A six-month stay in a Chinese village helped a family return to their roots
After the Lunar New Year of 2020, I was detained in my home village for several months. I lost my job to the pandemic and my children’s kindergarten suspended classes. I was constantly bombarded with bad news from the internet: the human toll of the pandemic, the hardships of my compatriots on the front lines, the laments of survivors. I could only cope by focusing on what was in front of me. I hadn’t spent this much time in the village since before my college days.
Renjian the Livings is the nonfiction storytelling platform under NetEase. It aims to “reconstruct life through narration.”
Translated By
Nathaniel Gan is a translator working from Chinese and Spanish to English. He translates poetry, fiction, and first-person narratives for TWOC. His background in activism, farming, education, and design has provided a fertile training ground for navigating the space between worldviews, where meaning depends as much on context as content. Based out of Providence, Rhode Island, Nathaniel collaborates with poets and writers in the US and internationally.
