Stories

Short (36)

Short 3 min read

The Seed Knows Its Way Home

Before dawn had fully broken, the fog at the river mouth crept along the paddy fields. Musa steppe...

Short 4 min read

You Are My Brother

November 12, Night, Beside the National Highway "Bhai! Bhai! Can you hear me?" That shout is...

Short 3 min read

A Ferry of Words

Rain near the equator keeps no schedule; it comes whenever it pleases. Drops struck the banana lea...

Short 4 min read

Keeping the Lamp Lit

"Lights out." From the darkness, someone called it out—a small announcement of dusk for the whole...

Short 3 min read

Taking the Bridge Home

I At two in the morning, in a cath lab in Xiamen, only the low hum of machines remained. Lin Any...

Short 4 min read

The Sea Draws No Line

The waves of the Indian Ocean are white, like medicated cotton. I never understood that saying be...

Short 4 min read

Four and a Half Meters Underwater

The year Qin An turned ten, he sank once in the Liu River. He had been wading the shallows, feeli...

Short 4 min read

Running for You to See

In Niamey, during the dry season, dawn comes crisp and clean. As soon as the sun rises, the fine d...

Short 3 min read

A Bow That Lasted Fifty Years

There are things one cannot forget—and need not. Gu Songnian is eighty-eight years old. The name...

Short 4 min read

I Dredged a River Back to Life

One I can't swim. Yet that morning, before the sky had fully lightened, I jumped into the Aj...

Short 5 min read

Help First

September the seventh, nine in the morning. "Somebody's fallen!" "God—blood, so much blood!" "...

Short 4 min read

Washed Clean

Your hand reached out before your thought did. On the crosswalk, the red light still had a dozen...

Short 4 min read

Writing One Square at a Time

The letter paper was old-fashioned grid manuscript paper—green squares, three hundred squares to...

Short 4 min read

The Warm Ledger

There is a debt you have carried for ten years, never daring to put pen to paper. Eleven at nigh...

Short 3 min read

Can't Just Walk Away

What were they really after? When you asked yourself that question, you had already been sitting...

Short 4 min read

The Door Will Open

Before I started writing, I sat in my rented apartment for half an hour. It was eleven at night,...

Short 4 min read

The Long March Went Up Into the Sky

"Son, when that rocket flies so high, can you see it up in the sky over Lake Yihai?" The first t...

Short 4 min read

The Man Who Carried Fire

In this life, every man must acknowledge one debt. Shen Shuisheng never said this aloud to anyon...

Short 4 min read

The Mountain Opened

Before dawn, the first hammer blow of the day would fall on Black Rock Cliff. At first I thought...

Short 3 min read

The Reply

To send, or not to send? Anand had asked himself this question a thousand times. And a thousand...

Short 4 min read

More Than a School Uniform

The September wind was still soft, slipping in through the blue-and-white cuffs of my sleeves, f...

Short 4 min read

Pulling Her Out

The September pond was an old mirror dusted over with grey. When the wind passed, wrinkles spre...

Short 4 min read

A Stool

A wooden stool, four legs, the middle of its seat worn pale. It has stood at the door of the sho...

Short 3 min read

The Light at Two in the Morning

The headlight reached only a dozen meters ahead. You rode at the front, slowing, slowing furthe...

Short 4 min read

Hold On

Master He Fan: This afternoon I passed the convenience store at the entrance to my complex. The...

Short 5 min read

Yaomei'er

"Yaomei'er, yao de." Whenever you think of your mother, it always begins with these three words. N...

Short 4 min read

Jasmine Flower, Off-Key

Work the night shift long enough and you come down with a condition: watching people. Now, you'd c...

Short 3 min read

The One Fate Sent

July 29 Year by year, Uncle Shen's memory was going—whatever his daughter told him one moment...

Short 4 min read

The Bloodstained School Uniform

I "Why won't somebody help him up?" "Don't—don't touch him. What if—" The words were barely out w...

Short 4 min read

Keeping the Seeds

September comes early to the water town. Daylight leaks through the gaps between dark tiles and set...

Short 3 min read

One More Compression

"We've wanted to thank you in person all this time. This hug—we've waited more than forty days for...

Short 4 min read

A Cradle on the Water

Just how heavy is a two-month-old baby? It was a question Chen Yu measured out at three in the mor...

Short 3 min read

Xiaoman

In the small hours of the night, Xu Qinghe lay with her eyes open. Not that she didn't want to sle...

Short 4 min read

Fifty Jin of Luggage

Many years later, Xiaohe would likely still remember that September morning — the fifty jin of lugg...

Short 3 min read

Two Hundred and Ninety-Four Households

The year I turned eight, I came down with a burning fever that had me raving. Mother was out in the...

Short 4 min read

Eleven Times

Eleven times. Someone else did the counting for you. At the ceremony, when the host read the numbe...

Medium (6)

Medium 12 min read

White Chrysanthemums and Arirang

I. White Chrysanthemums The white chrysanthemums are always laid out before dawn. The hillside stands at the edge of Yokohama, where Kuboyama l...

Medium 15 min read

Planting a Letter in the Sand

Prologue That letter bumped along the sand ridges for more than four months before it finally reached Jingkouzi. In April 2001, the postman Lei...

Medium 14 min read

The Man Who Brought the Harvest

I On a foggy morning in October, I was pulling barnyard grass from my seedbed. The fog had drifted over from the pond at the east end of the vi...

Medium 14 min read

The Flag in Her Skirt

I The pinewood torch had burned down to half. Amo pressed it into the ashes, the fire sank, and the room darkened to a circle of red. Three chi...

Medium 5 min read

A Single Stool

I Autumn comes late in Yunfu; even in October the sun still bites. When Ah-Ha set that bamboo stool outside her shop door, she had no such meani...

Medium 5 min read

The Light at Two in the Morning

I July 14th. Clear skies. Altitude: 4,200 meters. At half past eleven at night, our convoy was hopelessly lost in the Kunlun Mountains. My name...