Dear, happy New Year!

Today is the new year, what did you do? Every New Year, you come, I go, we stray from each other like embers fluttering away from the fireplace— the question simply boils down to who is snuffled first by the wind.

On New Years, when I was little, I would follow my mother to grandmother’s home, and get precious money. Materialistic, maybe, but the truth of the matter is that Jewels shine in my eyes like forbidden apples; the snake of temptation sneaks around my torso like blood flowing in a stream of keen-nosed sharks. (I will have to feed them someday, but for now I live; and bleed, and pursue my avarice for you, you, you.)

On the fourth day, it is the first village meeting in our area. It is ancestral to Dragon King Temple Fair, today Dragon king temple fair, Tomorrow is a long history, so all kinds of snacks and shows cover a street or two. Full of lively crowds, every year there are opera performances, and they sing and weep and act with a spirit that I can’t catch in writing. Even if I did snatch the love in their voices with my pen and paper, the life of it will be lost in translation. It’s always difficult to express emotion, maybe just for me, but you must know— there is a cage around my heart. It beats in time with my lifeline, like a second person inside my flesh. Someday I will bleed enough for them to leak out.

I’m trapped. Save me.

This year I was a person performing in the Ningbo Spring Festival, but I miss the atmosphere of the New Year home. I would get up early with the sun on a new day, new year, hoping to forget; I have endured too much to vie for the release of death yet I have endured enough to want to start over. I would sing songs and try to express the emotion of the opera in my pitiful imitation, take out my sister sent from the hometown to get snacks.

Then, start a conference call with friends. Fourteen five, one wave.

Year ago, I did not have time to pay New Year’s Greetings to all teachers and teachers.

To congratulate respectfully.

Love,
Wenwu Zhang