Dressing Code for Summer

So I saw this man standing by the bus stop with a yellow jacket and a pair of blue jeans that went all the way down to his ankles and met the thick brown leather shoes tightened by black strings. It was high noon of the summer. The tarmac surface of the road had turned into a soft and watery layer, when it met the treads of my slippers I could hear a squeezy and sticky sound. Not a single soul could be found on the street except for the intermittent sounds of the cicadas somewhere in the trees, and me and this strange man, who was probably waiting for a bus, too.

I was in my sleeveless shirt and running shorts, and desperately praying for the bus to show up. But the man seemed to be enjoying basking in the sun, which had pushed me to run a red light when crossing the road. I hesitated for a moment, but finally decided to walk over and have a word with him.

"Hey, what's the matter with you?"
"Excuse me?" The man said with nonchalantly as if he was doing me a favor by giving me a response.
"Are you sick?" I continued. "Why are you wearing so many clothes and standing in the heat on a day hot like this?"
"Which is soothing and lovely, isn't it?" He grinned, and adjusted the woolly skullcap on his head.
Good old sun, how could I have just missed that! "Don't try to fool with me." I was a little irritated. "Look at you, and look at the world around! It's 39 degrees Celsius. Everybody is looking for a shadow, and my shirt is soaked in sweat."
"But the world, the temperature, the crowd and your sweat shirt do not concern me." He answered peacefully. "The weather is perfect for me, and I want to enjoy it as much as I want."
"Then just admit you're sick and I'll let you go with it." I stepped forward and looked him in the eyes.
"But I'm not sick." He shrugged and grinned again. "Why do you make such a fuss about a person enjoying himself in the sun? The weather never suits people in a fixed way."
He seemed to have made a point, but I didn't want to give in and leave him in the sun like that. "Then what if winter comes?"
"Well, there's never winter for me." He said. "Winter, what a terrible word! Whenever the heat wanes, I move like a migratory bird. Three month from now, I'll be somewhere in the southern hemisphere where the heat waxes and culminates."
"I see." I stepped closer to him and whispered in his ears. "You're not human. You're an alien. You are-- what the sci-fiction says-- a lizard-man. You're a lizard-man in human's form. And just like a lizard, your metabolism depends on solar energy-- the more heat there are, the more lively you are. Am I not saying the truth, lizard-man?"
The man winced and gave a whole-hearted laugh. "You're surely got a wild imagination. At first, you call me sick. Now you claim I'm from the outer space. But let me ask you a question, why are you so obsessed with the way I'm dressed? All because I'm different?"
"You're not different. You are abnormal!" I was irritated again by his "what's the big deal" indication in his tone. "You see that woman passing the road? She's wearing a lace shirt and a pair of short jeans. Her shoes are leather but they are sandals. I call that different. But YOU-ARE-ABNORMAL! Only the fact that you're a lizard-man explains this abnormality."
"But why? Can't a person just be the way he is? Doesn't he have a right to be abnormal as long as he enjoys himself and does nobody harm? I know it!" He suddenly stopped, approached me and, quite by my surprise, whispered in my ear, "You're a Communist Party member. Only the Communist Party wants to decided on people's personal affairs, like how many children they should have, what kind of book they should read or what movie they should watch, and now, what clothes people should wear in summer."
"No, I'm not a fucking Communist Party member!" I leaped and shouted, horrified by his accusation. But before I could find a reason to rebut him, he continued.
"Forty years ago, the Communist Party decided that the clothes wore should be of no more than 2 colors, so you saw people then either in blue or green. Thirty-five years ago, the Party decided that group dancing was obscenity, so they cracked down upon those who gathered and danced at night. Thirty years ago, the Party decided public kissing was a crime, so people were thrown into jail for doing that."
"You don't live in the past. Things change. All that you said are normal now." I finally got a chance to have myself heard.
"Yes, things change. I agree with you on that. Abnormal becomes normal. Like the
Communist Party forced women into abortion twenty-five years ago, but now encourages them to have more children."
"But the way you dress yourself in summer was abnormal fifty years ago, and will be still abnormal fifty years from now. Because it's a universally accepted"
dressing code proved by generation after generation that one doesn't do sun-bathing in jacket and long jeans and leather shoes."
"Well, I think you're a hard-core communist, only you've never realized it. Only the Communist Party tends to conclude things with the statement that there is a universally accepted truth proved by generation after generation. The way how the world runs is how the Communist Party sees it run. Whether a behavior is normal or abnormal is totally up to the Party's call. You've been trying to tell me that I've broken the dressing code, that only you're wearing clothes in compliance with it, the universally accepted truth, the rule of mankind, the law of historical development, or whatever you call it, which is bullshit!" He zipped his jacket tight, pulled down his cap so that it covered his ears, and said, "The truth is people can live whatever life they want to live." Finishing last words, he hopped onto the bus that pulled into the stop and disappeared.

