meaning of life. As Chinese writer Xiao Hong writes of Northeast China: “people are busy surviving, and busy dying.” Human life, in the Russian steppe of the 19th century as well as the Chinese village of the early 20th century, is nothing but a “field of life and death.”

The protagonist is a ten-year-old child, an interesting age. He has enough intelligence to understand what is happening around him: he knows that dark clouds mean a storm; he knows that killing a harmless grass snake is cruel and wrong; he knows that the coachman’s legendary stories are full of inconsistencies. But he does not have the ability to analyze them, the cruelty and the absurdity, where they came from, and what they were leading to.

Writers who are comfortable with clichés never forget to give a child’s eyes some beautiful adjectives, bright, or clear. But in Chekhov’s writing, the child’s gaze is simply bewildered: encountering the world for the first time, everything bursts into his retina and soul in sharp, unfiltered form. He tears up more easily than adults, and is more easily moved, angered, pleased, and comforted.

The most emotionally stable figure must be the merchant uncle. He calculates and worries with steady minor anxiety. His face carries a fixed stern, businesslike dryness, until the end of the story: “The business dryness suddenly left his face, he turned a little red, smiled suddenly and said: see that you study… don’t forget your mother and listen to Natasya Petrova… If you study well, Egor, I won’t abandon you…”

The priest, old and haggard, prays for the child, and: “If I die, remember me.”

Both the merchant and the priest give the child 10 kopecks as a farewell gift.

In my hometown dialect, there is a word, “xing shi (醒事)” describing that as a child grows up, they awaken from ignorance into adult lucidity and sensibility. Some also describe the 19th to early 20th century as humanity’s collective passage from an ignorant childhood into an awakened adolescence.

But then what about adults, today’s adults? How do they answer those ultimate questions: why do people live, why don’t they die, and how should they live? When people realize that they create no value at all for themselves or others; when sensible, lucid Homo sapiens face the fact that most so-called jobs and careers merely maintain or slightly push forward a giant machine—call it a society, a system, a country, or an organization—which cares about their happiness less than the steppe cares about the fate of the coachmen—then bankers, engineers, managers, and polished white-collar professionals flaunting business-class flights on social media: how can they enjoy their “achievements” if they are sober and honest enough to see that they achieve nothing? That what they produce is money, not value? And that there they’re less useful than the ignorant coachmen wandering the Russian steppe a hundred years ago.

Tolstoy, in his short story “Master and Man,” which is also about a journey in a wagon and adopts an omniscient perspective, gave the answer that the master should sacrifice his life for the man—the working class—who actually transforms hard labor into real value.

Chekhov, however, is the least godlike of all Russian writers. Even the question of God, who God is, who God should be, he does not answer, rarely attempt to explore. Yet his characters often pray. Sometimes I feel that all his works are a kind of prayer: “Oh God, look down from heaven.”

Like in Chinese mythology, people believe that there are gods three feet above one’s head. What people pray for is not their own awakening, but that the divine will open its eyes above them, and that its gaze will be compassionate, clear, and as gentle as Chekhov’s voice.

The hotel receptionist handed me another map and pointed out how to get to the James Joyce Bridge. At first he put on a straight face and grunted, “How would I know?” Then burst out giggling—of course I know, it’s where I live.

I seem to have quickly grown used to the Irish way of hospitality as well.

The streets of Dublin are lined with restaurants and pubs, or restaurants with pubs, live music inside—songs heard on American radio, one singer, one guitar, one song after another. The group of Americans I traveled with all seemed quite moved, singing along, ordering one Guinness after another, and (having no choice but to) leaning close together, shouting at full volume.

At the doors, one or two men stood in suits with close-cropped hair—tall, sturdy, ruddy-faced—smoking with grave, alert expressions.

I sat down in a Japanese restaurant. No man guarding the door, a fortune cat waving on the counter, warm, clean, and bright. No live music, but on every table there were one or two glasses of Guinness. The servers were all young Asian women, petite, speaking in quiet voices. I ordered sashimi and wonton ramen (a combination I had never seen elsewhere), and asked if they had anything spicy. She fetched from another table a bottle of chili oil and a small jar of seven-spice powder, free of charge. I remembered a few days earlier, when I had just landed in Dublin, at another ramen place on a street corner—a small dollop of chili paste cost two extra euros.

The warm broth was, as expected, comforting, though the wonton skins were slightly overcooked, and the filling tasted indistinctly bland. Sashimi was just sashimi. The small restaurant was filled with English spoken in all kinds of accents. Sitting alone, I realized this was the first time I had eaten by myself in a week. The city outside the window quieted down, still not yet dark, beads of rain covering everything.

Rain, dusk, the fading yet lingering light—these seem to be Dublin’s keynote, even in spring, when daffodils bloom in every corner of the city: in parks, along the medians, and as centerpieces in restaurants. I had walked in gusty wind, and regretted not putting on sunscreen when the sun burned with astonishing brightness, yet there always seemed to be an underlying shade of gray. The streets remind me somewhat of London’s East End, but “this is Dublin,” and no further explanation is needed.

Like the stories in Dubliners, there are summer afternoons when teenagers skip school to go to the beach, and smoldering summer midnights drifting from one pub to another—not to mention the most famous piece at the end, where snow covers all of Dublin, all of Ireland, the living and the dead. But the underlying palette is dusk, nights waiting to arrive: somber, rain-streaked windows, a nearly transparent pale gray.

On the way back to Dublin, I overheard, in a bookstore in Sligo, a clerk chatting with a customer.

“It’s a great day for dogs.”

“Yes, it’s a soft day,” the clerk said.

“A soft day.” I love the expression. After all, this was where the young Yeats lived for years with his grandmother. By the river in the center of Sligo stands a statue of Yeats: a tall hat, head tilted back at an angle, as if looking defiantly up at the sky, long, wiry legs. I browsed the bookstore in haste and didn’t see any of Yeats’s books; instead there were rows and rows of Han Kang’s novels.

It took three hours by bus north from Dublin to Donegal, the northernmost corner on the Atlantic coast, where the sky and the sea both seem eternally gray. When the guide said, “I’m taking you to the beach,” she winked with a hint of mischief. The beach too was gray, nothing like San Diego’s blue coastline—the sea roaring, coughing violently, breathing out fine foam.

We stayed in a small town: ten minutes in one direction led to the sea; ten minutes in the other, to a supermarket. The supermarket was large. Someone from our group said: it’s like a small Walmart.

It’s a lonely town, the more candid kind of loneliness compared with that in America: there are pedestrians, not many; cars on the road, not many either, and the roads are narrow. At the edge of the parking lot there was a place for drying clothes, garments hung on wires, fluttering in the damp, cold wind. I couldn’t help wondering: can anything really get dry here?

On one side of our lodging were dormitory-like buildings; on the other, a pub, with live music every night. Each day an old man would come and sit there drinking alone, like a movie set prop.

On the first night the guide took us all out to eat. In Dublin I had ordered stewed beef and stewed lamb; the meat was equally hard to chew, the broth equally salty. Having learned my lesson, I ordered sea bass—it was relatively chewable, but I wouldn’t call it tender. Everyone in the group, including myself, nodded while chewing with diligence: it’s really delicious, thank you.

The second night we were on our own, and we decided to have Indian food. Freshly baked naan with spicy, fragrant curry; the lamb bathed in the curry had the taste and tenderness lamb should have. The chef came out to greet us, and after making sure there were no Irish around, we loudly thanked him, breaking into honest laughter: it was great, much better than Irish food.

The guide, also the business owner, worried we might not find the Indian restaurant, and asked a young American girl working there to take us. She had naturally reddish-gold curly hair shrouding a round face, wore glasses, and spoke with a slight Irish accent. We all said, who would know you weren’t Irish? She said there were two Indian restaurants here, both owned by the same person. Someone asked which one was better. She said she had never been to either.

