No. 680 Nanjing Road, Shanghai

[First-person narration]

Note: This story has no connection to 680 Nanjing Road in Shanghai. It simply borrows the name, and the story is entirely fictional.

Blurb:

The year I came to Shanghai was the year the heaviest snowfall ever fell in the south.

I went to 680 Nanjing Road in Shanghai, intending to sit on a bench by the street and quietly end my life on that snowy night.

In my pocket was a bottle of sleeping pills.

As luck would have it, I met a man who also wanted to kill himself.

He had a bottle of sleeping pills in his pocket, too.

We should have died together on that snowy night, but our chance encounter left us intensely curious about each other.

I asked him, "You're so rich. Why do you want to die?"

He asked me, "You're so young. Why do you want to die?"

Two mad people, both desperate to know each other's stories.

So we stepped into each other's lives and pressed pause on death.

Looking back, it feels like a dream buried beneath a blanket of snow.

If I were to write a memoir, how should I begin telling this mad story?

I would write this:

"680 Nanjing Road, Shanghai. Winter, heavy snow.

I clutched a bottle of sleeping pills, hoping to fall asleep on the snow and never wake to the world again.

But then I met my god, who fished me out and lifted me up alongside the moon.

We knew each other for thirty days.

They were worth thirty years with anyone else.

I was insatiable, yet from then on, I learned to be content with life."

Theme: Life is precious. Live well