The boy squats in the dust and the roadgrime tracked in on their shoes. He has his mother’s raven hair, eyes as blue as a fabled sea. They call the boy a mixed blood and he watches father, aging reminder of a faraway land he will never see, the room dark day or night. Eight years old. Already the boy understands much. He sees and he listens.

Father drinks. He speaks the common dialect poorly and when he isn’t drinking he takes the boy out and shows him the city. Cramped backstreet restaurants and shops, father’s memories strewn across a chaos of hammers and horns. Holding the boy’s hand at the city’s many lakes, distant cranes and buildings across the silver waters, skeletal sketches of New China halfbloom in the construction dust.

The haze floods the sky and swallows the sun. Read more “The Boy with Blue Eyes – Opening”