(14 records of a saddle)
(introduction)
(中文)
Rotten Scholar, Confucian (dot?) Hack
Every morning, I ride my bike to the subway station, which is at the far end of the street I live on — about a five minute bike ride away.
When I first came to Shanghai, I was startled to see that, unlike Baltimore, almost every street is tree lined. It was autumn then, so leaves were falling. Once winter came I almost forgot the trees were there. Without their leaves, it was easy to imagine to trees as being completely formless. At noon, with the sun directly above us, there was hardly a shadow.
Once leaves started emerging again in spring, the trees’ unnatural verticality became apparent -- the result of decades of careful trimming. Their leaves formed a pale green cathedral-like ceiling, turning those road I’ve biked down so many times into a tunnel. Light pierces through narrow holes in the canopy, illuminating the shadows beneath. Pollen flutters through the air, like one of those 3D visual effects you find in a PS2 JRPG that are completely unnatural, yet leave an impression too real to be written off as fantasy.
During my bike rides, I often imagine this city bombed, turned into rubble. How would the trees react?
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