essay 69
- The first term away from home
- 'Declining' Chinese language: what happened to our language?
- Why the evening study room stays lit
- Chestnuts roasting at the street corner
- When the autumn rain arrives without warning
- Buses home for the holiday week
- Noticing the days draw shorter
- Reserved seats and the grammar of the library
- Osmanthus shows up on the morning ride
- A new term arrives with small rituals
- Bread and candles the night before the typhoon
- Notebooks and pencils before term begins
- The admission letter from Sichuan
- Watermelon at the edge of summer
- Autumn arrives before it feels like it
- Electricity bill and the price of cool
- City's trees in the long heatwave
- Swimming pool's small republic of order
- Heat and patience in the long city summer
- Cicadas, and the attention they take back
- Long light, and the longest day
- The summer after the exam
- Plum rain, and the slow rhythm of the city
- A storm arrives, and the city remembers how to rain
- First mosquito evenings of the new summer
- Countdown weeks in the self-study room
- A phone call home, once a year
- Short sleeves arrive before the heat does
- Guyu and the first sowing
- Spring's long, heavy afternoons
- April rain on the city
- Qingming and the journey home
- A season of sneezes
- Filter bubbles and the view outside them
- A currency called attention
- Spring's drowsy month
- Valentine's Day and the economy of affection
- A hoard called the cloud
- The long way home for Spring Festival
- New year, by the numbers
- A billion journeys home
- A night borrowed from sleep
- Thirty days in, the resolutions thin out
- When the commute shrank
- Year-end lists and the curating of life
- Words of the year, and the mood they catch
- Winter solstice: the day the year turns
- Desks of the exam season
- A market for used things
- A season of deadlines
- Put on more clothes
- Singles' Day and the arithmetic of discounts
- Frost's descent and the season's turn
- Cold Dew and the deepening autumn
- Golden Week, when the whole country travels
- National day, and the week that follows
- Autumn equinox, and the year's balance
- Teachers' Day and the work behind the classroom
- White Dew and the first chill
- The last year begins
- A new school year begins
- Qingming, the road home
- December, and the year's last light
- The end of the summer
- The long vacation begins
- Football on a summer night
- When the school year ended
- Plum rain over the Yangtze
- May in the riverside town