A Collection of Essays on Daily Life in Contemporary China

The Structure Of The Nest Is A Direct Reflection Of The Species' Survival Instincts.

"Normal architecture should reflect the current social order and people's mental state. Excellent design must conform to such principles."

Your mind keeps echoing the classic quotes of your college mentor many years ago.

It is obvious that those empty slogans have nothing to do with the actual work of a low-level designer like you, except for shaping the image of a low-level academic lord.

You have used up all the inspiration in your life but cannot turn the mediocre design draft in your hand into the right decision.

Obviously, when the design plan has been reworked five times based on the client's comments, your employer and client have lost patience.

Under the sharp KPI, you were successfully eliminated from the last place.

Of course, this isn't the first time you've hit rock bottom.

You used to be a planning designer at a provincial architectural design institute, doing practical but menial work for higher-level engineers.

Born into a worker-peasant family, you have won social status, a good income and due respect for yourself with your excellent character and academic performance, and your gentle and modest qualities.

Like any young talent of any era, you once had a wife who was a perfect match for you.

She was your schoolmate and a programmer with an equally high income.

In short, you once had a bright future that most people envied.

A few years ago, a sudden plague ravaged the entire planet. At that time, you didn't realize that this was probably how the dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago.

While the plague is spreading, you and your wife are enjoying high-paying jobs working from home, which is a rare time for you to be at home in the few years since you graduated with your master's degree.

As a result, your relationship became more harmonious than when you lived together in school, and a year later you welcomed a pair of twin boys and girls.

You seem to be a winner in life, and even fate cannot resist your good luck. In addition to blessings and envious eyes from everyone, the arrival of a new life also attracts four elderly people to come and take care of your offspring.

Soon, when three families, eight members, were spread out in the same small apartment, interpersonal and intergenerational relationships broke out simultaneously.

Your parents and your wife's parents have demonstrated an extremely professional and subtle competitive attitude when it comes to caring for the twins.

The plague subsided in due course, and you and your wife returned to your previous jobs in a timely manner.

You feel relieved to have escaped from the crowded home where you have lived for nearly three years, and you feel that there is a bright future ahead of you when you return to the workplace.

Meanwhile, your wife is tired of typing code and has applied to join the international business department.

Soon after, she became a manager of international buisiness due to her outstanding abilities.

Your wife's increasing income gives you and your family the confidence and courage to move into a larger home.

In your eyes at that time, the down payment of millions was just the selling price of your current residence, and the thirty-year loan was just a grain of sand in your life, as insignificant as the dinosaurs in the history of the earth.

The only small problem is that it will take at least two years for the luxury apartments to be completed.

During the heated and solemn discussion among the four elderly people at the family meeting, your family made a wise decision to sell this old and small apartment, move into a rental suite with your children who had just turned one year old, and your parents and your wife's parents took turns taking care of the children every month during the two years of waiting for the house to be delivered.

Perfect!

The impact of the plague has finally dissipated, and the world seems to be returning to its original order.

However, the call from HR caught you off guard, and your heart stopped when you saw your name on the layoff list.

Those who leave with you are all from the same working class and peasant class as you. They tell you that employees who over the age of 35 are only those related to the leaders can continue to provide services to the department.

After completing the resignation procedures, when you passed by your former office, you saw a lady who looked like a graduate sitting at your workstation.

Her temperament reminded you of your wife when she first started working.

Driven by male self-esteem and family responsibilities, you did not become discouraged, but instead submitted resume after resume and visited company after company with firm belief.

With your strong ability and resume, you finally got a job in a home design firm, where you are not only responsible for all projects related to design and construction, but also have to develop clients yourself.

But what problem can these little things have for you?

However, Reality will never tell you the Reality's plan.

The number of clients who need decoration design and construction is far from the expected number, so that employers who come from working-class and peasant families had raised the KPI standards for all employees.

Under the pressure of performance, you contacted all the connections you could, and with the introduction of friends of friends, you successfully used your extraordinary eloquence and preferential packages to win over the few clients and declining income.

Until the last one, who was the client made you rework five times.

He could not understand that there was an irreconcilable contradiction between perfect design, efficient work and low price, and that it was impossible to have all three at the same time.

But your boss doesn't think so, he wants the client's money and the value of your labor.

The client doesn't think so either. He doesn't want to pay so much money and still wants the fruits of your labor.

That same day, you lost your job again.

However, having grown up in a working-class and peasant family, you refuse to admit defeat. The image of your wife and children in your mind makes you afraid to face the consequences of wavering your will.

That night you felt like you were back in college, burning all your life's passion and focus to learn how to quickly cook delicious and healthy fast food from the Internet courses.

The next morning, you sorted out the remaining cooking utensils in your home, purchased basic catering equipment, and drove your outdated car to the entrance of the night market before dusk to set up a stall and sell food.

Unfortunately, the number of fellow vendors outnumbered the customers.

Feeling puzzled, you return to the rental house at midnight with a small amount of business money with a tired body, only to find that your wife has left without saying goodbye.

Perhaps out of concern for you, she left you two children who can only cry "Dad, we're hungry".

