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‘Maugham’s stories—In her eyes—nonsense—she suspected it was all an act—Penang girls teased each other—as they were passing the Catholic cemetery at Happy Valley—THIS DAY MY MORTAL REMAINS TO NATIVE SOIL RETURN JUST AS ONE DAY YOU TOO WILL FOLLOW—That tone evoked the style of—overseas Chinese—hint of eerie humour in the face of death—boys lugged—burlap sack—of black bread issued by the Air Raid Defense Headquarters—’

‘—it seeped into the texture of your life. No matter what form it takes—I believe it is still present—and like me, you can’t ignore it. Let’s talk. Yes, let’s talk—I don’t know why I did what I did. Maybe because everything seemed out of my hands and the only thing I could choose was how to end this—After that—You’d vanished cleanly from our lives—like my hopes. I thought this was your way of telling me you agreed—’

‘It was a twenty-kilo bag of mashed potato flakes. Is that all you eat? I asked. She—said yes—sometimes she ate other things—but mostly when she went out to a bar/restaurant. At home it’s—mashed potatoes—That way there’s always something to eat. She didn’t put milk in it—only water—she didn’t even wait for the water to boil. She mixed the flakes with warm water—because she hated milk—Are you taking something? Valium’

‘She was Shanghainese but here the lingua franca was—English/Cantonese. Mainlanders shunned speaking Mandarin & Shanghainese in public—The sunlight—baked—red flowers in the blue ceramic flowerpots—bleached the sea to a faded hue, like old blue linen—voices & countenances of the two women did not reveal what was on their minds—Cantonese men have unique features—tortoiseshell-framed spectacles adorned his broad face—’

'This life that wasn’t mine would—like a dandelion—puffed into blossom wherever the wind took it. Without the encumbrance of roots—grown in its own manner—This ancient country was under a thick layer of dust & leaving would feel like being cleansed. I was drawn to this freedom even if it came streaked with suffering—I recognised you. Cheng Gong—I said—You—opened your eyes—as if you’d dozed off—waiting so long for me'

'Her reply completely stunned me, I swear. She said the flowers were self-explanatory. It was—so hard—so cold—you know what I mean: she was Russian & I was Chilean—it was like a chasm was opening in front of me & I burst into tears right there & then. I often think about that afternoon of crying and how it changed my life. I don’t know how to explain it—all I know is—I felt all the cold of Moscow for the first time—'

“This life that wasn’t mine would—like a dandelion—puffed into blossom wherever the wind took it. Without the encumbrance of roots—grown in its own manner—This ancient country was under a thick layer of dust & leaving would feel like being cleansed. I was drawn to this freedom even if it came streaked with suffering—I recognised you. Cheng Gong—I said—You—opened your eyes—as if you’d dozed off—waiting so long for me”

‘Misha—built like—Buddha—obese even by Russian standards—I began to—work for him—he’d give me a bundle of cash & send me to see a player I knew—On one occasion I managed to bribe half a football team—one by one—he sent me to persuade other gamblers to withdraw their bets or not to make waves. But most of the time my work consisted of providing reports on athletes—one after another—without any evident rhyme or reason’

‘—reading—Grandpa’s—classics—I chose Wuthering Heights. Then I happened to look up & there they were—faces pressed to the window. A boy and a girl—Though there was no resemblance, for some reason I was reminded—if I hadn’t left—would I be—different person now? The night before—I was—watching a doc about Chinese soldiers who’d stayed in Myanmar—opening dry goods stores—In a foreign land—even their aging was tentative’

‘—wild cekêgcao (herb) first boiled into a stock and mixed with lard and sticky rice flour into dough. Then—filled with a mixture of bean paste, glutinous rice, peanuts, shrimp, and pork. Next, heart-shaped cakes were pressed from the dough with wooden molds. Steamed on a bed of fresh bamboo or banana leaves, the finished cakes were endowed with a unique herbal fragrance. The people of Silicon Isle made them—’

‘—dramatised life is bound to distort—how it distorts—the perversity—is—the hero—made in the image of our most destructive & anti-social fantasies—I'm criticising from—simplest—most human position—Van Gogh was the genius he was—not 'cause he could see no way out—but 'cause he could write 'I admire the bull—eagle & man w/ such—intense adoration that it will certainly prevent me from ever becoming an ambitious person'’

‘We wanted a revolution that would overturn the revolution we had just lived through—we wanted to want for nothing—but somehow—all I managed was to laugh—& say—Nothing. You’re a crazy bastard, aren’t you? At a time in my life—I would have taken offence. But after all I had suffered—seen—maybe I actually was a crazy bastard. Maybe that was just another name for one whose sole talent was to see things from both sides—’

‘Everyone remembers—he cut off his ear. Few know—he said: ‘The cart one draws must be useful to people whom one does not know’; and—he dedicated his life to trying to make this true. Lust for Life—film—by Minnelli—is interesting precisely in so far as it unconsciously reveals this need to exploit the artist’s unhappiness. I say ‘unconsciously reveals’ because this film is not just a sensational catch-dollar affair—’

‘—the lowly among us only have each other to pick on—because going after the powerful will only cost us in the end. And if that’s too much—there are always animals. Love is blind—people like to say. But if you ask me—love sees clearest of all—it is the least interested in personal gain & the most true to itself. What’s blind is hatred.’