After bringing us to the door, she said again, “I’ve never eaten here.” She lowered her eyes and spoke in a voice only audible if you were standing right beside her.

I wanted to invite her to join us. There were so many of us; splitting her bill wouldn’t cost much, just a kind of tip. But no one mentioned it. I thought about asking her on my own, offering to pay for her, but it might feel awkward. What would the others say? This Chinese woman just doesn’t understand social etiquette.

I kept thinking of her—her shy expression and voice, so different from the loud, overbearing American teenagers; a group ready to feast, loud and excited, people from her homeland, yet she’s not invited, included, asked. She lowered her eyes and said softly, “I’ve never eaten here.”

Tender, bitter, and aching.

On the morning before we set off back to Dublin, I was alone in the lobby having coffee. She came over and asked, “Can I join you?”

Before coming here to work, she had studied at Pima College in Tucson. The name sounded familiar. I told her Tucson was my first stop in America. She asked if I liked Tucson. I said it was complicated. I missed the red rocks, the saguaros, the desert night sky, and the birch forests up on Mount Lemmon. I got my first graduate degree there, then another, met a guy, got married… The marriage was now over, and sometimes I wish I had never gone to Tucson, so that I’d never met him. Still, Tucson was a kind of honeymoon period, filled with fond memories.

How is it that, in a desolate Irish town on the other side of the Atlantic, I said so much to a girl I had just met? Maybe because she asked—and only she asked.

She said her family is still in Tucson. Her dad is a pastor, so she had grown up used to moving from place to place. She said she would turn twenty-one next week, but here it didn’t mean much—“it’s already legal.” I didn’t quite understand; she explained that in the U.S. you can go to bars at twenty-one, but here it’s eighteen.

“Maybe my parents will send me something from Arizona.” She smiled; that would count as a birthday celebration.

After coffee, I asked the guide to lend me some euros. I told him I wanted to leave a tip for the staff, and I would Zelle him dollars later. He was an articulate Irishman who often traveled to the U.S. for business. He leaned in and said, in a resonant voice, no need, really no need, you’re too kind, there is really no need to do that.

So I borrowed some euros from someone in the group instead. Before getting on the bus, I found the girl; she was alone in the empty lobby, arranging cups. I gave her the money and wanted to say, “Go to the Indian restaurant and treat yourself to a lamb curry. It’s really good.” I said “Happy birthday” instead. She looked surprised for a second, then smiled shyly and hugged me. I patted her back and said, it’s good to meet someone from Tucson here.

The tour itinerary was pretty full—a pack of Americans, excited and chatty, moving from one place to another: restaurants, sights, pubs. Most places were saturated with sound; you had to speak into someone’s ear, assisted by waving hands and arms, so whatever you said felt theatrical, like baring your heart.

There wasn’t much time alone, but I managed to steal some to keep reading Dubliners. In Dublin, men and women, young and old, each holds the silhouette of a solitude.

“He felt that he had been outcast from life’s feast.”
“He could hear nothing. The night was perfectly silent… he felt that he was alone.”
(A Painful Case)

On the bus to Sligo, the guide talked about Yeats—his inspiration, Irish folklore and landscape—and that he won the Nobel Prize. People on the bus kept chatting; she added a piece of gossip: he loved her, she did not love him, and he went on loving her for the rest of his life.

When we got off, I said to her that I hadn’t known Yeats had won the Nobel Prize. She said yes, 1923. I joked about how James Joyce never received one—do the Irish feel any resentment? Chinese book marketing often uses the line “the world owes Joyce a Nobel Prize.” She shrugged, pursed her lips slightly, and said, he’s very difficult to read; I know many people make a living studying him, but I like something more accessible.

I never made it to any place named after Joyce after all: James Joyce Bridge, James Joyce Centre, James Joyce Street, or his statue. I’ve seen pictures online: Joyce’s head tilted, leaning on a cane. Like Yeats’s statue, it brings to mind two Chinese characters: 古怪 (peculiar).

When the guide talked about Irish history, Dublin was marked on the map as “the Pale.” She said, we’ll skip Dublin here. Dublin is a very peculiar place.

Joyce, too, was a peculiar man. His relationship with his country, his hometown, was a strange one. He spent more of his life on the European continent than in Ireland, yet his stories never left Dublin.

There is another writer’s statue in Dublin that I actually saw: Oscar Wilde. He was also leaning at a strange angle. On Wilde’s tomb in France the lines read:

And alien tears will fill for him
  Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
  And outcasts always mourn.

I have not yet read Ulysses, but I do not find Joyce difficult. Of course, who can claim to have fully understood him? Joyce himself could not. Maybe that’s the whole point of writing—and maybe that’s the whole point of reading. It’s not about understanding after all. It’s about feeling.

I found it easy to feel for James Joyce. All it takes is to outcast yourself from the feast.

Kunming taxi drivers, on the other hand, are firm and serious about wild mushrooms: if you happen to be here in season, genuinely, you must have a plate of jian shou qing (a blue-staining wild bolete).

“We usually cook them at home,” one driver told me. “Too expensive to eat out. A whole plate of jian shou qing? We can’t afford that. We’d have to stretch it with fried rice or ham.” Eating wild mushrooms is both a serious affair and a wonderful one. A sales pitch? Not all. Better just sit down and enjoy a proper plate of mushrooms.

Eating mushroom in Kunming turned out to be an excellent experience, better than in Dali or Lijiang. Outside the restaurants, the mushrooms were displayed still dusted with fresh moist soil. Nearby, a large pot of mushroom soup simmering, offered for free tasting, its fragrance drifted down the street. A server told me the mushrooms were all gathered that very day before sunrise. “Where from?” I asked. “Chuxiong,” he replied.

Downstairs was just the passageway and front hall; upstairs was where you sit to eat, with a breeze and a view of the street. The air in Kunming in June is crisp and clear, good for both steamy hot pot and ice-cold beer. Remembering what the taxi drivers had said, I extravagantly ordered a plate of stir-fried jian shou qing, with no meat or other additions, garlic and oil being the only spice. It was exquisite: rich, succulent, intensely flavorful. Chinese food critique liked to say certain mushrooms taste even better than chicken, but that kind of comparison feels unfair to the mushrooms.

There was also mushroom hot pot. The server stood by the table gravely with a timer in their hand, even withholding chopsticks and ladles until the proper moment. The atmosphere was surely ceremonial. I couldn’t name all the mushrooms in the pot, probably termite mushrooms, porcini, and a few slices of jian shou qing. By the time I finished the mushrooms, I was already half full; the remaining vegetables and meat in the pot barely got touched.

I was never very good at cooking mushrooms until one day I came across a post on the Little Red Note that shared two tips: first, don’t wash them (I’d heard before that matsutake and button mushrooms shouldn’t be washed); second, let them sit in the sun.

The common brown button mushrooms from the supermarket were already quite clean. I wiped them lightly and set them out in the sun. The sunlight these days happens to be especially bright—even for Southern California. Supposedly, mushroom fibers have a special quality, absorbing sunlight the way a sponge absorbs water; the thought that I would soon take in a generous dose of delicious vitamin D is quietly gratifying.

For breakfast, I stir-fried those slightly dried yet still easily sliced mushrooms with eggs, sprinkling just a touch of salt. The aroma was deep and full; the texture soft, yet still pleasantly chewy.

I ate quietly and slowly, alone. My phone was out of reach. No audiobook, no reading, not even music; just me, and the food on my plate.

