dis­ turbed the traditional rank orders among Chinese cities. Subtly or hotly, regional sentiments get ... scathing. Further south, the coastal cities didn't seem to care much one way or another, the rights ... entire literary camp closed ranks around J ia, raving about and defending The Abandoned Capital as if it ...

kilometers but it separated me from myoid unfulfilled life by an entire eternity of reincarnation. This city ... gloomy caverns and the icy caves in their Rolls-Rovces, Mercedes, and Moskviches. Outside, my city ... , beneath a cloud the color of an old, blackened carpet. A city to which I was driven by fate from my native ...

cities are fictions of architecture; for that reason the latter is considered an art form. The architect ... to build it, we are now witnessing the fulfillment of that fiction. Once finished, the owner will ... inhabit the house and the fiction of the architect. Extending this line of reasoning, we might say that ...