Imagine this Chinese girl

Greetings,

Yes, he said, it's almost as true as you can believe it. Her image speaks volumes of emotional honesty.

She was trapped behind the steel grate, a hard grey Chinese educational formation of her childhood. Her eyes held all the secrets of the world, of her potential and she stared at the man, a stranger, a diversion in her universe.

He held a small black machine up to his eye and she heard a click, click as the shutter opened and closed, trapping time, trapping her image on a memory card. He smiled, thanked her and rode away on his dirty black mountain bike.

She had no way of knowing, for it was later in the spring, when he decided to feature her image on a book he was planning to publish, how she'd grace a book cover, her child eyes there for everyone to see.

"A Century Is Nothing," stories about stories and the girl in some alchemical manifestation would be alive, breathing and aware of her immortality.

He'd visited her school to sing, dance, speaking strange unintelligible words. His laughter and kindness were a relief after the autocratic, punishing manner of the bored women teachers. They didn't want to be here any more than the kids.

No one had a choice here. You did what you were told to do in a harmonious society filled with social stability, or so they said, in Beijing, a long distant dream far away from the poor village where people tilled the soil following oxen in the dirt, mud and rice paddies. Where green stalks revealed their essence under a blue sky below the mud and meadows of reality. As above, so below.

It was a place filled with friendship, steaming white rice and childhood's dreams.

Peace.