I suppose this is my third book by Doris Lessing. Like the previous two, the author seems to gather the people around her and stand them together before a rough and clouded mirror. The images overlap and blur, and at the center there is always the same woman, perhaps at different ages, in different guises, but the same intelligent, self-aware, dissatisfied, full of questions; And she always reads a lot and thinks a lot.

The reading experience was genuinely pleasurable, which is rather rare in literary fiction. In the book, Love encompasses much more than what we usually call erotic love, though it ultimately returns to the love between men and women, soaked with its weight, complexity, and pain. But Lessing’s prose is utterly beautiful, illuminating, witty, and quietly moving. Perhaps that is why, despite the length of her novels and the meticulous detail with which she renders life, I rarely feel tired of reading them.

Looking back at the notes I took while reading, there were many smiling moments, and a few teary ones, all with delightful understanding. On one sticky note I had written:
“I’d rather cry alone over a passage about the momentary understanding I received and achieved from another person who wrote this passage thirty-something years ago—for a moment she wrote about that I have lived, once, twice, many times.”

That page was about the troubled teenager Joyce. The protagonist “…sat silent in the car as it sped through moonlit lanes, thinking for the thousandth time that there must be something sensible they could do about Joyce.”

Maybe it was also a response to the comment I received when I told people what I was reading: “Are there any tears?”—asked in a teasing tone, as if a sage scholar (a man, of course) were condescending to a sentimental high-school girl about her reaction to a cheap nineteenth-century romance, the sort that Emma Bovary would devour ravenously.

Not really offended, just a little annoyed, and perhaps amused.

A friend once said that when dealing with men, one often has to “scale downward in compatibility.” The question is: when will men realize that we are doing this, and if they do realize it, will they be okay with it?

Take Hal in the novel, the protagonist’s brother. Through the narrator’s eyes, his immaturity, self-centeredness, and arrogance are rendered vividly. What is most interesting is that he remains oblivious to how his childishness and self-absorption make the life of people around them unbearable. Hal can even ask, quite innocently: What did I do? Everything was fine—why did she have to leave me?

It isn’t entirely unfunny. Sometimes it even reads as a little endearing. As long as one does not personally end up entangled with such a man—or bound by vows of lifelong loyalty—it remains relatively harmless.

The final part of the novel, however, felt excessive to me—too much attempted analysis and explanation, especially the scene involving the girl, her mother, and the baby boy. I don’t have brothers, but I am familiar with the feeling that someone else always considered more worthy of love. Yet, reading that part, I really wanted to say, enough, Doris, you’ve written enough about it.

Overall, I continue to appreciate silver-haired writers—especially women: Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, and Annie Ernaux. They shed light on the poorly documented final chapters of human consciousness. In a way, I feel closer to them than to my own blood relatives. They offer a preview, a glimpse—an open gate to the next landscape, one that, if I’m fortunate, may step into in about fifteen years.

The God of Small Things and Lu, Reshaping

Twenty-some years ago in Tucson, a few months after I came to the U.S., I was riding a bus to campus. A group of high school students got on—tall, full-bodied white kids. The girls wore low-cut, tight T-shirts; the boys wore shorts and tank tops, their legs covered in fuzzy golden hair. They chatted across the bus about who was sleeping with whom, their loud, brash American English filling the entire space. I, a foreign graduate student at that time, sat in the back, hugging my backpack, like an elementary school student at an adult dance—small, silent, invisible.

In Lu’s Reshaping (Madeleine Thien, New Yorker, 2021), at first glance, Lu perfectly fits the stereotypical image of an Asian female immigrant: small—assumed fragile; quiet—conveniently interpreted as meek. She indeed speaks little. When the HR officer, a woman younger than her and raised in the U.S., comes to discuss delicate workplace matters—the scandal Lu is involved in and the promotion that excludes her—Lu is treated like a kindergartner. She responds to the officer’s words with silence. Objectively described, yet readers, like the HR officer, easily assume that her silence stems from nervousness, a language barrier, or both. After all, in the previous scene, she had her daughter help her write an email in English.

I’m sure I am not the only immigrant who finds this scene eerily familiar: the tone adults use with children, a mixture of tolerance, patience, and condescension, especially when they notice you are smaller than them, when your English carries an accent, and when your voice is slow and soft.

Rahel, in The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy, 1997), had a brief marriage. Larry, an American architecture student, meets her while she is studying in the U.S. He is quickly captivated by Rahel—beautiful, small, quiet (from another perspective, perhaps described as exotic, sensual, and submissive). Yet Rahel is always sorrowful, which strains their relationship and eventually leads to divorce. She explains to Larry in vain, we are from a land of pain; the pain is so deeply rooted, we don’t know how to be happy. She feels guilty, for Larry is such a simple, naive guy.

There are more idiots in the novel. Uncle Chacko initially seems like the father every child would want. Returning from Oxford, he is liberal-minded, sits on equal footing with the children, and enjoys reciting English poetry in his Oxford accent. He is happy, and his joy attracts the English woman who later becomes his wife—she had never seen anyone so carefree, dressed in a crisp white shirt, eating bland English food, yet so joyful, smiling with perfectly white teeth. Well-versed in Western literature, mostly Marxist theory, though his Marxism seems like a child’s game compared to the shrewd local political leaders, he’s liberal minded and progressive. Even after returning to India post-divorce to run the declining pickle factory, plump Chacko can still be described as generous in both spirit and body.

How could Chacko not be happy? While his sister, the beautiful Ammu, represses her desires, endures shame and violation because of her beauty, takes on motherhood, and is ultimately crucified, their mother thoughtfully leaves a door open in the kitchen just for Chacko, so he can have sex with the maid (and she even pays the maid). “Men,” the mother would say understandingly, “they have needs.”

To be fair, Chacko is not entirely useless, though the pickle factory nears collapse under his management and only survives due to his blind mother’s quiet and careful oversight. Only he can block his father’s fists aimed at his mother—not because he is strong, but because he is the adult son, the emerging head of household. Thus, he is, from birth, the hope of his mother, the hope of the women around him.

Naivety does not equal innocence. Chacko has blood on his hands—family blood. How an Oxford educated Marxist with a soft heart lives with that blood for the rest of his life is not explained. I’m not really interested in it either. They always have a way to defend their conscience. To make themselves believe it’s not their fault. If there’s nothing else, ignorance can always be at service: “I am a man. Men are idiots.”

Another idiot is Rahel’s twin brother. Unfortunately, he is truly both naive and innocent. He is sent back and forth like a package. Yet, sitting on the train, he is wondering, with genuine hope, when his mother will come for him. It is heartbreaking: when naivety and innocence meet in a child, they become the most tragic cruelty.

And then there is twenty-first-century Lu—resilient, calculating, opportunistic, quietly shrewd. She has a husband who is nearly invisible, a lover—her boss—asking her to speak on his behalf to escape the Me Too movement, and an HR department attempting to manipulate her into saying what they want. Most of the time, she remains silent; her silence comes from detachment, and detachment brings steadiness and lucidity.

Men, colonizers, people who have been in the New World for too long, carry an innate naivety, sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, sometimes even cute. They just are too comfortable, too used to being the majority, the center, the mainstream; too fluent in the language they speak to truly grasp the meanings of words; and they have never read Su Shi, whose verses have been recited by Chinese children for a thousand years: “One shall not see the true face of Mount Lu, because one is in the mountain.”

Yet, those on the margins—outsiders, immigrants, from a soil long steeped in suffering and worldly experience—once been forced at the edge of mainstream discourse, possess the vigilance, clarity, and worldly wisdom. Lu is not the master of her fate, and she knows it. She understands what she can control and what she cannot. In her “reshaping,” she does not fully cut the strings of destiny, yet she is no puppet: neither of her marriage, nor of her lover, nor of her child, nor of the naive girl speaking loud American English, telling her what to write in her reports.