‘—started listening to—Sex Pistols—Nirvana—Nine Inch Nails—Radiohead—Pink Floyd’

‘No one had photos taken in those days—no way of knowing what she looked like when she was young—she was married (or more correctly—she was sold) to my grandfather as a child-bride. He handed over a bag of rice and 8 kilos of yams in exchange—1930s China—she had witnessed almost every conflict in China since the beginning of the twentieth century—Every day she prayed to Guanyin—the most popular saint in our region—’

‘—in the still afternoon, with the giant fly that landed on the giant wound and cleaned its feet. In our sleep, without our noticing, we passed from one day into the other and lost the day we were dogs. “Don’t be scared, we’re dogs…” I said. But Eva knew that was no longer true. We had discovered that man’s heaven was not the same as dog heaven. Dogs didn’t share in our crime and bloodshed.’

‘—she picked up two massive dead moths—the size of small birds—Disoriented by the bright bulbs, they had died—morpho drone was now kept aloft by two pairs of fluttering wings. The flapping appendages, modified from the carbon-fibre propellers, were covered by the wings of the dead moths glued on—The artificial creature fluttered—like the thousands of other giant and hairy moths in the damp, sweltering evening air.’

‘I was the onion that would remain an onion no matter how many layers were peeled away; destined never to be the citrus fruit, who just under the skin has a sweet pulp. I am taking such pains to explain this because I’m afraid—that today’s readers won’t be able to understand—We all project ourselves onto others—but know there’s no way you can ever convince anyone of your own sincerity—It’s strange to say, really—’

‘—heat—rose from the earth—The hairy sunflowers withered— instead of offering shade—they amplified the heat as if they were made of wool—There were no cicadas. The earth had closed its holes—reddish clouds descend until they touched—tips of the sunflowers.’

‘The day we were dogs wasn’t just any day—though it started the same as usual. We woke up at six—but then we realised it was a day with two days inside it.’

‘The title Permanent Red was never meant to imply that I would not change. It was to claim that I would never compromise my opposition to bourgeois culture and society. In agreeing to the re-issue of the book I repeat the claim.’

‘A society—oft defined by how it treats those seeking shelter—pieces here form a calculus of belonging—ethics—Home can let you down more than any other place & still retain its hold over you—There’s a liturgy of home in these pages—praise that goes beyond compliment and edges toward devotion—To find a home—we have to expand our notion of what that means—Ultimately, home is in the body & the voice for so many writers’

‘—he lived in Shanghai—returning to—Guangzhou only when—necessary. The unstable emotional environment—left its mark on him— // No matter how amazing a woman is—she won’t be respected by her own sex unless she’s loved by—the opposite one. Women are petty this way. Was it really true that he liked her? Not certain in the least—Puff after—puff—green smoke—mosquito-repellent incense floated up, seeping into her brain’

‘—plum-rain season—mountain—mist—scent of green leaves—everywhere. Plantains, Cape jasmine, magnolia, banana trees, camphor trees, sweet flag, ferns, ivorywoods, palms, reeds—tobacco all growing—rapidly—w/ a whiff of something like blood in the air. The humidity—oppressive—furniture—slick w/ moisture—flame flashed before—mouth like an orange blossom—bloomed—then died—Weilong’s brazier of incense will soon go out too’

‘When your incense has burned out—my story too will be over—One time somebody made a wisecrack—saying that if girls from Canton & Hunan—with their deep-set eyes and high cheeks—were sweet-and-sour pork bones—then Shanghai girls were flour-dipped pork dim sum—an “ill-bred remark” that popped into her mind just as she was appraising her looks—green-blue tinge to her white skin—purple-black lipstick—the 'mulberry red'—'

‘—no pressure—no pauses either—solid drinking—but she spoke Chinese—so I learned—Russian for nothing—He held up his hand and ordered another whiskey—I wanted to say that she might look foreign but she was actually Chinese—Ma Liye smacked him in the face and said, If you ever come near me again—I'll kill you. C blinked by way of saying yes. She slapped him again and said, How do you feel? Better, he said, much better’

‘The world is full of self-important people—some cute—some annoying—If you're born in this era and live in Beijing—you're probably—bit self-obsessed—At his age I was—confusedly trying to live like a normal person—answering WeChat—vacuum cat fur—Friends from—teenage years populate my dreams—sobbing after—we lose a football match—to my subconscious they're treasured antiques—constantly polished—carefully re-examined—’

“I’m not going to pretend I know how you feel. I wish the world were better than it is. I just want you to know that I’m really glad you’re here.”

They say that the past is gone forever, that you can’t go back. But every living thing leaves a ripple in Heraclitus’s river, an expanding wave front that fades but never disappears. Just by living, you’ve already changed the universe forever.

‘Maybe I was influenced by Dickens. Who knows—Anyway—I'll end up finishing all of these suncakes if you don't have some—There's so much to say about Dostoevsky: sentenced to death but reprieved at the last minute; faced every setback with superhuman resilience; in his old age found a woman who stuck by his side no matter what; forever talking to God; permanently in debt. Talking about Dostoevsky makes my life easier’

‘I would write more but time is running out—If you receive this letter—No response is needed. Please remember this and find a way to go on living. If you are dead then it does not matter—it's enough that we were once together. May we recognise each other when we meet again. That shouldn't be difficult—I only exist this time round because I met you—This is all I have time for. The postman has been waiting too long’

‘I would write more but time is running out—If you receive this letter—No response is needed. Please remember this and find a way to go on living. If you are dead then it does not matter—it's enough that we were once together. May we recognise each other when we meet again. That shouldn't be difficult—I only exist this time round because I met you—This is all I have time for. The postman has been waiting too long’