Of course, in addition to two noisy children, you also have the knowledge and brains of a master's degree.

You quickly thought of the only and reasonable self-rescue plan, which is to find buyers in advance for the high-end apartment that has not yet been completed and delivered.

After all, you no longer have a wife to share that spacious space with you.

But when you arrive at the construction site, apart from the giant isolation wall covered with exquisite prints outside the construction site and the luxurious but empty sales center, the frame of your high-end apartment seems to form an apocalyptic postmodern sculpture with the steel structure solidified in mid-air on the tower crane.

There were dozens of families who were shocked at the scene just like you.

Several elderly people quickly woke up from the paralysis caused by cerebral congestion and showed a crazy desire to express themselves.

The strong emotions infected everyone within a few minutes.

Although you try hard to stay rational and try to discern the logic that is beneficial to the development of the situation from their confusing words, the sudden appearance of riot police makes the course of events uncontrollable, of course, it is only uncontrollable for you.

The authorities quickly took control of the situation and arrested everyone present, even though you repeatedly denied your involvement in the riots and kept explaining how much you wanted to resolve the issue peacefully.

After all, all you wanted was a place to stay with your two children.

But because of your presence, for the first time in your life, a stain of crime endangering public security was permanently left on your life.

And this stain is destined to be recorded and passed on to your descendants. Its impact includes but is not limited to your children never being able to have a socially recognized job like you did a few years ago.

Because of this accident, even your parents kept their distance from you until they naturally cut off all contact with you.

As an honest person who does not want to add burden to the country, you voluntarily promise to never participate in gatherings that endanger social order again, and write a letter of guarantee at the police station.

Since you are powerless to change the outcome of the building developer running away, you can only accept the reality of being homeless.

Under the humanitarian concern of all sectors of society, the courts and banks are allowed to reduce the repayment amount of each installment for the owners of unfinished buildings at their discretion, but the huge mortgage loans must be paid on time and the total amount remains unchanged.

Faced with an unfinished high-rise building, you must move your few but essential personal belongings, including two young children, to the 28th floor alone.

The irony is that your unfinished apartment was once the pride of your department.

It was because of your confidence in your career and industry prospects that you and your ex-wife bought this large luxury apartment on the 28th floor when the housing prices were at their highest.

This event is like a branding iron that keeps stirring in your brain and heart, and it never goes out.

During the plague, you and your wife jointly repaid the loan for this building for a period of time, but now you have to bear this responsibility alone.

Soon, new owners in your situation began moving into the unfinished high-rise.

Like ants, you build and improve your own homes through slow mutual cooperation, and the progress of the project is orderly but loose.

In the process, you discover that the sales of this huge high-rise building complex are not ideal, and those grand signing events may just be a joint performance by the sales team and extras.

There are moments when you seem to understand the trajectory of your life.

But these speculations cannot affect the determination of you and your neighbors to build their homes.

Changes are growing on the rough and cold surface of reinforced concrete.

More and more people are appearing in this ruin.

They occupy as much space as possible, and each unit is realizing life in its own way and style.

Unfinished public spaces and garden squares between high-rise apartments serve as free markets during the day, while barter and sex trade take place simultaneously at night.

All these changes are the result of your hard work.

You use your former professional knowledge to help everyone here.

Through day-to-day work, you integrate into life and gradually find your former state, and express your creativity unrestrainedly in this wildly growing complex of buildings.

You, an architect.

As your two children grew tall enough to climb over the building guardrail, neighbors came to add fixtures and furniture to your apartment, and somone even found large pieces of glass that were almost the size of floor-to-ceiling windows, then installed it for you.

From this window, you watch countless people walk into buildings, climb tall buildings, and disappear into the air.

Many more struggle to stay and become part of the building.

Looking at the world from here, you feel that these concrete boxes have come alive. Humans are cells and life is blood, promoting the continuous growth of the buildings themselves until the world is formed.

One day the twins grew old enough to chase and play between floors with other children. The movement of children drove the development of interpersonal relationships like metabolism.

Searching for children in the huge maze has become your daily routine.

One day, you follow the sound of children playing and meet a lady who lives alone. She looks younger than you, but is actually a little older than you.

When you first met she was in her room peeling an apple for your daughter while your son was yelling at her TV.

Only then do you realize that your two children have never received such care.

They are wearing messy and lack education, so much so that many people think you have raised two boys.

The straight-line distance between your room and hers is no more than two hundred meters, but the total number of floors exceeds thirty-five.

Not only do you not belong to the same building, you cannot see each other directly from the windows.

Soon she moved into your room with her belongings, saying that living in a room nearby the lower floor was prone to theft and harassment by homeless people.

After all, as time goes by, this place is crowded with residents, and the longer people live here, the higher the floors they live on.

On the first day of living together, you learned that she had been a nurse in a plastic surgery hospital before the plague.

Although she survived the plague, she was unemployed.

Afterwards, like most women, she made a living by selling her body both online and in real life.

When she could barely make ends meet, she earned a meager income by working as a hostess in bars at night.

She didn't ask you to pay that night.