I slept restlessly the previous night, uneasy about the unknown future of someone so close to me it felt as if we were bound by an invisible rope, anxious about not knowing how to dissolve this anxiety.

This morning, I finished the final chapters of Life and Fate. The writing zooms back on the grandmother, Alexandra. After all, everyone in the novel is connected to her in some way, either her children, her children’s spouses, or acquaintances of her descendants and their acquaintances. If the book is a tree, she is the trunk.

“With that terrible clarity, she was aware of all that life had been for her: her daughters, her unfortunate son, Seryozha, her many irrevocable losses, her present homelessness. There she was, looking at the ruins of her home—an old, sick woman in an old coat and trodden-down shoes.”

For the last time she lingers in postwar Stalingrad. Her home, her children, her seventy years of life, now all in ruins:

“Three different strata of life lay exposed in the ruins: life before the war, life during the fighting, and life today.”

“Through three doorways—aging, sickness, death;
In the blink of an eye—past, present, and future overturned.”

(Su-Shi, Song Dynasty)

The past—

“The lives of those close to her were unsettled, confused, full of doubts and mistakes, full of grief.”

The future—

“What would happen to…”

She calls each name and asks, one by one. And these names, after mornings of reading, are no longer codes or strings of letters to me. I know them. I understand them, perhaps even more than they understand themselves.

Alexandra’s eldest daughter, Lyudmila, hollowed out by the grief of losing her son, has lost all passion for life; beneath her outward composure lies numbness and estrangement. Her grandson Seryozha’s whereabouts are unknown; even before the war, he had lost his parents in Stalin’s purges, and no one knows whether he is still alive. And her granddaughter Nadya, whose life is comparatively stable and comfortable, “that clever girl who was so difficult and so kind-hearted.”

She does not know what life has in store for those she loves, each and every one of them.

Not knowing is frightening. Sometimes it is also a form of mercy. “It’s all right. It’s just life,” she says to comfort her children.

And so, at the end of this book which is buffeted by fate itself, an elderly woman in the twilight of her life mourns, questions, and longs amid the ruins of war and the continuing brutality of political persecution, yet also finds solace in the clear blue sky above her.

I wept uncontrollably reading these passages. Beyond sympathy and lament, there was also gratitude. Every era and every person’s fate has its own harshness and absurdity. Yet mine compared to theirs, feels so merciful and generous.

A few days ago, in Zhuangzi, I read: “When human endeavors are exhausted, the principles of Heaven begin to reveal themselves.” I wept again, perhaps out of relief. I am fortunate for Heaven’s kindness toward me: a comfortable life, pleasant weather, abundant food, and my own two diligent hands to provide for myself; a home full of books, poetry, art, and music.

This is a novel so truthful and detailed as to be almost painfully plain. Vasily, with the objectivity of a war correspondent, describes in meticulous detail the fates of ordinary people amid one of the most inhuman disasters in human history—the inner lives, emotions, and journeys of each individual; their helplessness, pain, love, and hope.

When I finished the last page, what I felt most was gratitude and humility.

Thank you, dear Vasily.

It really does seem that fewer people watch the Spring Festival Gala now, yet the “let’s stop fighting and make dumplings together” gag keeps reappearing on Happy Comedians. Supposedly, fireworks are no longer allowed in the suburbs and rural areas. Videos about “How to deal with annoying relatives when you go home for the New Year” keep circulating—new vloggers, new embellishments, same theme.

On Little Red Note, there are videos of Americans speaking American English, declaring that neither “Spring Festival” nor “Lunar New Year” is accurate. Chinese New Year, they say, is determined according to the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and other complex traditional calendrical systems, calibrated each year by “a place called the Purple Mountain Observatory,” and then officially announced. It is neither solar nor lunar, but entirely, completely “Chinese.”

The first time I saw this, it felt affirming and educational. Then the algorithm kept pushing one after another—different speakers, identical content, including the detail of Americans speaking American English, a faint whiff of state-sponsored messaging, though it wasn’t particularly obnoxious.

Personally, I prefer the term “Agrarian Calendar New Year.” The emergence and development of the calendar ultimately stem from and for agriculture. The most basic agrarian blood runs in my veins. The word “Agrarian” feels rustic, ancient, and earthily romantic.

In my tiny WeChat Moments, fewer than twenty people, there appeared reunion dinners. Chengdu: the elderly playing mahjong, the younger (somewhat younger) ones cycling. The wit of that parenthesis prompted a knowing smile; The rapeseed flowers in the photos, the humid breeze and tender green of the Chengdu Plain, stirred longing in a Sichuanese overseas.

America: dumplings were displayed on a dining table. “We Northeasterners only know how to make dumplings.” As if that weren’t a near-superpower in the eyes of Southerners.

Chinese school’s New Year fair in San Diego: high school students performed dragon and lion dances for audiences who don’t speak Chinese. Parents skewered lamb through the night, then rushed to the venue during the day to run booths, take photos, bustle about, shout, organize, display, beam with pride, radiate a tired yet benevolent glow. This was their stage, their battlefield, their medal—a nonfiction picture book written in their children’s names.

There was only one photo from a first class flight. If I hadn’t once conducted a massive purge of my friend list, surely there would have been more? If we ignore that purge, two unreliable narratives might emerge:

1. The economy is declining; the “pigs that once rode the wind” have returned to their pens, no longer able to flaunt first-class seats.

2. The economy is thriving; first class has become so ordinary there’s no need to show it off anymore.

I wished an old friend in Beijing a Happy New Year and asked if her long break had started. There used to be a whole group of old Beijing friends on my WeChat; now only one remains. She had told me she wouldn’t return to her hometown this year. “Yes, on vacation,” she replied. “We’ve come to Yunnan.” She sent me a WeChat article about people from Jiangsu and Zhejiang “not daring to return home for the New Year.” In the Yangtze River Delta, kinship networks are tangled and intricate; the etiquette of favors is delicate and subtle—almost metaphysical.

II

On Little Red Note, “Uncle Hanzi” talks about the evolution of Chinese characters: “Dream” is a pair of eyes closed yet trembling with unease. A friend told me that the development of Chinese characters is itself an epic poem.

I was moved to order from Amazon a set of the “Four Treasures of the Study,” red paper for couplets, diamond-shaped “fu” papers, and paper-cutting sheets. M and her daughter would be back in Irvine; L would be home (theoretically); I would be off on Monday (theoretically). New Year’s Eve—I could bring my calligraphy supplies over. This year, besides hotpot and mahjong, we could try our hand at calligraphy.

On the couplets I planned to write:
“South and north of my cottage, all is spring water;
Day after day, I see only flocks of gulls.”
And:
“Swallows come and go before the hall;
In the water, gulls grow close and fond of one another.”

Poems about spring written during Du Fu’s time at the Thatched Cottage, China’s most humane poet, his most humane verses, the warmth and romance of the homeland I most cherish.

On the diamond paper we could write the character “fu” (blessing) or “spring.” Even friends who can’t write Chinese could join this part, and L, who knows some Chinese, could explain why the character “fu” is pasted upside down.

The paper-cutting sheets arrived before the weekend. I tried them out and cut a string of gourds. What emerged was a string of dumpling-shaped blobs, small on top and big on the bottom—barely resembling gourds, more like the paper effigies of Wei Wuxian.

III

Before heading out to see a play, I texted L: On Saturday M will take her daughter back to Irvine. It’s inconvenient to stay there—do you want to come home for the night? I won’t be home anyway; you could look after Sugar.

Instant and extremely brief reply: “No.”

The theater was tiny. In the loft there was only half a wall left; on the wall-less side sat a saxophonist. Dim yellow light. A bed, a table, and beside the table a cramped stove and sink—New York in its shabby, aging apartment form.

