Wang Tiezhu figured he must have gone crazy. One moment, he was losing his hair in front of a computer screen in a CBD cubicle; the next, he was clutching his resignation letter, leaving the city’s neon lights behind and heading straight back to Qingzhu Mountain, where his ancestors had lived.
Why? Well... maybe because his boss’s promises were bigger than the wild boars in the mountains, but nowhere near as substantial. Maybe because his mortgage weighed more heavily than the old locust tree at the village entrance, yet that tree at least offered shade. Or maybe it was because one day, after working overtime until midnight, he stared at the moon outside the window and suddenly realized: If he kept going like this, he might not live to collect his pension. And even if he did, he probably wouldn’t be able to walk, let alone return to the mountains to see the azaleas bloom in spring.
And so Wang Tiezhu, twenty-eight years old and a “senior” cog at a former internet company, returned to Qingzhu Village with a box of unopened instant noodles and a heart full of tragic determination to say, “I’m done with this crap.” In the village, you had to shout to get a cell signal, wait ages for online shopping deliveries, and count stars for entertainment at night.
