It's easy to fall into the exact scene of a childhood memory embedded in the cracks of everyday life.
Summer was always sultry, the whole family slept on the ground of the living room, one quilt, bamboo mat on top. The fan was shaking its head from side to side while the leaf fan flying up and down. There's no breeze at night, but the telling of folklores brought shivers. Invisibility grass, fascinating snake ladies, a mouse with drumstick-shaped tails, crippled old Taoist priest, hedgehogs that always cross the road at 10:30 pm, snores that come out of nowhere, the baby buried under a tree, my forever baby aunt who disappeared in a hospital. They came from the childhood of my father and speak with a central Chinese accent. Looking south through the window is a large field, a row of small poplar trees, a narrow road, a simple setting. Since then the characters of those stories have changed their places of birth, changed their accents, put on new clothes, and set up in the wilderness a little theatre which only operates on hot summer nights. Sweaty back, cool belly, heavy drowsiness came over me.
The little theater is now very run-down, the field is deserting from all sides to the center little by little. From 3:34 to 6:16 pm, the characters are already discussing changing their birthplace again and performing in a broken foreign language. I hope they don't mind the fireworks on a July summer night, and the witches with broomsticks flying overhead.
