Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

People in this city are manufactured and canned, raised for the sole purpose of taking tests and making money. The eighteen-year-old me went through the high-grade production line and was processed in three years, despite the fact that I was pure carrion inside.

The fact is, most people go through life without ever living. They say you have to learn how to construct a self who remains free in spite of the system. And you have to get used to the

idea that it’s every man for himself in this world. It requires a strange self-awareness, whereby everything down to the finest detail must be performed before the eyes of the world.

Life ahead was soon supplanted by a miserable prison sentence. It was as if I never really had a youth.