The saxophone began to wail softly and plaintively. The play opened as I shifted restlessly with a cramp in my stomach. The pain gradually subsided; fatigue rose, then ebbed away, leaving only a faint sense of detachment, as if reality were peeling off.

The tall, full-figured, efficient typist reminded me of the housekeeper in an Alice Munro story, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage — the housekeeper, equally tall, capable, a born caregiver. She changes clothes for the sick man in bed, wipes his body, cooks for him, feeds him aspirin—like the Virgin Mary descending to earth, or like “Ma” from The Grapes of Wrath transported to New York, wrapped in a tight skirt, and put on an office lady look.

There is also the Russian proverb Chekhov once cited in his stories: when a woman has nothing to worry about, she brings home a piglet to raise.

Clearly the male protagonist of this play is no piglet; the heroine is neither a Canadian small-town housekeeper nor a Russian peasant woman from over a century ago. Besides being tall, efficient, and decisive, she is talented—also a writer. She understands his loneliness, sympathizes with his disappointment, catches Flaubert references. She is beautiful and sexy; only slightly less talented than he is—just slightly. Inferior enough for her to say wistfully, “I will never write like you,” and then willingly stay his typist, sleeping with him, cleaning up after him, and calling this, “a different ending.”

Back at the Airbnb, I unexpectedly received a photo from L, holding Sugar: “Came to SD after all.”

The next morning I texted L to ask whether she would return to Irvine that day. No reply. I called M, who had already arrived in Irvine the night before. She listened patiently as I described my plan to go there and write Spring Festival couplets. “Okay,” she said, “but here’s the situation: L drove the car away. I need the car. I flew back from New York specifically so my daughter could practice driving and take her California license test.”

Finally I got L on the phone. “I already made plans with friends in San Diego. I can’t get back to Irvine tonight. They didn’t tell me they needed the car. Why didn’t they tell me earlier? First they asked me to pick them up, then until very late did they say I didn’t need to, so I drove over. Why can’t she practice driving tomorrow? Does she need that much time? If she did, why didn’t they tell me in advance?”

I requested a three-way video call and tried to mediate.

M: I’ve been assuming that you will be in Irvine and the car is there.
Me: I have to point out that it’s an unreasonable assumption. You can’t expect L to stand by 24/7. (At this point I glanced at L, not receiving the grateful look I had hoped for.) How about this—you take a train to San Diego and get the car.
M: But I’ll have to Uber to the train station, and that’s a lot of work.
L: You didn’t let me know you… (signal breaking up) …I already made plans…
Me: Let’s not point fingers. Let’s put what happened behind us. M, I’ll reimburse you—Uber and train.
M: Fine. Make sure L picks me up at the station.
L: You’re both talking at the same time—I can barely hear… fine, whatever.

So much for ‘South and north of my cottage, all is spring water,’ but rather ‘everywhere birds are singing their own songs.’”

An ominous feeling. As if the solar new year were happening all over again. Yet let’s be rational: life is not a neat circle. Scripts may resemble one another, but they are not simple repetitions.

The afternoon play wouldn’t start until two, so we wandered around UCLA’s campus and stopped by the Hammer Museum to see the exhibition Made in Los Angeles.

“Open House”: the roof torn off; everything inside is exposed outside in the California daylight. Inside the garage lay an enormous teddy bear. Red-and-white construction cones were the most striking visual cue. Grimy throw pillows, tires, human footprints—almost erased, but not entirely gone.

Another piece whose name I forgot: a row of doors side by side, decorated. Many bore Chinese dragons. One door layered with holiday decorations—“crime scene – do not cross”—who knows whether a Halloween gimmick or a real marker. Even the truth inside an artwork is not the same as truth in reality. Easter bunnies, pink Valentine hearts. And since it is “Made in LA,” of course, Chinese dragons.

The door leaned against the gallery wall. Behind it, a wall; beyond it, an empty exhibition hall. A few of us, a few of them, walking back and forth, waiting for the next act to begin.

Perhaps this is what in Chinese is called the chill of early spring. There is a special term, beautiful and somewhat poetic. But I won’t explain it. I’m writing a poem here and it is only a word.

In the north, people are trapped inside their homes. Wind and snow are like knives, the earth like a chopping block. They say California does not deserve a spring, that when it is spring all year round, there should not be a spring.

But I insist that California has a spring too, and I need not point to the newly budding branches of the sycamores outside my window as proof.

It is simply a matter of faith.

Just as, on a night when the spring cold bites, I allow myself to believe in certain warm and genuine words, to believe that although some people in the past, mostly men, once spoke the same words with the same sincerity, and then betrayed them as if they had never been said, this time is different

To set aside, for now, the Diamond Sutra I read night after night, “like a dream, an illusion, dew or lightning”

To linger in the seeming constancy of a warm caress,

And when I think of that booming voice, to let longing fall like a drop of ink on rice paper, spreading into blue-green mountains and rivers.

Every night, I tell myself: it’s already late, there is nothing you can do now; you can only have thoughts, but all thoughts at this point only add to your problems rather than solve them; you are already dead now.

And then I fall asleep.

Every morning when I wake up, I tell myself: it’s okay, it’s just life; get up and live it.

And I get out of bed.

So it goes: every night is a small death, every day a kind of rebirth. Life goes on, slowly alternating between living and dying.

Sometimes I’d marvel at how fate grants me mercy and blessing in unexpected and even cruel ways.

From a friend I have never met in person, but with whom I’ve shared years of mutual glimpses through social media, I learned the meaning of Wangchuan in Wang Wei’s Wangchuan Collection. Wang means a wheel; chuan means a river. Wang-chuan is a river with countless bends, extremely winding, almost circular like a wheel. Yet it is still a river: no matter how much it twists and turns, it ultimately flows on.

It can be seen a metaphor for life, or for time, or for human relationships: parent and child, romance, marriage, the connections that in the West are often called love, but in the cultural space I grew up in, we call them yuan (ties). Or perhaps all these metaphors are futile. You see, the river is just a river. Humans use language and arts to assign it meanings, but it never accepts them. A river is a river; it just flows on, without sorrow or joy.

Yesterday, when Mocha saw me come in, he lifted himself from the couch, ears standing straight. I could tell at once that the wary, even frightened look was gone. He wagged his tail, lifted the corners of his mouth in what was clearly a smile. He jumped off the couch and walked toward me. I crouched down and held out my hand; he sniffed it carefully with his wet nose. In human language, that can be translated into: “You’re here? Come on in! we’ve been waiting for you.”

And unmistakably, “I like you.”

They’ve had Mocha for more than three years. In that time he had seen me at least ten times, in different moments and different places. Even when I stood far away, even when he was with the people he trusted most, he still carried that look, like a clumsy child who has been pushed around and is ready to bolt at any moment.

You’ve been caring for Mocha for less than three months, and he has changed from a tense, timid dog into a silly, affectionate, cheerful puppy. In Chinese we have a word for guardian angels — “贵人.” Perhaps you are Mocha’s 贵人. Perhaps your unguarded warmth and softness finally allowed him to lower his defenses, to understand that the world is not all danger, that people are not all bullies, and that he can enjoy and love without being on constant alert.

So, dear kid, who is your 贵人?

While I was teaching, a message suddenly came in: “Today is our baby’s birthday.” I didn’t know what to think, nor how to respond, so I did nothing and said nothing.

Unfortunately, dear kid, neither of your parents became your guardian angel in your childhood, the way you have become Mocha’s. “I’m sorry” — what’s past is past; what’s done is done. “I’m sorry” is all I can say, and all I can offer for that.

As you move into adulthood, I hope I can continue to be here, so you may grow into your own guardian angel; see your immense strength and power, your radiant kindness and warmth, and let them become your invincible guardian angel.

