晓竹天下 个体空间

Give Me Liberty?

“Give me liberty? Or give me death?” Professor Qian burst into laughing and repeated the word “death” in a high-pitched roar. People at nearby tables eyed us and then got back to their own business. The Bar was about half lit as if to make a point that all sound and fury must be kept in check here. At this point we were half drunk.

“O Brother, you got to help me!” That was the first thing Zhao said to me when I opened the door.

“Hello, Old Zhao,” I was truly surprised. “Do come in.” But it seemed, before I could utter those words, he had miraculously walked past me and was well settled at my desk where he waited for my greetings and invitation to reach him.

A Crime Writer

“I’m not a good writer, but a good copier.” Jia spoke with a finger pointing upward, a sign of his excitement, of which I knew so well since we were school kids together. "But I don’t plagiarize others, I copy Life itself. Yes, Life is more talented than all of us added together." He lit up a cigarette and inhaled, continuing, “Life doesn’t claim copyrights. Isn’t that wonderful?” He blew out smoke in a long breath, resting his restless fingers on the coffee cup.

Taking a Walk

It was a sunny day and I took a walk in the morning. There were people, mostly elderly, walking along the promenade that threaded its way in a park like a construction site. Yet there was no clue of people minding the noise and dust. “Isn’t this great?” I thought to myself. “They would have been adaptive to a war zone.”

Friendship Hotel

Out from Beijing

Prologue

Today is Juanary 1st, 2008. That's right, another New Year. And my New Year Resolution is, again and not again, to be a writer writing. To be sure, that was partly my last New Year Resolution, but I forgot to put "writing" after "writer", a huge mistake it was, because I basically spend my previous year being a writer THINKING to write or PREPARING to write. Well, such historic error eliminated, I’m ready to proceed.

Then what?