Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

Forgot to return my student ID and library card but didn’t realize it. At first I’d actually lost them. Nineteen days later, they were returned to me anonymously in an envelope, instantly transforming their loss into a lie. But I couldn’t stop using them anyway, out of sheer convenience. Also didn’t take my driver’s exam seriously enough. Took it four times and failed, although two of those instances were due to factors entirely beyond my control.

In the past I believed that every man had his own innate prototype of a woman, and that he would fall in love with the woman who most resembled his type. Although I’m a woman, I have a female prototype too.

Cruelty and mercy are one and the same. Existence in this world relegates good and evil to the exact same status.

seems I’m going to have to learn to be crueler if I’m to become the master of my own fate.

bright orange sun whose radiance floods through the windows and spills onto the vehicles behind us, like the blessing of some mysterious force.

It’s a magnificent night scene, gorgeous and restrained. The two of us are content. We look happy. But underneath, there is already a strain of something dark, malignant. Just how bitter it would become, we didn’t know.

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.

I’d wake up at midnight and ride my bike—a red Giant—to a nearby store where I’d buy dried noodles, thick pork soup, and spring rolls. Then I’d come home and read while I ate. Take a shower, do laundry. In my room, there was neither the sound of another human being nor light. I’d write in my journal all night, or just read. I became obsessed with Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls.

Being in college gave me a sense of vocation. It exempted me from an oppressive system of social and personal responsibility—from going through the motions like a cog, from being whipped and beaten by everyone for not having worked hard enough and then having to put on a repentant face afterward.

Kobisa

It drove my body to retreat into a self-loathing soul, and what’s even scarier is that nobody knew or seemed to recognize it.

All too soon I realized that I was an innately beautiful peacock and decided that I shouldn’t let myself go. However lazy, a peacock still ought to give its feathers a regular preening, and having been bestowed with such a magnificent set, I couldn’t help but seek the mainstream of society as a mirror. With

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.

my new motto contained a revelation: The power to construct oneself is destiny.

Though they were off in the distance, I could still feel the glow of her smile.

When I stepped forward, she stepped out, too. And she had pointed with a child’s wanton smile and said, “I want that one.” There was no way I could refuse. And like a potted sunflower that had just been sold to a customer, I was taken away.

How could we, with me under the table, scrambling to summon a different me, the one she would worship and put on a pedestal? No way was I coming out.

I denied myself, and I denied the fact that she was part of my life, so much so that I denied the dotted line that connected the two of us and our entire relationship to a crime.

Life ahead was soon supplanted by a miserable prison sentence.

It was as if I never really had a youth.

Nonetheless, I was determined at all costs to become a person who would l...

Roses every week and she didn’t even know it, and it was amid roses that it seemed I might live after all.

Those wrenching eyes, which could lift up the entire skeleton of my being. How I longed for myself to be subsumed into the ocean of her eyes. How the desire, once awakened, would come to scald me at every turn. The strength in those eyes offered a bridge to the outside world. The scarlet mark of sin and my deep-seated fear of abandonment had given way to the ocean’s yearning.

The whole world loves me, but what does it matter since I hate myself?

How can the world be this cruel? A human being has only so much in them, and yet you must learn through experience, until you finally reach the maddening conclusion that the world wrote you off a long time ago, or accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence.

And the world keeps turning as if nothing had happened.

No one will ever know about your tragedy, and the world eluded its responsibility ages ago. All that you know is that you’ve been crucified for something, and you’re going to spend the rest of your life feeling like no one and nothing will help you, that you’re in it alone. Your individual circumstances, which separate you from everyone else, will keep you behind bars for life. On top of it all, humanity tells me I’m lucky. Privilege after privilege has been conferred upon me, and if I don’t seem content with my lot, they’ll be devastated.

What’s ahead of me is unclear, yet I must move forward.

The first time I saw you, I knew I would fall in love with you. That my love would be wild, raging, and passionate, but also illicit. That it could never develop into anything, and instead, it would split apart like pieces of a landslide. As flesh and blood, I was not distinct. You turned me into my own key, and when you did, my fears seized me in a flood of tears that soon abated.

Didn’t understand that love, every little bit of it, was about exchange. Didn’t understand that she caused me suffering. Didn’t understand that love was like that.

She spoke timidly, not because she wasn’t supposed to have such feelings but because she was telling me about them. Because femininity meant having to hide one’s true feelings.

Can we start over? She turned around. The ocean wept. I knew it was mutual love.

Sometimes writing was like finding a parking spot: Just as I was about to give up, I managed to achieve a perfect fit, thanks to a bit of skillful maneuvering.

Because she was mine and illness had set in. And because purging her was the cure. What was gone was gone.

College—now there’s a system. Though it’s not quite death, it’s a pretty close second. It’s the nexus of three major institutions (compulsory education, compulsory labor, and compulsory marriage), and these three institutions happen to be the greatest achievements of human civilization. Contrary to expectation, when experienced in combination, they allow for an escape into a transient, self-absorbed greatness. Like death, college serves as a kind of escape hatch. But while death takes you straight to the morgue, college is a single rope dangling loose from the inescapable net of society.

“If I come out of hiding and treat you however I want, you’ll wish you could hide from me, but you won’t be able to—I’ll be cast deep down into the inferno,” I wrote to her. “Even if you were in the inferno, I’d follow you down just to see you. I’m capable of things you can’t imagine.”

Two very different types of people, mutual attraction. And for what reason? It’s hard to believe, this something that exists beyond the imagination of the chess game known as the human condition. It’s

Man’s greatest suffering is born of mistreatment by his fellow man.

She was a vine extending one slender, delicate branch toward my window, hoping I was the sky, not knowing that on the other side, there was no shade, and not much sunshine, either.

When you sleep next to me, I suffer, I said. So come sleep here on the bed, she said. That’d be even more painful, I thought.

Mischievously and teasingly, she lowered her body onto my covers. Her hair brushed against my face, and her scent filled my lungs. I pulled her head in close, wrapping my arms around her neck. My lips were pressed up against her eyelid. She was so tender. It was an awkward embrace, like black rain pelting snow-covered ground.

My shoes weren’t even firmly planted on the ground when I was cordoned off by Shui Ling. A stone hit my heart. Then another one or two or three broke through.

felt as if I had to hide in a cave, lest anyone discover my true nature.

Ever since I asked Shui Ling Can we start over?, I’d become a refugee on the ocean, and in due time, I was drinking seawater.

So I decided to confront my desires head on. I would renounce my resistance and hasten toward destruction. I would indulge in reckless behavior until I’d co...

To paint a picture of our embrace, I’d almost have to use her blood and guts.

Because I had moved on with my life, she offered me only the dregs of reconciliation, a cup of black coffee with no sugar, just cream on the side. I’d taken a sip of each, and I have to say, I preferred the coffee. The cream agreed with me about as much as she did.

No matter what kind of trouble she was in, I’d run over in an instant to toss a rope down and pull her back to safety.

I don’t know how other people endure the violence and cruelty they encounter throughout their lives.

“That isn’t being forced to do something. It’s your own choice not to make other people disappointed in you,”

“Ever since I started to wise up, my family’s been perpetually disappointed in me. Though it hurt them, I shattered their image of me little by little. If I didn’t, I’d have to sacrifice myself in order to maintain a false ideal. I’ve been trying really hard to get over my resentment. It’s caused them no small amount of pain,”