And now another Thanksgiving is around the corner. I look back and see all the encounters, with people and places, books and poems, old and new, gone and ongoing, each one beautiful, each one deserving of a “thank you.”

The first three characters feel very much at home in Chekhov’s world. Vanya, of course, reflects Uncle Vanya—disillusioned to the point of self-destruction and denial. Sonya is the girl who spends her life longing for love, only to be continually disappointed and neglected. Masha is not unlike Liubov in The Cherry Orchard: she capriciously swings between her passionate pursuits, driven by lust, mindlessly, forced to take charge of the household yet lacking the sensibility to do so. Even the two supporting characters, Kasandra and the neighbor girl, though they might initially seem like minor players borrowed from another troupe, reveal remarkable depth. In Kasandra, I see the idealists often found in Chekhov’s plays and novels: passionate about social reform, full of conviction, though often blindly and fruitlessly (the elder sister in A Room with a View). In the neighbor girl, I see the innocence and tenderness Chekhov consistently allows for his young female characters (the younger sister in A Room with a View).

The only character who feels completely foreign to a Chekhov fan is one of the leads: Spike—not because of his cellphone, the Internet-age jargon he uses, or the impossibility of his tights existing in 19th-century Russia. Not because he is handsome or glamorous. It’s true: he is male, white, straight, with a perfect body, perfect hair, and above all, perfect happiness—desired by anyone with desire, gay or straight alike. He is forced to dress as Prince Charming for a costume party he has little interest in attending—an apt metaphor for his role in the play: a prompt, a symbol without heart or soul, possessing only fragments of mind; a convenient protagonist for a 21st-century experimental play trying to appeal to a broad audience while retaining Chekhovian themes—a nearly impossible mission: nostalgia, humanity, and the mysterious power and powerlessness of love—all wrapped in trivial, non-violent, non-thrilling, non-romantic family scenes.

The final monologue of Vanya moved me to tears in a profoundly Chekhovian way, followed by laughter from the witty dialogue and the absurdities of micro-level daily life that pervade all Chekhov stories. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in that small theater filled with silver hair and walkers. It’s hard not to be moved by Vanya’s monologue: the past generation, our generation, our losses—handwritten letters, stamps we had to lick to stick on paper envelopes, four seasons, sincere expressions of sincere feelings, awkward yet authentic TV shows, genuine human-to-human connections. All gone. Not only the trains are gone, but the railways that carried them. We are losing our foundations, losing a battle to the monster we ourselves created. Yes, it deserves tears, anger, and the beautiful monologue, rendered with a flawless performance.

But what about Spike? During Vanya’s play, Uncle Vanya paces up and down, sometimes pointing at Spike, sometimes spitting in his direction. Poor Spike shifts between sitting and standing next to Vanya, facing his ranting with an unchanging expression—no defiance, no sorrow, no grievance. Yes, he may deserve part of it. He scrolls on his phone during Vanya’s play, he cheats on Masha (though Masha also uses him as a sex object), he flirts with Uncle Vanya. But should he bear the blame for all the losses that Vanya clings to? Does he even deserve a voice to say, “I don’t know. It’s not my fault. All those beautiful things you’re talking about—I don’t even know what they are. I don’t even know what the world is like without cell phones, text messages, or social media”? Can he be allowed some gesture of protest: Why point your finger at me? Am I the one who invented all of it? Am I the culprit or the victim?

I have to admit, what actually made me sob out of breath was not Uncle Vanya, but Spike. When I see him, I see my child—how they would toss their phone at me like it was a hot coal burning their hands, panicked, crying, “Take it away!” when I caught them swiping it in the middle of the night at age twelve. What’s truly heartbreaking is that their generation is not heartlessly happy like Spike, even though we thought they were privileged to have the conveniences and pleasure we couldn’t even imagine. They were not happy. Our children were not happy, no matter how much we provided. They were constantly unsatisfied; they were prompted and pushed to want more, to move faster, to reach higher, yet they could never catch up. They were deprived of the tranquility and simplicity that once defined life, born into this peculiar age of digital revolution, social media cacophony, artificial intelligence, and artificial efficiency.

Who should be sitting there to receive Uncle Vanya’s lecture and blame? I honestly don’t know. I only wish, at the end of the play, Kasandra could be gentler with Spike, could give him a real ride and a hug, instead of acting as a jailor escorting a prisoner. I think even someone like Spike deserves a measure of Chekhovian compassion and forgiveness.

The magician in front of the lily pond had changed, perhaps replaced again and again — who knows. After all, the last time I watched a magic show here with you was nearly ten years ago. Back then, even buying you an ice cream took some hesitation — I’d be afraid of being questioned, the stern index finger relentlessly pointing at the credit card bill, as if interrogating a cheating wife about a hotel receipt.

Yet I still gritted my teeth and got the annual pass for the Natural History Museum for both of us.

A kid so easily lifted into joy — you’d run up and down the museum all afternoon, dragging me to look at this and play with that. I’d either be pulled by your hand, my tired steps following you as you explored; or I’d sit on a bench, watching with exhausted eyes, thinking how sad and happy this moment was: you are older than you have ever been, and younger than you will ever be, you are happy, at this very moment.

Lacking the courage to look at old photos, yet somehow always revisiting old places, and always wonder — were you truly happy then, or just trying to be, to make your sad mom happy? And always end up thinking of that time we watched the documentary at the Natural History Museum — The Journey of the Butterflies. Those small and beautiful creatures — once they grow wings, they begin to fly; they leave their birthplace, cross oceans, and never return to where they were born.

The sad part is that all this celebrity drama shows how little either side truly cares about trans people or women’s rights—though both claim they do. Trans people are left stuck in the middle, with almost no control over the narrative. The reality is that the vast majority—99% I’d say—just want to be left alone, to live privately without being dragged into these debates.

From a public policy perspective, it’s not complicated:

1. Put dividers in bathrooms (which is in place already).

2. Respect everyone’s privacy—don’t peek into anyone’s pants, whether trans or cis (which is in place already).

3. Leave medical decisions to medical professionals. Let them determine what care is necessary, and let insurance coverage follow that. From what I know, this is already in place as well, and it is how most trans healthcare works.

Bottom line: there’s no inherent contradiction between trans rights and women’s rights, including the rights of sexual assault survivors. Trans people are not a threat. There’s no data showing they’re more likely to commit sexual assault—in fact, they’re likely less so, given their own vulnerability to public scrutiny. Rowling suggests otherwise, and that’s why I see her comments as hateful.

The bigger picture is that both sides of politics are using trans people as pawns. Neither side truly cares. It’s a messed-up situation—not just for trans people but for society as a whole. When any group is unfairly targeted, it fuels hate. And hate grows into crime, division, and even war. Hate is a plague.

I find myself crying over almost every chapter, every character’s “life and fate:”
the ones butchered like cattle, and the ones butchering people as if they were cattle.
Forced to call them items, to count them as items, again and again.

I remember talking with L about the two Milgram experiments before she left for Japan, and how she said, I believe we’re already in World War III. I didn’t agree or disagree. We don’t know yet. Events of that scale don’t take shape until they are over.

There is a Chinese poem: “We cannot see the true face of Mount Lu, simply because we are standing within it.” We are all in the mountains, soaked in the river of our own lives and fates.

They say there is a time and place for everything, but I can’t think of a time or place to talk about this book, about my journey with it, how it makes me cry like a fool, yet leaves me with a calm and clear mind, how beautiful and how truthful it is.

I really dislike the phrase “the epidemic of loneliness.” I detest the way American media treats loneliness as if it were a disease, instead of a reality. Yet, at this very moment, I feel both the pain of loneliness, and the joy of it.

