Although recalling the past may make you happy, it may sometimes also make you lonely, and there is no point in clinging in spirit to lonely bygone days. However, my trouble is that I cannot forget completely, and these stories have resulted from what I have been unable to erase from my memory.

-- Lu Xun (1881-1936), from Call to Arms


CHINA Fifty years inside the People's Republic, Asia Society, Richard Yee


A word has abolished another word

a book has issued orders

to burn another book

a morning established by the violence of language

has changed the morning

of people's coughing

-- Bei Dao (b. 1949)
from "The Morning's Story"