​​         Chinese Stories in English   

9. Meeting the Enemy
10. My Horse
11. Old Soul
12. One-Time Things

1. Ancient Way
Author: Tang Boniu


     Old Wang was invited to spend some time in a well-known scenic area. He went for a stroll every day and, on his way back, passed along a dirt road with a sign saying "West Wind Ancient Way". From the start he liked this peaceful, secluded road, with its ancient trees reaching to the sky on both sides and its carpet of fallen leaves on the ground. He'd breathe deeply as he went along enjoying the scenery.
     "What a great place this is," he told his friend. "With this West Wind Ancient Way to stroll along, all my desires are fulfilled. I couldn't ask for anything more."
     His friend said, "Why not stay a few more days? We'd be happy to have you stay until winter starts."
     So Old Wang settled in. He took a walk every day, but gradually he began to feel he was in a rut. He was bored, especially with West Wind Ancient Way. If he went for a stroll three times in one day, he'd pass along it six times, twice each time he went out.
     He decided to make a new path, even where there was no road. After all, as the author Lu Xun said, originally there were no roads in the world. Roads only came into being where people had already walked a lot.
     One day he went out without thinking about where he was going. He passed over a hill, by a stream, around a swamp, and through some brambles, intentionally taking a new route. But when he couldn't find his way home, he got scared.
     Finally he found West Wind Ancient Way. When he did, he stopped worrying and went happily home.


21世纪中国文学大系;2002年短片吗小说
21st Century Chinese Literature Compendium; 2002 Short Stories, p. 354
Translated from version at
http://www.4hw.com.cn/yanqingxiaoshuo/15767.html
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2. Contrast
Wan Junhua (万俊华)


     Wang Five had written short fiction for several years. He'd written out every word and sentence in pen.
     Shi Four asked him, "Why don't you do your writing on a computer? Don't you get tired writing in longhand?"
     "Don't know how," Wang Five answered. "Those things are too complicated."
     "Everyone starts out not knowing how and then learns." Shi Four said. "If you don't know how to write [on a computer], study it."
     "Don't want to study," Wang Five answered.
     Shi Four didn't understand. "Why not?"
     "It's not that I haven't tried to learn," Wang Five said, "but whenever I write on a computer, I start thinking about the roots of the words. I lose my train of thought."
     "That means you haven't formed the habit," said Shi Four. "It won't happen anymore once you get the knack of it. If you don't believe me, just stick with using the computer and you'll see."
     Years later. Wang Five was turning in more manuscripts than ever. He really knew how to use the computer to type his drafts, and it was much faster than using a pen to write them out.
     One day his son came home from school with the draft of an essay that had been assigned by his teacher, and pestered his father to correct it for him. When Wang Five picked up a pen for the first time in years and nonchalantly tried to write something, he was startled to find that his hand wasn't the same hand that it had been before. He couldn't write anything down in the essay book, or if he did write anything, his hand wouldn't write what he wanted it to.
     Wang Five's brain couldn't think of anything. It seemed to have been short-circuited. In fact, his mind had now become a completely blank space….
 [Fannyi says: Anyone who has tried to write Chinese characters by hand after using a computer for years will understand exactly what this story is about.​]


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3. Father and Daughter
He Liwei


     The Production Team Leader was a short, bald-headed fellow, skinny as a rail but strong nevertheless. In the pole-breaking games, he could grip a shoulder pole with his fingers and snap it in two. No one could best him. If a big guy lost to him but wasn't convinced, he'd say, "Come on, let's go one more time!" Talk about considering yourself a macho man.
     The funny thing was, the Team Leader was illiterate. He still liked to take quotations from the Little Red Book, though, but he'd often turn them around or mix the words up. He'd pretend to be reading and recite out loud, "Chairman Mao teaches us that today we need to apply fertilizer!" The Educated Youths would snigger and then quickly cover their mouths. He'd get a fierce look in his eyes. "What are you laughing at? Laugh at your cocks, you little bastards!"
     He also liked to tear the pages out of the newspaper and roll them up into megaphone-sized cigarettes. When he smoked one, he'd take a drag and the next moment a white cloud would rise up, by contrast making the sky look too blue for words.
     He was mean to everyone. The only exception was his eighteen-year-old daughter, upon whom he always looked benignly. The daughter had finished the top grade in the commune's elementary school but not gone any further. She could work harder than the young men and, like her father, she had unlimited strength in her hands. But amidst all the coarseness, she still had a young girl's delicate charms, good facial features and especially white teeth. She never brushed her teeth, but her smile was white like cotton.
     The first time I saw her I was walking alongside the creek coming into the village. Suddenly the twig door of a straw latrine alongside the road banged open and a woman came out. She was tying her belt as she walked forward, with her back bent and her head looking down. When she saw the tips of my plastic shoes, it was like she'd suddenly come across a pit viper. She screamed and looked up, and her face turned completely red. Then her ruby lips parted in a dazzling bright smile and she ran off.
     We got to know each other in time. All she cared about was asking me what the city was like. After I answered her questions in detail she'd fall silent. Then she'd ask some more and then fall silent again. Finally she'd mutter, "I'm going to the city, even if I have to be a street sweeper." When the Team Leader overheard her talk like that, he'd say, "That's all you think about, all day long, the city. What's so good about the city?" He'd be angry, but then his voice would get as soft as sagebrush cake....
     That was almost forty years ago. I've never gone back to that village since I left. The Team Leader must be seventy or more years old by now. I don't know if he can still compete with the young men at pole breaking. And his daughter, she should have a passel of kids, and I wonder whether she ever made it to the city. I think I can say with certainty that I wouldn't recognize her.
                                                                                                                                            From Southern Weekend, October 20, 2011