I’m sure, darling, if you did a brain scan on me,

If you had the futuristic technology and equipment

you’d see the rise and fall of certain chemicals, the shifting hormones,

something to explain every drop of the tears trickling down my cheeks.

But where did the chemistry come from?

Maybe it’s the overcast June sky above London,

the moody flow of the Thames.

Maybe it’s the whisper and sigh of trees, caressing the wind.

Maybe it’s the street artist, singing a song like dark chocolate — bitter, rusty,

with a wisp of sweetness buried deep beneath it.

Maybe it’s the smell from Borough Market —

the melting cheese, the sugar coat on doughnuts, the mushroom risotto,

the dried lavender, the garlic flavored salt, the honey and the honey colored beer.

Maybe it’s the rainbow flags.

And the sight of two men, each carrying a child on their shoulders,

dancing to a song they must have heard

a hundred times on the radio.

And maybe it’s the thought, crossing that very moment:

how we give love so many names,

so many theories and definitions,

how we perform it so diligently —

yet we know nothing about it, after all.

Stopping by an unknown station

(They must all have names, I’m sure—

but I didn’t care to know them.

Google always knows.

I just follow where it tells me to go.)

Bustling platform.

Across the railway—

a woman wearing earphones,

rocking her head and body,

lip-syncing, dancing in silence.

I read her smile

and heard the music flowing

through her movements,

and felt her joy.

She saw me—

wrapped in noises and crowds

I wasn’t part of—

and understood

my detachment,

my foreignness.

We waved hello and goodbye,

as the train arrived

and departed,

to and from stations

whose names I’ll never know.

～～～～～～～

"Oil Neck," recommended by a guy in the pub. The name sounded offputting, but I gave it a shot — light and palpable tangerine touch, really refreshing. Cheers to unexpected finds in Cambridge!

I was having breakfast at the hotel restaurant when I heard the laughter of Nina and Max, an Australian couple. I had first met them while drinking beer alone outside the hotel. They were sitting next to me when Nina leaned over and said, “Are you traveling alone? You look beautiful.” Apparently she had already had a drink or two. I was feeling gloomy and lonely, and I thought she looked very beautiful too. We ended up talking over one drink after another and became friends.

I went over to say hi. Nina laughed so hard she doubled over and said, “Cheyenne, come take a look.” She showed me a photo on her phone: her legs were nearly paralyzed, and Max had snapped a candid shot of her frail body gripping the handrail, struggling up a flight of stairs. “Don’t I look like a mummy?” they asked, both laughing.

Max had been pushing Nina around for their entire trip through Italy. “In Rome, the sun was brutal that day — just standing still outside made you sweat buckets,” Nina told me. “Max pushed me everywhere. He walked over 30,000 steps that day.” Max added proudly, “Best workout I’ve had in a while.”

After finishing my coffee and getting ready to leave, Louise happened to walk in. She waved at me, then turned to the waiter and said, “Would you mind bringing my coffee outside? I want to sit and chat with my friend Cheyenne.” I had met her the day before when we both took shelter from the rain at the hotel. She grew up in Oxford, England, and when she heard I’d be spending two days in London on my return trip, she immediately started helping me plan it out — where to stay, what to see. She pulled out a notebook and pen and wrote me a long list of places she thought were worth visiting. Louise is an artist and always carries a sketchbook. Her English handwriting was beautifully crafted — the kind you rarely see anymore.

Louise spoke quickly, her face full of expression, and soon I learned that she was happily married yet often traveled alone. Her husband, she said, was “a wonderful man — he cares, but doesn’t possess. He always gives me plenty of freedom.” She was always laughing — the kind of big, head-tilted-back, bright and echoing “haha…” that made you want to laugh with her. I found myself wondering how happy she must truly be.

She once advised a friend trapped in an abusive marriage: “You’re only in your forties. People live long now — it’s common to live to eighty. Do you really want to spend the next forty years like this?”

And suddenly, I remembered something an older female relative once told me: “Middle-aged women have it tough. But life is short. Just endure it, and it’ll soon pass.”

Following Louise’s advice — she was practically a local Venetian by now — I spent two euros and took a five-minute gondola ride across the Grand Canal. Short as it is, it’s quite a unique experience, and I got to take one of my favorite selfies. After a few steps of walk, I arrived at the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

Inside the museum, I asked a pair of English-speaking tourists how to get the audio guide. The man replied, “We just got here five minutes before you — but you’re in luck, we just figured it out.” Then they generously shared everything they had learned. Judging by their accents, they were American. When I asked where they were from, the man said Boston; the woman said California. I told them I was from California too. “Where in California?” she asked. “San Diego,” I said. “Where in San Diego?” she pressed. As expected — she was from San Diego too. We were hometown folks.

And once you meet your hometown folks, you end up talking about everything. The man told me they had known each other since they were teenagers but had lost touch for years. After his spouse passed away, he found her contact information online and reached out. It turned out her spouse had also passed. So, they reconnected — and came together again.

The woman stretched her arms to give me a gentle hug. “It’s good to meet a Californian in Venice.”

How strange. Just as I was beginning to lose hope in personal and intimate connections between people — whether you call it love, dating, relationships, situationships, or friendship — Venice kept offering me these sweet, beautiful encounters with lovely people and their lovely stories. It felt as though some higher force — call it God, call it fate — was reminding me of something, with a mocking yet tender smile.

A full visit to the Gallerie dell’Accademia would have required more time than I had, but I was content just focusing on what I liked. I’m drawn to works that depict ordinary people — fleeting moments of individual life: emotion, desire, mood. I came across a phrase in one of the exhibits: “intimate reality” — and I absolutely loved it.

My favorite piece was a painting called The Old Woman. She rests one hand on her chest, pointing to her heart, and holds a slip of paper that reads: “with time.” The details are as vivid and precise as a photograph, yet the painting offers ample space for imagination — you could write an entire story from it. It’s like looking at the moon reflected in a river: you see the moon, the shimmering water, the ripples — and you see yourself, and others, beside you, around you, passing by.

This is the most poetic and clear reflection on time I’ve ever read. It came from the death note of an 18-year-old high school girl in China, addressed to her parents. And yet, that wisdom didn’t save her from taking her own life.

Right now, in the U.S., in the room next to mine, another high school graduate—you, my own child, has turned down all the rituals of “graduation”: prom, the commencement ceremony, and parties. You didn’t ask to celebrate with anyone. You’ve settled into your own rhythm and timetable now: staying up all night, sleeping through the day, eating takeout, playing games, crafting things, editing photos.

How should I describe where you are right now? Is it loneliness and chaos, or freedom and joy, while other kids we know seem to follow what time dictates—going to prom, heading to college, taking road trips, traveling with friends and families? Yet, these are only my guesses, shaped by my perceptions, which shift and blend, swinging my mood between anxiety, relief, and a quiet sense of loss.

Reading the Chinese girl’s last note felt like an awakening. It laid bare the absurdity and futility of "seizing time." Time passes as it does. No one owns it. No one can truly hold it in their hands.

I’m grateful—but sad—that I cannot share with her what I’ve learned from her: since we’re all destined to be left behind by time, why don’t we begin now, while we’re still alive, to let go of the tight grip on the fine sand in our hearts and minds? We can slow down. Ignore the hurried beat from outside. Forget the schedule, forget the clock. Simply breathe, eat, sleep, and walk. We don’t have to rush—to graduation, to college, to work, or to death.

Four years ago, or maybe even earlier, I had clear and eager expectations for your graduation. They included a college acceptance letter, prom night, and a graduation trip. I imagined high school ending with me sending you off at the airport, backpacking to Europe with a friend. Over the years, the destination and the friend’s name kept changing, but there was always someone. Having you travel alone seemed as unbearable as a failure of the plan. I imagined you happy and excited, careless—even ruthless—blissfully unaware of your mother’s lament at your departure. Though, in my mind, you’d turn back suddenly before boarding and give me a big, tight hug.

