Mostly I see my mother sitting one table away, and I feel as lonely as I imagine her to be. I think of the enormous distance that separates us and makes us unable to share the most important matters of our life. How did this happen?

I will call her, long, long-distance. Cost doesn't matter, I will say. I have to tell you something, can't wait any longer. And then I will start to tell her, not what happened, but why it happened, how it could not by any other way.

I saw a little spot of mold growing on her pale painted cheek. I took a soft cloth and dipped it in water, washed her face. But her cheek grew darker. I washed harder and harder. And soon I saw what I had done: rubbed half her face off completely! I cried, as if I had killed her. And after that, I could not look at that picture without feeling a terrible grief. So you see, I did not even have a painting anymore to call my mother.

I don't know why he thought this was good, to imitate what foreigners did, as if everything Western were good, everything Chinese not so good.

We were always ready to squeeze out one more moment of fun. We liked to think we were just like those people in Berlin. We had heard it was a crazy kind of place, where people did not think about the war….