2011 中国最佳短片小说,主编王蒙,辽宁人民出版社,第297页
China's Best Short Stories 2011, Wang Meng Ed., p. 297
Translated from version at
http://news.ifeng.com/history/zhiqing/xiaohua/detail_2012_02/28/12833312_0.shtml?_from_ralated
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4. Final Answers
Text by Yu Yonghai


     Time for final exams again. Not wanting to come to a "Raise the Red Lantern" scenario, all of us in the dorm had finished our "preparations", except for a few guys who were "cramming".
     But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Half an hour before the test was to start, the Dean and the Test Proctor gave the room a careful once-over! It didn't matter that they found a pile of cheat-sheets as high as a mountain, though, because we'd "squirreled away" enough to make another whole mountain.
     The lucky thing was, four of us from the same dorm room were seated right next to each other for the test. We could secretly pass our exam papers back and forth until we worked out the most ideal answers. But while we were hard at this "cooperative endeavor", we weren't paying attention and the Test Proctor caught us red-handed!
     We stood in the office with our hearts pounding, waiting for the Dean's "judgment". He got more and more perplexed as he scanned over our test papers, then called out to the Test Proctor.
     "Professor Zhang," he asked, "you said these students were cheating, so how is it none of their test papers look the same? You see, even the multiple choice answers are all different. Were you mistaken?"
     A shred of doubt appeared on Professor Zhang's face as he looked over the test papers, but he immediately thumped his chest firmly and guaranteed, "I'm absolutely sure of it. I caught them while they were exchanging test papers. If you don't believe it, check the surveillance tape!"
     The Dean looked from Professor Zhang to our test papers, his expression more and more doubtful. Then he called out to me. "Tell me what's going on here. If you give me a satisfactory answer, you'll all pass this test!"
     I saw agreement in my friend's eyes, so I said, "It's like this. We didn't know the answers to most of the questions on this test, so we decided to let the one of us four who's usually the least lucky make guesses. When he was done, we had the next unluckiest do it over, throwing out some of his guesses. Then the next one did it again, throwing out some of those guesses. Finally it was up to me to throw out some of those guesses and arrive at our 'final answers', which we were all going to copy onto our test papers. But just when I'd gotten our 'final answers' together, the teacher grabbed our papers…."


Translated from分节阅读8
Also available at
http://www.xzbu.com/5/view-4471930.htm
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5. The Fox
Wu Hongpeng


     The leopard felt a little frustrated that it hadn't caught that fox, and it was unbearably hungry. No matter what, it'd have to find something to fill up its belly.
     It doubled back. Just now it had felt that something was moving up ahead.
     It got to that big rock. Whoosh, a fox sprang out from the brush on the left. It had a lame foot and couldn't run fast. It must have been so frightened that it didn't know which way to run. It scampered around this way and that, kind of funny, really, until it bumped its head on a tree.
     The leopard, carrying its easily won prize, walked away satisfied.
     A good while later, a tiny fox plucked up the courage to poke its head out from behind the big rock. It was so young, how could it figure out what had happened? Hadn't its mother's tracks been perfectly normal? A little before, the first time she raced the leopard, hadn't she won and come home really early?


