The White Cockatoo Flowers

'He looked down at his watch and saw that the long hand was overlapping the short, pointing towards twelve. The old year had passed and the new year had begun. He was swept by a feeling of loss and attachment to a past that was no longer there: If I were in China now, I would be ...' A father and son muse on the value of fame and fortune and the path of chu jia or receding from the world by becoming a monk. On Christmas Eve a lonely immigrant travels from his deserted outer suburb to the city in