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109 The Happiest Thing November 1960. This story, Wang’s shortest, is similar to “Calendar ” in both theme and style. Its focus on one theme condenses the semantics of the narration to a level comparable to poetry. This is the third of five experimental works among Wang’s early short stories. v The chilly morning has been creeping onto the street outside the building for hours. The young man opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling for a while, then puts on a sweater, leaves the woman in the bed and walks toward a half-closed window. He looks down at the street, his broad forehead pressed against the cold glass of the window . The freezing, empty asphalt looks like the face of an anemic woman. The sky is gray and misty, impossible to determine the distance of anything. All of the cement buildings are frozen, numb. The street, the sky, the buildings have looked the same for more than two months. There’s no sign of any change in the weather. “They all said this was the happiest thing to do, but how loathsome and ugly it was!”1 he says to himself. A few minutes later, he asks himself: “If it’s true, what they say, that this is the happiest thing, isn’t there any other happy thing?” That afternoon, the young man commits suicide. Translated by Shu-ning Sciban 1. The phrase “but how loathsome and ugly it was!” is in English in the original . ...

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