卧底:闪小说精选300篇Undercover: 300 Choice Flash Fiction Stories
出版社:百花文艺出版社Published by Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House
Translated from version at
http://lz.book.sohu.com/chapter-230093.html
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6. Gravestone in the City
Author: Yu Tu (余途)


     You say things are crazy in that town. Yeah, they are. Even a young kid like me can dare to commit robberies.
     Springtime in that place, it's always raining. It rains for almost two hours every afternoon. But you can buy an umbrella anywhere. Almost every little shop, no matter what they sell, has umbrellas for sale, too.
    I was walking down the road one afternoon when a motorbike passed me. Without warning, the guy sitting behind the driver snatched the satchel I was carrying. He was too strong for me and I was thrown back. I ended up face down on the ground under a trellis beside the road. I crushed a section of the flowers.
     I'd seen a lot of that kind of thing, but I'd never thought it would happen to me.
     What did I lose, you ask? I had a mouse in the satchel that I was going to give to a girl to scare her.
     Damn, it was raining again.
     I was getting wet where the skin had been scraped off by the trellis, and it hurt.
     I thought about buying an umbrella, but my money was gone.
     A racing bike flew by me. The water it splashed up was worse than the rain.
     A box was delivered to me a couple of days later. There were a small gravestone and a piece of notepaper inside. "A Mouse's Grave" was written on the stone. The note said, "I found a gravesite for your mouse. I got it with the money that was in your wallet. You'll have to go there and pay the grave maintenance fee every year. I left them the address that was on your ID card."
                                                                                                                                                            Published in (Metro Evening News [Jilin])


Flash Fiction Monthly, Premier Issue, Distinguished Authors' Manuscripts
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7. The Hero
Liu Lang


     When the fat man went swaggering down the street, he didn't realize that the glittering gold chain around his neck had already gotten him into trouble.
     Three thugs rushed forward and grabbed him. He resisted, instinctively protecting his chain. People on the street gathered around to watch the fight. For a long time, the criminals were unable to get the chain away from him. Then, taking advantage of the unwillingness of the people gathered around to get any closer, each of the thugs flashed a knife. Killers that they were, they wanted to put a quick end to the matter.
     "Blood!" the crowd shouted as one as they broke away.
     At this point, a hero appeared. He faced up to the three glistening knives that were rushing at him. Amid a flash of knives and spattering blood, the hero fell to the ground. But this had given the police enough time to get to the scene.
     The three thugs were shut away in a paddy wagon, and the hero was lifted into an ambulance.
     Television and newspaper reporters flocked to the scene and, their hearts filled with respect and admiration, began to interview the hero. It had been many years since the city had seen a hero able to do such good, covered in so much blood.
   One reporter asked, "Mr. Hero, why were you able to rush to the fore at such a critical time?" Gasping for breath, the hero answered, "Because I didn't want to see him die."
     "Mr. Hero, did you think of the danger to yourself?" a woman reporter asked, tears flowing from her eyes. "Not only were you unarmed, while they had sharp knives, but it was three against one."
     "There was nothing else I could do, despite the danger. That fat guy is our foreman. He owes a dozen men in our village over two year's wages, almost one hundred thousand Yuan. They sent me to follow him for a few days. If he died, what could I say to my brothers?"
     The ambulance drove off. The reporters looked at one another. Maybe they didn't know how to report such a weighty news story.
                                                                                                                                                                             Published in Reader's Magazine


Posted by 浪不起来 Surf's Not Up
http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-53748-3724-1.shtml, Story #8
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8. Losing Her Hair
Liu Lang


     Sometime, she didn't know exactly when, the woman had started losing her hair.
     They fell out one by one, spreading over the back of the sofa, beside the pillow and on the floor in the corners.
     Whenever the woman went into the bathroom to comb her hair, some strands would get wound around in the comb with every stroke.
     When she looked at the comb, the woman would become lost in thought....
     The man was a bit of a neat-freak. He hoped that the home would be kept as tidy as could be, not stained by even a speck of dust.
     The woman losing her hair gave the man headaches, especially when there was a breeze, and the hairs that had fallen on the floor would swirl around, dancing, and quickly bunch up in small, black clusters.
     Looking at the floor, the man would furl his brow....
     Once, while the man was brushing his teeth, he suddenly felt something unusual in his mouth. He pulled it out and was surprised to see one of the woman's hairs. The man just couldn't take it anymore. "Will you please," he hollered at the woman, "clean up your fallen hairs!"
     Like always, the woman was fed up with the man's cold stare. "Do you think I want to be losing my hair?" she shouted, as though she'd been wronged.
     The man was startled. "It's not your fault you're losing your hair," he said philosophically. "But leaving the hairs all over the place, that is your fault!"
     The couple started fighting constantly over the fallen hairs. Neither one would give in to the other during these arguments.
     The man insisted that it was the woman's job to keep the house clean. Only with respect to the fallen hairs, the woman wouldn't cooperate.
     They ended up getting divorced. As they were leaving the Registry Office, the man laughed at himself a little. "It's funny," he said. "I never expected that a few fallen hairs would end up ruining our ten-year marriage."
     The woman looked at the man, tears in her eyes. "It's not funny at all. All you could think about was fallen hairs messing up the house. You never thought to take me to the hospital to find out why I'm losing my hair. In my heart, that kind of marriage was destroyed a long time ago."
                                                                                                                                                                (Published in Heavenly Pool Mini-Stories)