Because of her experience at the plastic surgery hospital, she asks you to clear out a separate room in the apartment and to find and purchase some medical equipment.

For money she would work as a waitress at the bar downstairs every evening, occasionally returning home at dawn.

Sometimes she has to provide plastic surgery services to those in need, including local residents, homeless people, and even outsiders.

As word of mouth spread, her craft greatly improved the quality of your life, until one day, she finally stopped going to the bar.

And you may have noticed that there has been an increase in demand for plastic surgery among men recently, and their requirements for body modifications have become more and more professional.

Its manifestation is that some men want to gradually or completely become women.

Architect and plastic surgeon, soon, you, this strange combination, will finally become an element of the community's ecological balance.

While you occasionally have to go to other parts of the complex to make repairs or upgrades, she stays at home to take care of her two teenage children, and the twins act as apprentices and assistants while she works.

The scene is more like a rare complete family, and you even have the illusion that life will remain the same.

This went on for a few more years until one day the bank stopped collecting loans and instead some semi-armed men searched the building for the people they were looking for, claiming that their business was to collect money on behalf of the bank.

Almost immediately, a large number of refugees poured into the community, some of whom were well-dressed families even with a small amount of property.

They wandered around the ground floors of buildings, trying to find a place to stay.

And such scenes trigger your memories from many years ago.

These people come to your world in search of living space, and the markets and bars on the ground floors of buildings never close.

Locals here cheat all their money and then break up their families.

Women and children survive on the streets using ancient methods, while men disappear.

Some repay their debts with their lives, while others become your wife's customers.

They are unwilling to give up their lives and try to repay their debts with their bodies.

You learn from the lucky few who have settled in the building that they were once residents of other areas of the city and had jobs and lives not long ago, but when their income was not enough to repay the mortgage, the depreciated property became their creditor.

As the times change, more and more refugees enter the community, and customers' increasingly alternative demands for surgery directly promote the development of technology.

Your wife and daughter no longer regard survival as the only goal of their work, but instead save lives and heal the wounded with vitality and creativity.

Since the population growth rate is proportional to the aging of the buildings, you have felt overwhelmed by the heavy workload of community environment transformation and building structure upgrades more than once, so you brought your son who is also proficient in body modification surgery with you.

Now this young man is your right-hand man and future successor.

In just three years, your son has acquired the same high level of architectural skills as you, and is even more rational and creative than you.

Looking at your son's focused expression as he works, you feel the pride and expectations that your parents, who have lost contact with you for many years, once had for you.

A mouse's children will dig holes, and a worker's children will always work.

Your family and life are far superior to those poor people out there who tried but failed to cross the class barrier.

Just maintain the status quo, your family is still standing on the 28th floor and above, and remain calm in this noisy little world.

Before long, some of the arrogant armed debt collectors of yesterday became refugees selling their bodies for survival today. Everyone is equal under the KPI.

Because of their work background, they find it difficult to integrate into the world you live in, and their former colleagues will treat them more harshly when faced with their current situation.

The brutality of the debt collection process forces them to sell the higher-quality parts of their bodies in exchange for a slightly longer survival time.

Such behavior sets off a trend of humans promoting and selling parts of themselves, with those in debt wanting to sell parts of themselves, and those who have paid off their debts wanting to sell more of themselves in exchange for a place in the community.

The general situation is that most people would sell themselves until only their brains or intestines were left and they would not earn enough to buy a basement room.

After all, space is the basis for the survival of all living things.

In such a market environment, your wife will accept various body parts voluntarily sold by refugees at a suitable price, and then sell them to the highest bidder at a suitable price.

And when faced with countless people who have drained their own blood but still cannot earn enough to pay for a house, you don't have the heart to let them die in despair.

Your son will assemble those human bodies that are too damaged to work but have a strong will to survive, and place them in suitable corners under your professional guidance to realize their dreams of continuing to live in this world.

Sometimes five heads share one old torso, but more often it's a dense connection between the brain and large intestines.

As the two most useless parts of the human body, people generally believe that they can survive by sharing some low-cost, inferior lungs and hearts.

They come from different refugee groups, but now they are closely united for survival, helping each other and loving each other.

Although they have changed beyond recognition, they are still alive.

Until some parts die completely, new parts will voluntarily join.

Residents of the community are proud of the attitude of respecting life and the atmosphere of freedom and equality.

And you, an architect from a worker-peasant family, have laid the foundation for a better life for the people, and the world thrives because of your humble contribution.

More and more people come here, your community is expanding, more buildings are joining your community, more poor people come to fight for the right to equal survival, and desperate losers are eager to become part of the building, all for survival.

Finally, all the buildings are full of life and closely connected.

Those who win a living live in the building space, and those who lose a living hang on the exterior walls of the building.

Everyone is equal and everyone has a living space.

You watched all this calmly from the floor-to-ceiling window on the 28th floor.

A few days later, you passed away peacefully.

According to your will, your family held a low-key cremation for you on the rooftop of the apartment building.

At dawn, your ashes were blown away by the wind.

Your kind voice, smile and appearance are remembered with gratitude by this living complex and will live forever.