So I lost the argument. But that was not the embarrassing part. What embarrassed me was that he labelled me as a communist, and a hard-core one? The truth is I never belong to any party or club. I don't even party! And I don't want to decide for anyone's life, certainly not his. But that son-of-a-bitch says he always lives in summer and follows the sun like a migratory bird. He certainly has got millions of money to do that. No doubt that he is a rich capitalist bastard. Fuck the capitalists and fuck the corrupt life they live! I'm going to report this strange man to the local bureau that oversees people's behaviors and let them keep a good eye on him.

Wait, I think I've got a better idea. I'm going to call on people to sign for a petition that we, the people, should wear clothes in accordance with normality. Wearing jackets, long jeans, leather shoes and woolly hats in hot summer should be deemed as abnormal and is not acceptable. Anyone doing that should be denounced and put into house arrest. I'm going to do that, and to be effective, I'm going to found a club and recruit people who share my view so that we can re-establish sanity in the way how people dress themselves. So if you're with me and support my cause, please make a donation to help us achieve that goal. My bank account: 1234-5678-8765-4321 (People's Bank, International).

Beware, capitalism is ruining us with its ideology. To exploit the surplus value of those garment makers, it even wants us to wear more clothes in summer. Wearers of the world, unite!

Trail Running on a Hot Day

The top of the hill was just about 15 meters or so above my head, and I could hear some indistinct voices coming down through the thicket up there. How strange that there were so many voices. All the other runners were either way behind me or way ahead of me. Those two runner who had just passed now resting and talking up there was conceivable. But the multiple voices I heard could be a group of people partying.

Am I having an illusion? I said to myself. Why is the song Stairway to Heaven playing in my mind all along? Yes, I'm buying my stairway to heaven. It was damn hot. The dry and stony trail I had just climbed through was unsheltered by any plant. Yet Robert Plant's voice was stuck with me. The soil was exposed to the sun, which now aiming at me freed from underneath the earth the heated air that hit me like steam coming out of a wok on the stove. But I could barely sweat. Neither could I barely move my heavy legs. I looked at my watch. It was 10:45. Had been 3 hours since I started, but the latest uphill 1km cost me 27 minutes. I checked the GPS. Still got 2km to go. But once I made it to the top, the rest would be downhill. Yes I need to hurry up. I thought to myself. My wife was waiting in her car at the foot and was going to take me back to the hotel for the check-out before noon.

The voices were clearer and clearer as I approached the hill-top. Wriggling past the last corner around the slab stairs, I finally saw the talking human beings. There were 8 of them, either standing or sitting in the shadow. One of them had lit up a cigarette and was trying to take some consolation from it. But there was a silent one lying still on the ground and was stripped off his shirt. His topless white upper body was leaning against a pair of legs that belonged to a 40-ish woman, who was shaking a piece of towel to create some coolness over him.

"Running on a hot day like this," the woman said, "everybody is a hero."
"Are his heart rates going down?" another man next to her said. He was about the woman's age, but shorter than her. "His HR watch is still beeping. He needs to be cooler."