http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-53748-3724-1.shtml, Story No. 2
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9. Meeting the Enemy
Wan Junhua (万俊华)


     A room with five people in it, all of them middle-aged, macho types. They'd gotten together after dinner and started chatting about how satisfied they were with what they'd done the past year.
     When they mentioned the Tao of being an official, the first one, A, said smugly: "To be an official, you must first of all be intelligent, but to make a lasting career, you must also be enlightened. Flatter your superiors well and keep the people placated. To stop improving is completely unacceptable. How do you become a genius leader? In my experience, intelligence plus enlightenment equals genius."
     B continued the conversation: "Being an official, you must always have a permissible way out. If you want to have a way out at work, you must first of all get your thinking on track. But getting your thinking on track isn't enough. Don't the common people always say, 'The leaders have policies and the people have countermeasures'? 'Countermeasures' means a 'bag of tricks'. Being an official you need a way out, and in my experience, on-track thinking plus a bag of tricks equals a way out."
     C took up the subject: "These days maybe it's a diploma. Whoever has a high-level diploma is sure to have high status. But a school diploma alone won't cut it. You've got to commiserate with your bosses all the time and be able to drink [when you go to banquets with them]. That's a boozing diploma. In my experience, a school diploma plus a boozing diploma equals status."
     D interrupted: "If you want to be a success in officialdom, you must first of all have work skills. But just having work skills isn't enough. You also need singing skills [to impress your bosses when you go to karaoke clubs with them]. In my experience, work skills plus singing skills equals success."
     Then E opened his mouth: "The reason you guys wanted to be officials was to get rich. If you want to get rich, you need to be in the right spot. But just being in the right spot won't cut it. You've also got to have guts. I once wrote over ten letters to blackmail more than ten County Commissioners. Believe it or not, I got rich overnight. If you want to get rich, in my experience being in the right spot plus having guts equals folding money."
     "So it was you that sent those letters!" A, B, C and D immediately surrounded him. They were all shouting, "I'm going to kill you, you rat!"
     "The head of the Discipline Committee is here!" They got scared when E shouted that, and they all scurried off to their own beds.
                                                                                                                                         Published in Short Fiction Monthly, 2010 # 12


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10. My Horse
Author: Yu Tu (余途)


     I was attacked and fell off my horse, blood flowing from my wounds. My horse stopped in its tracks and stood by me.
     Trying to stand, I grabbed onto the reins, but I didn't have the strength to pull myself up. I groped around in the sticky blood and fell flat again.
     The horse lowered its head towards me.
     Sand blew up around me in the wind. My horse was all I could see in that wasteland.
     I struggled to grab the reins again, but my body wouldn't do what I told it to.
     My horse stared at me with its head down. I slapped at its rear end with a hand full of blood. "Go!" I shouted with all my strength. It turned and flew away.
     The whistling wind was keeping me from breathing. The sand was trying to bury me.
     The ground shook. It was a rhythm familiar to me.
     My horse, that's what brought the cavalry.
                                                                                                                                             From (Mini-Stories Monthly, December 1007)


Flash Fiction Monthly, Premier Issue, Distinguished Authors' Manuscripts
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11. Old Soul Meets Quick Wit
Unattributed


