In the southeastern corner of Qingcheng Park, beneath a willow tree, there is a bench.
An unemployed young man sits there every morning at dawn, chanting sutras. He doesn’t think he is doing anything special. He just chants. Little by little, people begin to come: a literature teacher who can’t sleep, a mother who has grieved for her dead son for fifteen years, a factory director down on his luck, an art student who failed the entrance exam, and a man who has returned to his hometown to open a noodle shop. They sit on the bench, then get up and return to their own lives. Yet in their comings and goings, the bench becomes a silent landmark: it needs no explanation, no invitation, and offers no answers. Two years, one scroll of sutras, one bench, one willow tree, and one person who never leaves. Thirty-two mornings, corresponding to the thirty-two chapters of the Diamond Sutra. When you finish reading the final line, you may not be able to explain what happened, but something in your heart will already have gently, steadily settled into its proper place.
This is a novel about “nothing happening.”
And yet everyone who reads it will feel something gently touch them.