I imagined myself driving home alone from the airport, tears running down my face—grief, joy, pride, and relief all at once. Your high school graduation felt like the key to my jailbreak: from a rotten marriage, from the drain of parental devotion, from the Southern California sunshine that had become dull and oppressive, from a family life that looked intact from the outside but was shattered within. Your graduation, in all its imagined details, was the gear that would unlock everything and open the gate to a new chapter of my story.

“Just wait,” I was told. Wait until your kid becomes an adult. Wait until they graduate high school. Wait until they go to college. Then you can leave. You can travel, move out, separate from the toxicity, do whatever you want—you are set free, by time, by your kid’s reaching adulthood.

So at the start of your high school years, that’s how I saw it: a maze with one entrance, one narrow exit, and countless branching paths in between. We had to tread carefully and painfully, always searching, always making sure we stayed on the one and only track. We had to move fast and steady, and never fall behind, until we finally reached the exit.

But I didn’t wait—just as you didn’t stay on the trail. Somewhere between the start and end of your high school years, we moved out of the house you grew up in. I traveled—sometimes alone, sometimes with you. I built a new home, for you and I, and for our cat. I began writing a novel about a Chinese female writer I first read in high school—someone who’s inspired me ever since. And just as your graduation approached, I finished the first draft. Yet, when friends ask me what it’s about—how it begins, what happens, how it ends—I never quite know what to say. Yes, it has a beginning and an end. But there’s no entrance, no exit, no closure. It’s messy—messier than any maze or escape room. Just the way I wanted it to be. If it’s anything at all, I hope it captures some truth, through a fictional lens, about the life she lived in my reading of her stories, about what I’ve lived, we’ve lived, suffered through, rejoiced, and embraced during the last four years.

In your junior year, I bought Les Misérables by Victor Hugo while loitering in a book store, trying to escape the suffocating air in the old house. It was a book I had meant to read since childhood but never found the time or courage to. My mom had told me the story when I was little. Later, I watched the musical and several film versions. I knew the plot and the ending of the characters—but I didn’t know them. Not really. I didn’t understand how they became who they were.

Over the last couple of years, in moments of quiet between hope and the near loss of it, I found time to read that massive book I’d once feared to even open, slowly, carefully, painstakingly—annotating, journaling, and letting myself feel how I feel, rather than how I’m supposed to feel: awe, sorrow, delight, boredom …

Yesterday, just a few days after your graduation, I finished the final chapter. It felt oddly anticlimactic. I was shocked by Jean Valjean’s final words to Cosette: “You may be rich with a tranquil mind. Thou must have a carriage, a box at the theaters now and then, and handsome ball-dresses, my Cosette, and then, thou must give good dinners to thy friends and be very happy.”

After all the suffering, wisdom, and love that Jean Valjean had endured—was that really all he wished for the child he rescued and raised with so much love and care? Material comfort? A husband who made every decision for her? A home where she couldn’t even decide where to place a chair? The only space she could call her own was a garden to grow strawberries.

What about a deep and beautiful soul? What about adventure? What about freedom? How was Cosette any different from the newly-wedded Emma Bovary?

And yet... part of me understands him. And forgives Hugo for writing such an ending. Life is unpredictable. People’s souls are more complex than any maze. What else can a parent wish for their child, if not simplicity, ease, and safety—even if it means compliance, rather than defiance of expectations from others, tradition, society, and status quo?

My own graduation, in contrast to yours, met every expectation of my parents—which, thirty years ago, for a small-town girl in China, was harsh but clear. It wasn’t a maze. It was a single-plank bridge, a metaphor so common it needed no explanation. You worked your ass off for the college entrance exam, a standardized test of standardized subjects that conclusively determined your fate.

And that’s what I did. I studied from 7:30 a.m. to midnight—self-driven, self-planned, self-monitored. I outperformed 99.9% of my peers and got into an elite university. My only indulgence was sneaking in stories I loved—Chekhov, Hans Christian Andersen, Lu Xun, Xiaohong, Chinese classics and myths—and scribbling thoughts and story fragments in my diary while taking short breaks from study. As for my future after high school? It felt blank and weightless, even as I worked toward it. I once considered studying literature, but my mother quickly convinced me to choose business school. “See how clean and comfortable banks are?” she said.

In about a week, I’ll be the one taking a trip to Europe. And you will be the one driving me to the airport. I’ll hug you tightly, in a rush, and remember to say, “I love you.” I’ll travel alone—with books in my backpack, my most faithful companions since high school. Some will be first-time reads, some re-reads. They might not suit the vacation vibe, but I’ll feel safe with them, like I’m visiting an old friend. I’ll know when to sigh, when to gasp, when to weep. Books like that can do what no friend, lover, or family member can: they never fail your expectation to understand and be understood.

And you will return home alone. For the next two weeks, you’ll be on your own—as the head of the household, the master of your own time.

And yet, for both of us, life remains an open book. We won’t know—and shouldn’t guess—what the next page will bring.

Perhaps, in a few years, we’ll look back and realize: we were both rebellious high schoolers once. We both refused to take the path given to us. Your defiance was loud and brash—cars, photography, a struggle to show up for your classes. Mine was quiet and stubborn—stories read and written in silence, from then until now.

Maybe we’ll come to see that your high school years were never a maze. They were an expedition—one where we crashed through walls, stumbled and fell, bruised and healed. We’ve witnessed each other’s shadows and brilliance. We’ve been companions, obstacles, and teachers. We’ve each undergone a metamorphosis—and thankfully, neither of us turned into a beetle.

Most important of all, we’ll come to a joyful understanding: we are still here, in the sunlight of this world—walking, dreaming, listening to the breeze sway the trees. Loving, and being loved.

The narrative shifts between we and she—the collective and the individual—but never I.

Who are we? That’s the question I kept wondering while reading the book. By refusing to use I, the narrator seems to exclude herself from the we, as if she’s not part of the years she’s recounting—as if her life is a river flowing past her eyes. We are the women of France, growing up in the 1940s and ’50s, divorced in the ’90s, aging in the early 21st century, trying to “record life by living it.” Women who read the news and literature, who joined social movements but eventually gave up and stopped caring, who raised families and couldn’t resist materialism.

I, a woman who grew up in the ’90s in China, who reads news and literature, who used to care and maybe still does—though less and less—don’t quite belong to that we, demographically speaking.

And what about she? The woman who once hoped to tell the story of her life in her own words, but eventually gave up—realizing, perhaps, that we all use the same words. She lives and records, trying to notice, and maybe still can’t help anticipating what life might offer next. That’s the common dilemma for fiction writers: try as we may, we can’t stop scripting and imagining stories in our minds.

She not only writes, but has the ambition to “save it,” to “save it all.” She is cared for by parents, then cares for her parents. She is educated and educates others. She retires, marries, divorces, raises children, takes lovers, leaves lovers, has a cat and buries the cat.

My overlap with her—and my distance from her—amazes and humbles me as a writer, and inspires me.

Chinese fiction also often uses the banquet as a metaphor for life. We say life is like an ongoing banquet—guests come and go, yet the kitchen just keeps sending food out. In this way, encounters and departures become its true nature.

Lately, I’ve been reading the Diamond Sutra—on and off—as bedtime reading. There, I’m told not to cling to the past. The very second something happens, it becomes history and should be let go. Time should be allowed to flow—evenly, on its own terms and at its own pace.

“Like sexual desire, memory never stops. It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dream with history.”

Wow, such an analogy, so wrong in so many ways yet so true and so powerful.