51 posts tagged with "satire"

During that period, the world caught a fever, a fever for buying and selling. Exactly when it started, nobody could say, just like nobody can pinpoint how love or the flu suddenly arrives. Anyway, overnight, it seemed everyone had become a shrewd merchant, or at least a fervent customer. The air was no longer filled with factory fumes or the scent of lilacs in the park, but a strange odor blending the stench of money, new plastic packaging, and adrenaline. Multiple countries globally were buying, buying, buying, and selling, selling, selling in China. It sounded like an economic news headline, but in reality, it felt more like a collective sleepwalk sweeping over everything.

I, Wang Er, a fellow who considered himself still retaining a shred of conscious awareness, was muddling through life at a unit called the 'Office for the Promotion of Universal Circulation'. The name sounded impressive, but really, it was just about stamping things. Before, we stamped imported and exported salted fish, stamped thermoses bound for Siberia. Not anymore. Now, we stamp everything, as long as it can be priced. Just yesterday, I stamped an export permit for a batch of 'Bulk-Purchased Melancholy (70% new, slight existentialist tint)'. The buyer was supposedly an art collective from some Nordic country; they felt their local melancholy was too pure, lacking a certain Eastern flavor.

Liu Wenhai, or Teacher Liu, as he was more accustomed to being called, was counting down silently in his heart. Forty-seven days left. In forty-seven days, he could step down from this lectern he had stood behind for over thirty years, clutching the pension—not hefty, but enough for him to retire to the countryside—and tend to the small vegetable garden he had long planned. Sunshine, soil, and the freedom of doing nothing—for an old teacher earning two thousand yuan a month and renting a cramped room on the city's edge, it was practically a preview of paradise.

Old Ma, whose proper name was Ma Desheng, felt he'd lived a rather "failed" life. His parents gave him the name for good luck, hoping he'd amount to something. But those characters "Desheng," meaning "victorious," felt somewhat ironic attached to Old Ma. He'd been drifting along for nearly thirty years in a half-dead neighborhood factory in the north of the city. The factory's fortunes were waning year by year. And him? Just a gatekeeper, handling mail on the side, earning a pittance each month – enough to keep him from starving but never full.

Li Wei felt that ever since he and Xiao Fang broke up, his desktop WeChat had turned into a malevolent ghost court, and he was the sole defendant, charged with "attempting to forget."

Lixiang, much like the nearly withered jasmine on her windowsill, was an inconspicuous speck of green in this concrete jungle. She worked as a clerk in a medium-sized trading company, her days filled with typing, photocopying, and making tea that was never quite hot enough for the boss. Life felt like a rusty conveyor belt, carrying her from sunrise to sunset. Her only hope, her only thing to look forward to, was Liang Yu.

Old Zhao Si emerged once again from that grey, dusty building; the sky too was grey and dusty, as if coated in five years of grime. The poplar trees lining the street, however, shone with a vibrant green, seemingly shameless. It was already the fifth year. His daughter, the one whose name he now scarcely dared to whisper even in his heart, still 'lived' in that row of buildings behind the main one, cold and waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for him to settle that 'cost of eternal rest'.

Old Chen's mobile phone was an old-fashioned button phone handed down from his son. Apart from making and receiving calls, the flickering icons on the screen were like ancient hieroglyphs to him, both familiar and strange. Every month, he would go to the business hall at the corner of the street to pay his phone bill, no more, no less, always fifty yuan. The clerk mechanically tapped on the keyboard and handed him a thin piece of paper printed with numbers and symbols he couldn't understand.

Ah Q has been feeling a bit hot lately. Perhaps it's because the weather is warming up, and it's time to drink iced water again. As usual, he strolled into that "Mixue Ice Cream & Tea" shop. The Snow King at the door was still smiling, but that smile, in Ah Q's eyes, seemed to have a bit more strangeness.

"A cup of lemonade," Ah Q said, his voice a little hoarse.

Mr. K received a letter. The envelope was stamped with an unfamiliar seal, the specific department unclear, only a vague impression of the word "Declaration" showing through. The content of the letter was simple: it requested that he fill out a declaration form and submit it within seven days.

Mr. K was puzzled. He couldn't remember needing to declare anything. But he followed the instructions anyway, and took the form from the envelope. The form was long, densely packed with various items, each item subdivided into countless smaller sub-items, and the sub-items further branching out, like an inverted tree with endlessly extending branches.

Old Li has been a little bothered lately.