Six years ago, I came here
with a clean face and fresh lungs
looking around, non-stop,
and caused a car to crash into the hillside.
The driver, a local Tibetan, was arrested by the police.
I heard the roar of the river below
and people cried out in the mountains:
What are you here for?
But I didn't have a family then, nor a house,
nor more than ten years of serious study.
How could I answer?
So they made me drink non-stop
and tell a couple of jokes from the interior
but the air was too thin, I stammered
like a stone rolling down the snowy mountain
rolling into the car
and rolling back to Beijing.
There were many circles in Beijing, I was shy,
poor, and my girlfriend was deeply depressed
so I chose to live outside the five rings.
Since then, everything has just happened.
The air is fresh in the neighborhood,
everything's greenified, even people, neighbors
are mostly salt-of-the-earih, no elites,
I watch TV to know what's going on.
These past six years, the country's had its ups and downs.
Has all that development out west come to nothing?
Railroads have brought in more backpackers,
more Sichuan girls on the way.
They're also enraptured, they vomit as well,
dreaming too of their homes rising three thousand meters high,
but they're honest, don't ask questions,
fate and dollar bills are bound together.
Six years gone in a flash.
The very best of them
most likely by now have slept together.