     Jing Three is an old soul, but Hou Four is a quick-witted fellow. When Jing was getting married he sent an invitation to Hou, figuring he'd be good for a large cash wedding gift.
     On the big day, Jing happily took the thick red envelope which Hou had given him and weighed it in his hand. When the wedding banquet was served, Hou stole a look at Jing, then hastily wiped his brow and dove in.
     Jing opened the envelope after he saw Hou off at end of the banquet. He peeled back layer after layer of paper but didn't find any money. When he peeled off the last layer, only a large invitation written in red ink was revealed: "Hou Four respectfully requests the honor of your presence at his wedding next month." Jing huffed and puffed in anger.
     Next month, on Hou's wedding day, Jing followed suit. He gave a large but empty red envelope as a wedding present. He also brought his own wife to the banquet, where they ate ravenously. He figured that made him even with Hou.
     Jing's mother unfortunately got sick and passed away two years later. Jing told Hou about it in a letter. He thought Hou should certainly send some money this time.
     On the day Jing's mother was cremated, Hou sent him a note on white paper. It read: "After one hundred years, your mother can return from Heaven and exchange this note for five hundred Yuan in cash." Jing weighed the note in his hand, thinking, "White symbolizes death in our tradition, so he sends worthless white paper to a funeral. It'd be hard to outdo this guy."
     Hou's mother remained in good health, but his father died a few years later. That worthless note thus made its way back into Hou's hands, as good as it ever was.
     One day Jing ran into Hou. "Everybody says I'm so clever," he said, "but when I run into you, Brother Hou, I have to admit my inferiority. Next time something happens in my family, don't bother sending a monetary gift. I'll just assume you would've done something clever."
     "People call me clever," Hou said, "but up against Brother Jing, I'm slightly inferior. Don't let me eat free the next time your family has something going on, and you'll be the clever one."
     A year later Jing's father remarried and threw a lavish wedding reception. Hou [attended but] in fact didn't send any money for a wedding gift, and Jing really didn't let him eat free.
     How was that? Because Jing's father married Hou's mother.


Translated from分节阅读9
Also available at
http://www.rensheng5.com/gushihui/ymgs/id-95415.html
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12. One-Time Things
Wan Junhua (万俊华)


     Wang Hua and Li Jia were drinking together. They were old classmates, after all, so when asking for advice about the doings of officialdom, Li Jia would speak from the bottom of his heart.
     "In general, there are really only two types of jobs," Li Jia said frankly and confidently, "those where your actions are regulated, and those where you can do what you want."
     "Back when you were a government functionary, you chose to always ride your bike to work, but after you got promoted you always took a car," Wang Hua said. "Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?"
     "As soon as I got my name in the Municipal Party newspaper and on TV," Li Jia said smugly, "I went from being Village Mayor to become Party Secretary."
     "When you went public with that 'Don't Throw Banquets for Homies' rule, but invalidated it less than two months later," Wang Hua asked, "was that the same thing?"
     "Once I got my name in the Provincial Party newspaper and on TV," Li Jia said with a bright smile on his face, "Didn't I become an Assistant County Supervisor?"
     "You spent a hundred million Yuan building Asia's first observation tower, then tore it down because of bad 'feng shui' a half year later," Wang Hua said regretfully. "How big a waste was that?"
     "Once I got my name in the national papers and on TV," Li Jia said with a brief wave of his hand, "didn't I lose that word 'Assistant' from my title?"
     Not understanding, Wang Hua asked, "So were each of these actions just 'one gust of wind?'"
     "What's so hard to understand?" Li Jia jabbed the air with his chopsticks. "Restaurants have one-time-use chopsticks, right? Those things I did are called one-time-use actions."
     A while later, news came around that Li Jia had been 'dual-tracked', [that is, disciplined by the Party for corruption]. No one understood why. Lots of people had sent him thousands of Yuan [as bribes], but he'd never accepted the money. Wasn't he an incorruptible leader? There must have been some mistake.
     Subsequent investigation made it clear that he had taken a one-time gift of five million Yuan from a real estate developer.
                                                                  (Published in Gold Mountain, 2010 #10; Reprinted in Selected Mini-Stories, 2010 #20;

                                                                  trophy winner in Short Fiction Monthly's Second Flash Fiction Competition, Gold Medal)


Flash Fiction Monthly, Premier Issue, Distinguished Authors' Manuscripts
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13. Three Glasses of Water
Author: Yu Tu (余途)


