There is not a lot I know about Nanjing.

I have been there a few times:

At Lukou airport,

Or the South train station.

Each time I was there, it was during winter,

When the leaves of French parasol trees erected along Zhong Shan road,

Are brushed with the tints and touches of snow,

Condensed high above the hazy and dimmed grayness of the sky,

Stretching towards the ground,

And coating the waxed trunk and leaves and trees,

With an impeccable layer of smooth clothing.

The trees, the few that were still around, were lined up on the roads where Sun Yat-sen’s body traveled towards its mausoleum, or so I’ve been told.

If I walked close enough to a parasol and examined its rigs,

Its sags and crests carved around its surface,

They appeared to envelop and cut the snow into strings tied around its dark body.

Up above in the snow and away from the cars,

Were the chirping of robins and cries of ravens,

Softly refracting into the cracks between wooden walls,

Echoing across and from the rusted lamp posts,

Gleaming its frail warmth from its worn coil.

The majestic statues of the two bronze lions lie still between the gates of the Hanfu hotel,

The oily metallic texture of their prestigious claws,

Fades away into the murky submergence of the unknown future;

The remaining chants and songs from a distant past,

Sang from the wooden windows along the crowded streets,

Bustling with the vaporized breaths of pedestrians wandering up and down Zhong Shan road,

Restless and filled with lantern lights of

A hundred years of wear, care, creation, and destruction.

There is not a lot I know about Nanjing.

The sight of a young lady taking left from the River Crossing Memorial along Re He Road,

Dressed in a pair of ankle-height leather boots, sluggishly caping a cheap coat around her shoulders, her slim and blossoming figure,

With a strand of long hair, so impermeable, and carelessly fondled by the nightly breeze,

Glistened with the hue of the reflections of the guard rails along the streets.

And in the midst of all the complications and smells of the garbage stacks at the end of the road,

Mingled with the piercing fragrance of the spicy shrimps, fresh out of the foil within the wok, seemingly igniting every coarse particle within the haze exuded from countless heater pipes peeking their heads out from the corners of the roof,

Imprints the bold and listless figure of the young lady.

Simply counteracting against the flow of the few cars shrieking on the road,

To reach their destinations,

Presumably a safe and warm one, far away from the malicious deeds of the city, and far away from all its purging history, breathtaking to suffocate.

But the young lady still beholds herself at the exact location,

The snow has already melted around her high heels,

As if surreal clouds were lifting her away from the mundane lands of the city,

Released from the constraints of burden, identity, and the existence of gravity,

She turns around and poses a smile:

Detatched from any means of worldliness yet confined,

Heading back with someone else,

To the Hanfu hotel

Through the gate watched over by lions,

Within the sleepless nights of dreams and failing marriages.

Freedom and society,

And Sex and spicy shrimps.

She walks away.

Without hellos and goodbyes.

There is not a lot I know about Nanjing.