晓竹天下 文创空间

Myrtle House was no ordinary restaurant. No doubt it was expensive, but what made it stand out among two dozens of top of the line eateries in Beijing was its atmosphere. On approaching it, one could not fail to notice its peculiarity about architecture. It was built in the middle of an empty plot about two acres in size, which by itself being a statement of class over land scarcity in Beijing.

"Cut," the director shouted through a loud speaker. He walked to the young actress named Jiujiu who had rode through a street on a bicycle. "Your ride is not so much in a hurry than in earnest. Remember all the troubles you went through to get your mom treated. Your love and worry for her is reaching a breaking point."

The coffees were long cold, and they, mother and daughter, stared at the cold mugs placed on soft pads on the table, tired and speechless. A car, turning around the street corner, beamed its headlight into the dim-lit coffee shop. Their faces were illuminated and receded into shadow again.

The next morning I woke up in the middle of a broken dream. It was something about a unique Gong I obtained through practicing standing. The Master who had so taught me called it Vertical Gong. You have to stand sleeping, eating, doing everything and never lying down.

"Then," he said with a mysterious smile. "You will be a vertical man, forever upright and fearless."

Captain Hei never raised his head to look at the prisoner while thumbing through the files on the table. It was his style as a formidable police interrogator, never acknowledging the existence of the interrogated and always focusing on the invisible soul as if the physical form of the prisoner is no more than a shadow of his true being.

Summer Night. The wheat field was harvested and bare under the moonlight. A man and woman lay on the hay heap, exhausted and breathing hard.

"We can gather it in before tomorrow's rain," the man said.

"There won't be rain tomorrow." The woman whispered, staring into star-lit sky. No cloud in sight.

I had quite a few well-meaning friends who, all happily wed, would tap me on the shoulder, and say "Old pal, you ought to get married." Well, I thought it quite extraordinary for they knew and I knew and they knew that I knew they knew that I had married three times already and all of them failed miserably and ended up in bitter divorce.

作家是一个孤独的人，带着纸笔到处流浪，走到那儿写到那儿，但从没写出像样的东西。这一天，他来到一座大山前面，只见树木葱郁，鸟语花香，就顺着一条小径往山里走去。走了三天，仍不见人烟，背包里的干粮早就吃完了，采摘一些野果充饥，仍饥饿难当。

If a professional writer tells you that on average he spends less than eight hours a day clawing the keyboard, he is either lying or not doing his job. He has to be a hard nut before being anyone else or anything else. This is indeed a tall order for anyone who is able to enjoy and make a living in other professions.

In the broad scheme of things he was less a statistic than a polar bear in the society he lived in, and the people who knew him regarded him as on autopilot 24/7 and barely wasted a thought on him. He simply performed as millions of working bees do in a bee society. Indeed he was aware of the time moving on for he was growing older. But would it make any difference?

So Mr. Pei got married. The marriage status certainly mattered among his friends, for before they had called him Little Pei and now they called him Old Pei. Man is not a man until he got married and then he turned into a dray horse--this of course was uncovered to him later. At the this moment Mr. Pei was quite happy with his family life.

My life so far had been most simple and most ordinary, like a chill wind from Siberia constant and never ending. It pierced my bones and frozen up my brain. I didn't know why one could call it life. Its continuation towards eternity would be most terrible. Indeed the horrible. But people seem to believe death to be most horrible.

四湾镇豆腐坊的高老爷爷去世了，刚好在高奶奶七十三岁生日这一天，城里的算命先生说：这老太太命硬。但是，四个儿女却很担心，都说七三和八四是鬼门关，父亲刚去世，母亲能挺过去吗？于是，他们都邀请高老太太去住，但被老太太一一谢绝。没办法，大家凑在一起商量。

The evening I came out from hiding, I remember, was exceptionally hot. For four hours I walked slowly and tentatively on the bustling Beijing Street where everyone seemed to know where to go and went with an air of dogged determination. Funny. Were they really so sure?

AT three o'clock in the afternoon of a fine spring day in 2008, a young man of about twenty was toiling up the staircase of a six-story building. He was shabbily dressed, shuffling his down-trodden leather shoes at each turn of the flight. At last he reached the very top floor, breathless and perspiring. On his right, a door half-opened to a small, dark passage.

