37 posts tagged with "Black Humor"

I developed a cough, a sticky, persistent kind of cough that just wouldn't let go. It wasn't anything serious, just the kind where you're about to make a witty remark, and it jumps in with a "cough, cough," making the atmosphere feel like the minute before a memorial service; or in the dead of night, just as a spark of insight about the origin of the universe flashes in your mind, it lets out a couple of "hacks," shattering that spark like a clumsy waiter dropping a platter of fine food. In short, it wasn't fatal, but it thoroughly spoiled the fun of life.

I went to see a doctor, a middle-aged man wearing thick glasses, his expression as solemn as if he had just presided over a failed philosophical debate. He listened to my lungs, looked at my throat, then said in a tone that permitted no doubt: "You need to smoke."

Xiao Shi is a programmer, writing code in Shenzhen. In this place, the buildings are tall enough to pierce the heavens, and the rent is high enough to pierce one's courage. Xiao Shi lacks courage, at least the courage to dedicate the bulk of his monthly salary to supporting a pigeon coop. So, he doesn't live in a pigeon coop; he lives in a Deepal G318. The car, domestic, electric, isn't exactly small – better than some Hong Kong subdivided flats, at least. He's been living like this for four years, like an urban nomad, or perhaps, like a sardine packed in a tin can.

Our place here used to have a nickname, the "Unofficial Reserve Base for the World's Toy Factory." Later, officials thought it lacked elegance and changed it in documents to the "Red Star Industrial Demonstration Zone." But privately, especially when spitting foam at the dinner table while reminiscing about the glorious past, everyone still habitually called it "Rust Town." The name fits, carrying a sense of helplessness and滄桑 (vicissitudes/weathered look) like oxidized metal. Rust Town, well, as the name implies, now only rust remains. It wasn't always like this. Back then, the town was like a hyperactive spinning top, buzzing non-stop day and night, specializing in manufacturing happiness for those blond-haired, blue-eyed kids across the ocean – plastic ones, plush ones, battery-operated ones that could sing and dance, you name it.

Old Wang, full name Wang Fugui, though that name was probably the most unreliable inheritance his parents could have given him. In this steel-jungle city, he was more like a malnourished old tree, barely putting down roots in a cramped rental apartment. Today was Qingming Festival. The traffic outside remained noisy, but Old Wang's room was filled with a unique smoky aroma—not cooking fumes from the kitchen, but the incense of ancestor veneration.

Beijing was still Beijing, just with more cars, taller buildings, and perhaps a little less of that leisurely vibe under the old locust trees where people used to walk their birds or play chess. Ma Liansheng, forty-five years old, was doing alright, not great, crunching numbers in a company that was neither big nor small, decently managing the mortgage on a place still a couple of miles shy of the Fourth Ring Road. His physique, much like his life, had decently put on a bit of timber.

Old Li had been looking at the starry sky above his head for nine months. To be precise, he had been floating and looking at it for nine months. This was no romantic affair, it was like being locked in solitary confinement with only a toilet and compressed biscuits. The only difference was that outside this confinement was a vacuum, and some coldly gleaming stars.

The whole thing was just damn frustrating. Old Li, a seasoned astronaut, was supposed to return to Earth three months ago, hug his grandson he'd never met, drink a little wine, and brag about how the farts he released in space changed the course of human history. But now, he could only listen to those bureaucrats on Earth bickering through a dilapidated communicator.

Elon Johnson, an accountant whose name is so ordinary it disappears into a crowd, hits a wall in his fortieth year – a wall built of dollars, yet harder and colder than concrete.

Old Wang is an honest pork vendor who gets up at three o'clock every morning, rain or shine. His biggest wish is to save enough money for his son to buy a small apartment in the city. The pork knuckles he sells are always a dime cheaper than others, and the neighbors like his small but heartwarming benefit.

That day, as usual, Old Wang tapped "34.00" on the electronic scale. He squinted, looked at the jumping numbers on the screen, and calculated today's harvest in his heart. A customer hurried over, glanced at the pork knuckles, and dropped a sentence: "WeChat transfer!"

Lao Li, fifty years old and supposedly at the age of knowing his destiny, had been feeling a strange swelling in his chest lately. At first, he didn't think much of it, assuming it was just his blood pressure rising from arguing with Widow Wang next door. But the swelling in his chest grew increasingly strange, from a slight distension to a dull ache, and then, eventually... eventually, damn it, he grew boobs!

This terrified Lao Li. He was a real man, burly and rough, with a bristly beard. Anyone who saw him on the street would call him "Brother Li." How could he have grown these things? He secretly went to the hospital, registered, got checked, and the doctor pushed up his glasses, looking at him like he was an alien: "You have... breast hyperplasia."

Old Li felt like he was about to die.