It’s a privilege to see the various segments of Chinese society colliding against each other in Shanghai, but once you get past their differences, you begin to focus on
their commonalities–you begin to notice the way people talk, their inflections, their slang, the content of their conversations, the things they choose to emphasize.
ANd you realize, not [...]

作为一个词语“,活着”在我们中国的语言里充满了力量,它的力量不是来自于喊叫,也不是来自于进攻,而是忍受,去忍受生命赋予我们的责任,去忍受现实给予我们的幸福和苦难、无聊和平庸。
This is from the preface to YU HUA’s “To Live”, and was written by the author himself. The gist of it is that “to live” is not something you shout out, or something that is aggressive, outwardly defined, but rather means to suffer and persist through both the happiness, pain, joy and grief, boredom, mediocrity [...]

not sure what I expected out of life, but i think there was some kind of core that persisted even as everything else changed. And what was that core? Some kind of feeling–some kind of feeling that life was meaningful, that things were on the movie, that I was working towards something, towards a goal [...]

Sometimes it seems very clear, what i must do: i simply can’t do the whole work a 9-5 white collar job and live in the city. to say so in damning especially if my future employers are reading this. However, despite that risk it must be said: without some kind of overarching mission, I don’t [...]

i suppose you just need a respite, some kind of reprieve from this feeling of anxiety: and what’s sad is that this undercurrent we take as normal. I hardly even notice it, but i actually am tense most of the time. I am always pulsating with ideas or impulses and worried about things that arent’ [...]

i suppose you just need a respite, some kind of reprieve from this feeling of anxiety: and what’s sad is that this undercurrent we take as normal. I hardly even notice it, but i actually am tense most of the time. I am always pulsating with ideas or impulses and worried about things that arent’ [...]

there are times when you think that your life is messed up enough that you have to somehow “reset” it. But of course, that would mean extricating yourself from many things. The problem is how, and what, and to what degree. and i don’t think anyone can you tell you that since for one, no [...]

there are times when you think that your life is messed up enough that you have to somehow “reset” it. But of course, that would mean extricating yourself from many things. The problem is how, and what, and to what degree. and i don’t think anyone can you tell you that since for one, no [...]

I have a problem whereby instead of feeling better after pouring my heart out, whether it’s to parents or lovers or other confidantes, I actually feel worse: this because you felt that you’ve exposed yourself, thus imbricating yourself further in relations with these people, when in fact, someone with my “problem” should make it their [...]

I spent the week or so prior to the chinese new year in Anchang and the Beichuan area, which was one of the hardest hit and in which there are many quake victims living in temporary housing. I talked a bunch of them and in general just observed their lives there. I will write something [...]