我没有在歌德的小说里死去，人生要真能那样就好了，死而无憾，可那是小说，我们最好还是回到现实吧。现实的维特很幸运，你猜得不错，我娶到了心上人绿蒂。当然，多亏了歌德鼎力相助，那本《烦恼》一发表，舆论大哗，绿蒂回心转意，少年维特的烦恼一扫而光，从此我们过上了幸福的生活。

Dinner was almost done, and the final round of nice pies and fried fish virtually untouched. My stomach was full, my eyes still hungry, and my soul continued to savor the dishes I couldn't devour. Then came Xia Ren, the house cook to ask Old Shang, my host, what he would like for tomorrow's dinner. The cook was a women in her forties with a pretty face and long narrow eyes.

A writer is either a copy cat or a revolutionary, but the best write is always both. Everything between a copy cat and a revolutionary is filled with block and more blocks. So the trick of the trade is to copy cat when revolution is unlikely, and to start one if copy catting becomes boring. No kidding, boredom is the father of creativity.

How time flies. Need to get this thing started before the year ends, before nothing is left. Remember Joseph Conrad: the horrible! the horrible! So stop thinking, start experimenting, if not with plot, mood and character, at least with language. Guess I missed lots of fun. What a waste! Why? Because you take it too serious, pal. Try something, and try it everyday.

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】政治局常务会议开到深夜，胡锦涛看了看表，说：“今天差不多了，灾后重建安排就这样吧。救灾款的数字不小啊，这个钱从哪里出？请家宝和国务院的同志们拿出一个方案来，总之要提防通货膨胀，全局的经济稳定第一。我们要保持清醒的头脑。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】世界艾滋病日到来之际，中办主任令计划茶饭不思。直至今天，只要想起2004年那个艾滋病日，令计划心里就不由得打哆嗦。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】十一月下旬，胡锦涛开完了十七大，身心俱累，想到京城外面走一走，散散心。在令计划的建议下，胡锦涛一行轻车简从，来到了内蒙古的鄂尔多斯，要深入草原牧区。此刻，自治区党委书记储波和政府主席杨晶小心翼翼，陪伴在侧。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】政治局奥运工作部署会议开了整整一天，会议结束时，胡锦涛总书记做总结：“今天这个会开得很好，很及时，许多重大方针政策都定下来了，大家一定要认真执行。最后，我还想谈一点体会。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】又是一个闷热的下午，胡总办公室外的蝉鸣格外响亮。但房间内气氛凝重，人人格外低声细语，好像是在医院的病房里。中办副主任令计划走过宽敞干净的楼道，看了一眼临时堆放着的医疗设备，嘟囔了一句：“飞来的横祸”。

【人物情节，均为虚构，若有雷同，纯属偶然】北京夏夜，万籁俱寂。轿车开进了中南海的边门，孟学农仍然觉得自己是在梦中。这种感觉就像四年前的一次经历。那时，他刚刚上任北京市长不久，也是一次深夜召见，还记得令计划苍白严肃的神情，向他宣布了中央的决定，撤销他北京市长的职务。

In a social context, you find people to be either good or bad or ugly; and in a linguistic context, you find words to be either moral or immoral or amoral. Moral words do right and immoral words do wrong, but most words are amoral, neither good nor bad, but simply do or exist. They are uninteresting and likely to make me soporific as a lot of food would do in my stomach.

I think I have developed an affinity for words; they come from everywhere, from dictionary, from reading, from mental images, and from everything I set my eyes on. They are not yet properly tagged, but like children who swarm the beach on summer weekend, while the tide of consciousness rises and smashes under their feet. In short, I wallow in words. But when can I swim in them?

Achievement is an aggregate of daring and hard work. You would mix them together just as your grandma combined meat and beans to make chili. Or, to put it another way, life is like driving somewhere, requiring both energy and integrity. Energy with no integrity is like reckless driving that would end in tragedy, but integrity with no energy is going no where.

I think people should abominate government censorship on free speech as much as they abhor raw chicken livers. But they don't and that puzzles me. Perhaps humans are not as serious as I think them to be over life situations; or perhaps I derive too much levity from them while they too little of them.

Everywhere in the world there is poverty, but few poverty is considered abject. Only when poverty is conditioned by servility and a total denial of human dignity can it be said to be "abject". Then property beside poverty becomes no less abject for both the rich and poor share an common abhorrence in their milieu. Therefore they are equally disgraced.