Essays ⁽³⁴⁹⁾

I do not like rushing about, especially not traveling fully kitted out during a pandemic, but for the past week or more I have been traveling everywhere. During a pandemic, eating, drinking, toileting, and sleeping away from home all require great care; if there were…

After lunch, I went for another walk to the Medicine King Temple on the hill behind the neighboring village. Last night an autumn wind blew through, and my hometown felt as if it had entered autumn overnight; yellow leaves covered the hills and plains. Beijing…

I have been back in the village for eleven days; city life is growing more and more distant. The countryside at this season is sparsely populated; walking in the fields, I rarely meet anyone. Many returnees might feel sad at this sight, but I do…

On an after-dinner walk, I ran into Uncle Zhongde, who was herding his ducks into an abandoned greenhouse in the village. A few years earlier, on a sudden whim, the village party secretary spent village money to build two greenhouses in our village; they have…

I eat dinner very early every day. After eating, I take a walk along the road at the edge of the village, watching the sunset slowly descend. The autumn fields are golden; after the sun sets, the whole village is gradually swallowed by the night.

Su Dongpo wrote a ci poem, "Huanxi Sha · Fine Rain and Slanting Wind Bring Dawn Chill": "Fine rain and slanting wind bring dawn chill; pale mist and sparse willows grace the sunlit sandbar. The clear Luo River, entering the Huai, slowly spreads wide. Snow-foam…

After tinkering for over a month here and there, I have finally created another peach-blossom spring at home. I gave up the rented study elsewhere; with that financial burden lightened, my heart feels much freer. I have finally freed up more time for reading, and…

This morning when I got up I weighed myself: 64.8 kg. Two years ago my peak weight was 75 kg — I have lost a full ten kilograms. My height is 168 cm; my standard weight range is 55.4–67.7 kg, and I had been overweight…

Since moving, my spiritual home has shrunk from a former fifty-plus-square-meter private room to a small two-square-meter balcony in my apartment. My home also has a long seven-meter balcony; the wall-side space there I have commandeered for low floor-standing bookcases, and on top of those…

Until I moved house once, I had no idea just how many books I had bought. Between my home and the study I rent, I have seven bookcases in all, and every one is stuffed with books in layer upon layer. If I did not…