A Circle on the Subway

As a child I often played in the dirt by the bridge at the east end of the village. Turn over a mound of earth and you could see tens of millions of ants. I would squat beside them and watch them come and go until the sun set, or until I heard my mother calling.

Once I followed the ants toward their food and turned over a stone the size of a washbasin. There stood an ant, mung-bean sized and dark brown, towering above the rest. It leaned back slightly as if moving forward, yet it did not move. Its head lifted; its gaze seemed fixed on the sky, or lost in thought, pondering the laws by which all things run… I watched that ant until I was spellbound. Suddenly dark clouds gathered and raindrops the size of beans fell. What came after is a little blurred—did the ant flee in panic from the sudden rain, or remain as calm as before? Or was it me who fled in panic from the downpour…

When I grew up, I came to Shanghai. I entered the subway, Line 7 to Line 2, and passed through the bustling crowd. I knew how small I was against the earth, yet there underground something stirred—a feeling I had known before. I wanted to stop, but the crowd pushed me on; I could not stop at all. I entered the station, swiped my card, exited—and suddenly I remembered the dark brown ant by the bridge at the village entrance…