Status Updates From Ninth Building

‘—people who seek out others for conversation don't only tell the truth but also shove in piles of lies—not to say I don't lie—but I'm reluctant to do so under the rubric of a heart-to-heart—an enchanting phrase—And how lucky we are—to have so many people we can talk to—like Lu Xun’s short story? This was no heart-to-heart, but a spleen-to-spleen—a gall-to-gall. I got on the 28-Model tractor that would take me away.’

‘I wanted to ask who Chrysanthemum was, but didn’t. Nighttime—when the moon is absent—you feel you have nothing you can rely on. When you can’t sense her—she seems ancient. Every round felt like guessing riddles I already knew answers to—we passed baijiu sorghum liquor around—taste lingers a long time. Such beauty—The way a horse looks at another horse is how we appear when we're being kind. He works on, beautifully’

‘People who haven't been to the Great Northern Waste don't have a clear sense of the land—they tend to think of it as if seen from above, a flat surface ready to be sliced into squares—Harvesting wheat in such a vast space? Our sickles suddenly felt tiny & insignificant. Most of us had taken up smoking—nine cents a pack—made you cough non-stop. Everyone quietly shed tears when they got their first letter from home.’

‘Plastic—substance with no sense of history. So many plastic objects—crammed their way into my life but I've steadfastly refused to wash my face in—plastic basin. I'd never seen so many broken basins in my life—They looked deformed—Youth, a concept whose meaning isn't easy to grasp—there are a multitude of ways to gamble. So much competition in the world—This bet would lead to certain death—the deadest of—deadbeats—’

‘Castor beans aren’t edible, but if you collected enough you could take them to the provision shop to exchange for red-bean pastries, which were delicious and, like all flaky baked goods, left a sheen of oil on the fingers after eating. That spring, we collected more than twenty castor beans, which we planted in a vacant lot near where we lived. An open ditch ran nearby, and we used its black soil for fertiliser—’

‘I no longer swear like a Beijinger—I think I've stopped growing up and started growing old. I miss all of you—There used to be a hornet nest on our balcony. I'd see them flying back & forth. Then one day someone smashed it, & I saw the hornets come home, just hovering there & buzzing helplessly. I wondered why they were still there—why didn't they just fly away & build a new nest somewhere else? How foolish I was—’

‘Every year it only feels like spring when we come to tomb-sweeping time. He could never understand why we'd wait for springtime, when flowers were blooming, to visit the dead and sing those mournful songs—Ninth Building was in the rural part of this city, surrounded by vegetable fields and farming folk who ate whatever they gathered. They'd split open a huge eggplant—They spoke Shanghainese when it was just them.’

‘—scent of my body seeping—familiar odour—no beginning/end—yet far away—farther than anything I knew or would learn in the future. This smell was a transmission of pain. We were sweating after some roughhousing—a Butterfly brand cigarette—lampshade w/ orchids. She asked what my background was—I said I didn't know. She asked which building I was from. I said Ninth Building. She said, You stinking bastard intellectual’

‘I carry a compilation of shadows—leaving one behind everywhere I go. The other day, I went to admire some flowers, when a shadow abruptly stepped out from behind a magnolia tree of a decade ago—We looked at each other—I’m a martyr’s orphan—a child with no status—we can’t just stand here gaping—we ought to eliminate the traces of the landlord class, we won’t leave a shred behind—wenzi (mosquito), and wenzi (words)’

это вино из одуванчиков рэя брэдбери но во времена культурной революции в кнр

хиханьки-хаханьки закончились теперь будем читать как китайцев помимо японской империи планомерно убивало собственное правительство всю вторую половину 20 века