     Today was the first time my wife's friend was a guest in our home, so I made a point of fixing up our room. I hid a pair of dirty socks under the pillow and polished the mirror in the bath.
     I also made it a point to buy some fruits and beverages. I even got out the crystal glasses that we'd never used and put three of them on the table.
     The ancient music of a Chinese zither began to stream through the room. It was the music my wife and I had listened to the first time we'd been alone together.
     We stood by the door to greet her.
     "What a pleasant home," she said in surprise as soon as she came in the door, "and it smells so nice!"
     "He sprayed some air freshener around just for you."
     I know my face turned red.
     We showed her around the place. I saw her bright, shiny eyes in the bright, shiny mirror.
     "He likes a high pillow, but I don't."
     My wife was tugging on the pillow but I pulled her hand away. "Let's go get something to drink."
     She gave one glass to her friend and one to me. One glass was left empty.
     "What about you," I asked. "We have three glasses, don't we?"
     "I'll use yours when you're done," she said. "The two of us, it doesn't matter who goes first."
     The two women laughed. The third glass was filled with the ancient Chinese music.
                                                                   (From a Collection of the Evasive Speaking Series, Love and Resentment between the Sexes)


Flash Fiction Monthly, Premier Issue, Distinguished Authors' Manuscripts
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14. Wedding Photos
Liu Lang


     The woman was over thirty and still beautiful in the eyes of men. But the woman would sigh every time she combed her hair.
     One day the woman said suddenly to the man, "Dear, how about we go take a set of wedding photos?"
     The man's family had been quite poor when they got married. The woman had been very understanding and they had not hired a professional photographer.
     The woman looked expectantly at the man. "What wedding pictures?" the man said. "It's been years."
     The woman said, "I've heard it's not very expensive, if you just take a minimum set."
     "It's not a question of money," the man said impatiently. I'm afraid people would say we're nuts!"
     Another time, the man and the woman were passing by a wedding photo studio when a young girl promoter handed them an advertising flyer. "Would you like to take some wedding photos, sir? Now during our special promotion, a set of outdoor wedding photos is only eight hundred eighty Yuan."
     The man stopped, looked into the studio through the transparent glass window, and hesitated. The woman's eyes lit up and she began to feel warm all of a sudden.
     But the man stopped for only a couple of seconds, then walked away, pulling the woman along. The promotional flyer slipped soundlessly from the man's hand as they passed a trash can.
     A few days later, the man saw the woman at the computer, covering a laugh with her hand. He walked over to take a look and was surprised to see several varieties of wedding photos with the woman in them. The woman was posing in a number of different ways, fascinating, flirtatious and charming. She was very beautiful.
     "You got wedding photos," the man said, a little angry.
     "Nmm," the women replied.
     "How could you take wedding photos with me not there?" The man stormed out, slamming the door angrily behind him.
     Tears started to form in the corners of the woman's eyes. She didn't want to tell the man that she'd photo-shopped these pictures by putting her face on wedding photos sent to her by a girlfriend.
                                                                                                                                                                (Published in the Zhongshan Daily.)


http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-53748-3724-1.shtml, Story No. 3
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15. Who's at Fault?
Author: @Hai Feng


     It’s been raining straight for several days, like it doesn’t have the slightest intention of ever stopping. The sky’s been all clouded over, cold and dark….
     The first thing I do when I get up early every morning is push open the window. It seems to have become a habit. I look out the window and it’s raining, drip-dripping away like always. I watch the pedestrians scurrying along the road. That reminds me of those employees who were laid off by the company.
     The company’s going through a down-turn and business is rather bleak, so the boss decided on massive layoffs. It’s a small factory and forty or fifty people lost their jobs this way. Among them there’s no lack of employees who gave the company three or four years. If they didn’t make big contributions to the company they at least worked hard. If they didn’t do physical labor then their jobs were probably mentally fatiguing. The company immediately stopped the salaries of the ones who got laid off and wouldn’t even allow them to stay on in the company housing.
     Looking out at the rain, I can’t help but worry about them. They’ve been set adrift, and where should they go? Will they be able to find other jobs? And where are they going to spend their nights? If they figure on staying in a hotel it’ll cost them a lot of money, right? They’re just ordinary workers and it’s really not easy to scrape together a little money out in the world. Why was the company so ruthless with them? Such decisions by companies inevitably chill people’s hearts.
     Fortunately the sky finally clears up in the afternoon. The sun always comes out after a storm. I just hope they’ll be able to find work as soon as possible.
     Maybe, in the boss's eyes, profit is the basis of everything. Whose fault was it that the company laid people off? Was it poor executive decisions, or did problems appear in the day-to-day management. It’s worth thinking about....


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Gravitas Mini-Stories (Page 2)

1. Ancient Way
2. Contrast
3. Father-Daughter
4. Final Answers

13. Three Glasses
14. Wedding Photos
15. Whose Fault

5. Fox, The
6. Gravestone
7. Hero, The
8. Losing Hair