All these stories have the flavour of the author's Chinese mindset, but vary across wildly bouncy psycho-philosophical categories, extreme situations and cultural settings. Often it’s the hidden, lurking implications beneath the surface which carry the threat and make you grateful for the normal reality you live in.
I don't know how long I've been walking but eventually I arrive beside the sea and the Statue is there. The bronze Goddess stands potently, in the misty light, raising her arm to the sky, just like I first saw her many years ago, in the themepark near my hometown, with my cousin.
Don't cry, Xiaob Peng, she'd said, holding my hand. Promise me when you grow up, you'll come to the other shore, and we will meet again.
Through my tears, I watch the goddess as she transforms. The hem of her robe fans out. The spikes on her crown expand. Her arms lengthen, multiplying, and, at last - dense with foliage - she becomes a prodigious tree, prospering, in the land of nowhere, the wild of nothing.
