Library

At 4:25 in the morning, tricycles rolled over the road, and the villages on the outskirts of Beijing woke up. This is an enclave on the edge of Beijing's Sixth Ring Road - half soil, half cement; half crops, half high-rise buildings. Old Liu from Shandong who sells vegetables, Hainan from Henan who sells pancakes, Hebei couple who make steamed buns, Xishi with soy milk, retired workers, old ladies with thermos buckets... They come from all directions and take root in this urban-rural fringe, living day after day. And I, a thirty-one-year-old drifter from Beijing, live in a rental house in this village. Being woken up in the early morning, going to the market early in the morning, and waking up in an empty bed late at night. I look for small differences in the repetitive daily life, and touch the warmth of others in the lonely gaps. This is a book about "in between" - between city and country, between hometown and foreign land, between numbness and sensitivity. Record the little things that are not seen, and write down the people who are not remembered.