I live in a beautiful city in the Great Lakes region of the United States. It is rare to see a Chinese character in a few years, and I don’t speak Chinese very well when I meet a fellow countryman. I don’t use my mother tongue at all except for contacting China or talking in my dreams.Sometimes I wake up in a dream, forgetting the sculptural and tranquil Western face of the wife next to the pillow, and suddenly think-will I lose the ability to speak my mother tongue one day like an ostrich's wings molted?This indescribable sense of alienation, alienation and foreign body invasion makes me shudder.

I started talking to myself, taking care of my past life.Memories are deposited in the blood like traces of heavy metals, and it is difficult to get rid of them even in a foreign land.Wandering is a kind of existence (as long as you are on the earth), whether you love it or hate it, it is cast as a code of life and merges with you—just like the eight years of Beijing drifting, which ended four years ago and is still crushing Shatter my dreams. But unearthed a life - even if it is unforgettable - it is inevitable that the clay will be dusty and suspicious.In human evolution so far, memory codes cannot be stored digitally. There is no high-fidelity history in this world, even if the history is just yesterday.Especially once the narration involves the parties involved, the fame and fortune under the skin, harming others and benefiting oneself, exaggerating mistakes, avoiding the important, evasive words... and the inherent paradox of the text (once you try to manipulate it, you will also be manipulated by it), Tension, erraticity, delirium, inaccuracies, and so on, may not match your vision.

Fortunately, all these polished restorations and hidden entanglements can be called creation. According to fashionable literary theory (how to write is far more important than what to write), this is not a good novel.There is no confusing structure, no complicated plot, just like a bulldozer pushing forward in a single line with a few detours, solidity and fatigue go hand in hand in the clang.The ending is not earth-shattering, but a sigh at best.The characters are lively and vigorous, but stiff and flat due to congenital dysplasia.The words that think they are sturdy are nothing more than personalized, solemn and humorous.The sentimentality penetrating into the bone marrow is not "hypocritical", the tearful smile is suspected of "scratching an itch", and the cowboy-like sincere self-competition can be called "twisting".

Fortunately, the balance of the world, a free mind, lies in my hand caressing my heart. This book is dedicated to the "drift generation"—those who are in a foreign land, on the road, ready to go out, afraid of going out, afraid of falling, trapped by love and confused by love, those who love the bed, People with insomnia, people who fall asleep, people who are nostalgic, people who can't bear to look back, people who want to escape but have nowhere to go, people who want to collapse but are stubborn, people who have a lot of money but are bored, voyeurism, tear glands or smile muscles People who are dysfunctional, people who have a need to listen and talk, people who want to be alone, people who want to communicate with a friend who is far away...and people who are just obsessed with words.

Thanks to the Writers Club and editor Yiling, who encouraged me more than ten years ago when I was still a stupefied youth. Li Maison in the summer of 2011 Madison , Wisconsin