Strange Beasts of China

by Yan Ge

Sorrowful beasts are gentle by nature, and prefer the cold and dark. They love cauliflower and mung beans, vanilla ice cream and tangerine pudding. They fear trains, bitter gourd and satellite TV.

Sorrowful beasts never smile. If they do, they can’t stop – not until they die. Hence their name.

‘This city is too full of monsters, too enchanting, too bewitching. A paradise for artists and wanderers.’

‘You can’t be sure that beasts aren’t people, or that people aren’t just another type of beast.’

When that time came, surely all novelists would have hormone injections to turn us into computer programmers, and all zoologists would undergo surgery to become bus conductors. Everyone would give up their hollow pursuits, and there’d be no myths, no beasts, no history, no fantasy. The government would rattle along, printing money. Yong’an would truly become an international metropolis.

I don’t know when people stopped saying goodbye. Anything to cut down on phone bills.