Moonlight Mile

I keep having the same dream over and over again. The port town in the 1980s and 1990s, the breakfast prepared by my mother, the dim arcade room next to the farmer's market, western cowboys, street fighters, knights of the round table - these were the truest joys of my childhood. The dream always stops in that carefree time. Until this time, the arcade room disappeared. Instead, there are two huge traditional Chinese characters - "fighting grass". That day, I didn't get to play the game. In history class, when the teacher asked about "the reason for the defeat of the Dashun Army in the 17th year of Chongzhen's reign", I blurted out that the Qing army entered the Pass and the Battle of Shanhaiguan - but the whole class looked at me in astonishment. In their world, the Qing army never entered the pass. After the Jin Dynasty was defeated at Shanhaiguan, Dorgon was killed in battle, the Han Dynasty was revived, and civilization was not broken. And I became a nonsense person. When I found myself wearing Hanfu, discovered that the history textbooks had completely unfamiliar era names and wars, and discovered that everyone was living in another branch of history as a matter of course, a girl named Luo Jiajie stood at the door of the classroom and said to me: "You are not from this world." At that moment I realized that maybe this was not a dream. Or - I am the one wrapped in dreams. Under the moonlight, there is the outer self and the inner self. When I discover that "I am not me and she is not her", when the history I am familiar with becomes a heresy, when reality and dreams are mirrors of each other, how should I live? This is a story about self-perception, civilizational assumptions and the meaning of life and death. It is also a questioning in the dark side of the moon.