AnnaBR’s Reviews > The Man from Beijing > Status Update

“Growing older involves a kind of retreat. You don’t just keep rushing forward…We’re trying to find out real selves, who we are, both now and then.

“Think of ten things you still want to achieve…ten things you still have left to do.” “What did she still have left that she really wanted to experience?” “Why would she need to write down what was already posted clearly and unmistakably on the church doors of her inner self?”

“The thought worried her. Measuring her activities and her best efforts in terms of people she had sent to prison - was that really the sum of her life’s work?”

“Memory is like glass, she thought. A person who had died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.”