Dried Fish

BE!!! It's all an illusion

“Mingwei, if I close my eyes, can I kiss you?”

“I swear by the snow mountain that I'll stay with you forever.”

Thorns sprouted in love, forcing him to take the main road, even if it left him covered in blood.

Through the endless night, Mingwei held his hand. “Cen Zhou, keep going. Everything will get better.”

“What about you?” Cen Zhou asked again and again.

In Lijiang, when he was eighteen, Cen Zhou let go and watched Mingwei walk into the light.

In Lijiang, when he was twenty-eight, after waiting ten years, Cen Zhou was reunited with him. From then on, every day and night felt like a gift.

Here, flowers bloomed year-round and the water flowed slowly. It seemed that there was still time for everything, and that everything was within reach.

They took walks and tended flowers, laughed together in the alleys, and embraced beneath the snow mountain, as if in a dream they would never wake from. Again and again, Cen Zhou gripped his hand tightly to make sure he was real. Mingwei only smiled. “Cen Zhou, I will never leave you.”

In the darkest hour, at the brink of life and death, Mingwei counted the deeds of his life. If the Buddha would show mercy, could he trade those deeds for one chance to say goodbye?

If one day the snow mountain collapses and the river floods its banks, I love you, unchanged through all eternity.

Contains many details about Yunnan's local culture and scenery, with memories interwoven with reality.

The sections titled “Little Fish, Little Fish, Swim Along” are all memories.

(This is a bit of homesickness coming over me, so I wrote some of it down. It was probably one of my very earliest writing exercises. I'll leave it here for now and rewrite it when I have time.)

Theme: Peace and prosperity for the nation and its people