That room, less a home than a forgotten corner of the city, cowered in the perpetual shadow cast by towering buildings. The air hung thick with the damp smell of mold, mingled with the scent of cheap wood and the decay of old age. This was Old Liu's entire world, a space less than ten square meters. His bed occupied a third of it; the rest was filled with wood shavings, blocks of wood, carving knives, and wooden lives yet to take shape.
My ass, no, my entire existence, is welded to this supposedly ergonomic chair. Dante described Hell, but he clearly never saw upstairs and downstairs neighbors waging class warfare. If he had, he would've created a special circle of torment just for the 7th and 8th floors, and I, Old Wang on the 9th, would be the innocent prisoner with a millstone around my neck, eternally damned. This war has been going on for three years, not much shorter than the damn Anti-Japanese War, but far more intense, only the battlefield is the floor slab, and the weapons have changed from planes and cannons to hammers, high heels, and a high-tech gadget called a "ceiling shaker."
That piece of news initially surfaced like a faint yet clear note in the background noise of the city, appearing in the torrent of notifications pushed to my phone screen: "Thank you to the brave female passenger on Beijing Subway Line 5." It possessed all the elements that grab attention instantly only to be quickly forgotten: a specific location (Subway Line 5), a vague protagonist (the brave female passenger), an event tinged with a moral halo (bravery), and a public gesture of gratitude. However, for me, this message did not dissipate as expected. It lingered, refusing to leave, like a metaphor, or a doorway leading into some dark labyrinth.
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.
Lao Ma felt this place was a bit like a huge, cold cement box. He hadn't thought that way when they first bought it. Back then, the sales lady's words were sweet as honey. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, shining on the exquisite little model houses on the sand table, bright and full of hope. One million one hundred ninety thousand yuan. It emptied half a lifetime's savings and saddled them with a thirty-year mortgage, but Lao Ma and his wife, Ma Sao, felt it was worth it! For their son's future schooling, for a stable nest for their old age, for putting down roots in this big city – this cement box was their "home," their tangible, heavy future.
That supermarket, named "Yongfu" – Eternal Fortune – ultimately failed to sustain its fortune. Like a weary behemoth stranded on the city's edge, it breathed its last on the day it announced its clearance sale and closure. The air hung heavy with the scent of cheap soap, expired bread, and something deeper, an essence called "despair."
Wang Cuifen's legs had always been straight.
Old Zhou felt he was living like a potted plant. Not the meticulously pruned, zen-like kind, but one simply stuck in soil, placed on a windowsill, given a bit of water regularly, and nothing more. The "soil" was the Sunshine Nursing Home, the "water" was the three daily meals of mush, pills, and the occasional smile from a caregiver. Outside the windowsill was, theoretically, the world. But separated by a layer of smudged glass and a gleaming stainless steel railing, that world became like a landscape painting on TV – distant and unreal.
The railings were installed uniformly last year, supposedly for safety. The director spent an hour spitting saliva at the all-residents meeting, the main theme being: this thing will prevent you from falling. Old Zhou, dozing off below, thought, falling? From this third-floor height, not too high, not too low, falling would most likely just mean breaking a few bones, then lying in bed, becoming an even more standard potted plant. What really irked him was that the gleaming railing, like prison bars, constantly reminded him: you are penned in.
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'.
At half-past four in the morning, the sky wasn't fully light yet, murky grey like the cooling embers in a hearth. Old Zhang rubbed his bleary eyes, shuffled in his cloth shoes, and carried his chipped enamel mug out to the courtyard tap. The faucet sputtered twice before reluctantly spitting out a thin, ice-cold stream of water.