Echoes from the Corners of the City

Twenty-five-year-old Lin Shen is one of the most ordinary migrant workers in first-tier cities. He was squeezed into a rental house in an urban village with a meager monthly rent. Outside the window was a messy narrow alley, and a few kilometers away was the bright and prosperous city center. Across the street was a life that was out of his reach. He was doing repetitive and trivial clerical work in an office building, working hard and without complaint, but he remained unknown, received no recognition, and saw no way out. He was used to carrying everything on his own: the helplessness of living alone with a high fever and no one to take care of him, the embarrassment of collecting the rent at the end of the month, the grievance of taking the blame at work, the loneliness of being alone during holidays, and the estrangement of having nothing to say to his family. He once thought that as long as he worked hard enough, he would be able to gain a foothold in this city and live the life his family expected, but reality told him again and again: most of the efforts of ordinary people were just a hand-to-mouth existence. In the corners of the city where no one cares about, he meets all kinds of ordinary people: the breakfast aunt who works out her stall in the early morning and has been running around for half her life, the retired old man who lives alone in an old house and has seen through the ups and downs, colleagues of the same age who are drifting at the same time and are sober and transparent, and the errand riders who grit their teeth to make a living regardless of rain or shine. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.