The man struck down by the sun was about 25 years old or younger. His chest was heaving slowly as sweat trickled down and converged at his belly where most of his fat was accumulated. His eyes were closed, nostrils blowing out some light snores as if he was in deep and un-wakable sleep.

"Is he with you guys?" I asked and stopped in front of them, who had totally blocked the path.
"No. I barely know him." The woman said and turned her head to the back. "He is with her, the Hungarian Beauty. She says they come from Shanghai."
I looked over and saw a skinny blonde sitting on a rock in the shadow. She was sipping water from a bottle and wiping sweat off her forehead.
"You are from Shanghai, too?" A 30-ish man next to me asked loudly. "Whereabout in Shanghai?"
"Luwan District". The Hungarian girl answered in perfect mandarin Chinese. "I often run in the parks there."
"No wonder your face looks familiar." The man said, "I often do exercises in the Luwan Gym. Did you also run the Chaigu Ultra Trail earlier this year?"
"Yes, but I didn't finish. The weather was too awful."
"Hey, I was there, too. I must have seen you there, that's why..."
I decided to turn a deaf ear to their conversation and walked over to pull down the fainted man's calf sleeves. Although his legs were huge like two felled down trees, his muscles were soft, and the sleeves were soaked in sweat, it was not difficult for me to peel the fabric off his skin.
"That'll make him cooler." I said.
"Why don't you take off his shoes, too?" The short man said with an urging voice.
I hesitated for a while. I didn't like to take orders but nevertheless, I bent over to do as the man said. Shit, the shoe

strings were not tied but were fitted to a button and were wrapped in such a way that I tried but failed.
"Don't know how to unhook the strings." I said to the man.
The man looked at me and said nothing.
"Don't bother." The woman said, "He'd have to put on the shoes again. Leave them on. When he wakes up, he can just get going without the trouble."
"Can I walk through? I need to catch the time." I said.
"Oh, sure." The woman slided and made some room for me to pass.

When I was racing down the hill with the last bit of strength, Robert Plant was on again, "as we wind on down the road/ our shadows taller than our soul." You are wrong, man, there are no shadows at all. The sun is taller than my soul. And I kept asking myself, Are you really up for the 50km race 4 months from now in the same place? "It makes wonder, oooh, it makes wonder." Robert Plant echoed. But the song instantly disappeared when I finally reached the finishing line, an aid station set in a hotel's yard at the foot of the hill, and saw the watermelons, cherry tomatoes, milk shakes displayed there. As I was
gulping down the fruit and drink, a siren whistled by outside the hotel.
"Is it a fire engine?" one of the assistance girls by the desk asked, "It's so hot, could be a forest fire or something."
"I think it's an ambulance." the other girl answered, "a man's got a sunstroke on the hill, haven't you heard?"

大盘鸡

吃完大盘鸡，我老婆突然对我说：“快，把我举到头上。”

我说：“Are you chicking me？”

我老婆：“快，这是你的最后机会。再晚就来不及了。熬扫！”

我一把抓过她的腰，像翻一袋装着马铃薯的麻袋一样，把她举过头顶。“好了，快讲为什么？”

“唧唧复唧唧。”我老婆回答道，一只脚站在我的手上，展开双臂，摆出了一副要冲破天花板的飞天姿势。

“No chicking！我脚下的地板快塌了！”我大叫道。

“爸爸，你要挺住。”我女儿手里抓着一只啃了一半的鸡爪，说：“你再坚持100分钟，我就把鸡爪奖励给你。”

“You son of a chick。快叫你妈下来。否则我给你暑假报100个补习班。”

我女儿扔掉手里的鸡爪，一把掰住我的肩膀，蹭蹭爬到我的头上，单脚站在了我的另一只手上。她弯下腰，凑到我耳边喊道：“你去报呀，报呀，you son of a chick！”

我松开了屏住呼吸的肚子，脚底一沉，一声轰隆的巨响，远方落日的最后一道光照在我额头突出的静脉上，宛若血光的诗意。“听着，我没有给你俩上保险。”我托着头顶的娘俩沉入了楼下。