In the Year of the Rabbit, Peisun decided to paint her heart's desire on a stack of thin, tea-stained rice paper.

She knew all the risks involved. She just thought that it would be worth giving up everything for even one trip. To be up there, looking up, falling down, nothing but distance all around.

"So it seems to me a kind of race between progress and catastrophe; and that being the case, why not write about progress winning out?"

I can understand wanting to see Romeo and Juliet for the first time without already knowing that Romeo stabs himself because he believes that Juliet is dead, when in fact she has taken a medicine that allows her to feign death so they can run away together.

She'll always be a seamstress now, / sewn into a simple black dress,