Above the Clouds

• Hotels
• Planes
• In bed
  half asleep

A Hilton hotel room in Charlotte: desk, writing table, kitchen counter

221 characters

Core characters

Father · Mother
The classmate who always came first
Aunt J · Ding Lei
Wang Chen · Guo Yu

• Named by: Lu Xun, 1935
  preface to Compendium of New Chinese Literature: Fiction II
• Who writes it: people who left home for the city
  and look back at home
• What it's about: village people, land, customs
  with nostalgia, and with scrutiny

Lu Xun, My Old Home
↓
Shen Congwen, Border Town
↓
Mo Yan · Jia Pingwa · Chen Zhongshi, White Deer Plain

The data no longer came
from server rooms and formulas.
It came from the road,
from the cars,
from lidar and sensors running around the clock.

It wasn't just plain numbers
in a table anymore.
More often,
it was images,
video,
and frame after frame of point clouds.

Kicking off a project had its own ritual too.
Jeff had the whole team drive out
to the Princeton office in New Jersey
for Sprint Planning.
The room was huge.
The team was huge too—
over a hundred people.

We held a lot of meetings,
ordered a lot of pizza,
and made a lot of decisions.
He tried to bring in technology
that seemed as solid and scalable as he was—
things like Cassandra and Redis.

Roche
Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century

Stronger technology
→ stronger instrumental reason
→ literature matters more

Literature transcends technology

Above the Clouds
 

Technology → human experience
→ memory → language
→ literature

Technology enters literature

As industrialization and digitization speed up,
the old rural idyll is probably gone for good.
Every era has its own literature.
In the age of IT and AI, writing people through technology—
I call it tech literature.

Science fiction
uses literature to imagine technology.

Tech literature
uses literature to understand
people in a technological age.

This genre might be called… science fiction.

Coders can't even out-code AI—what chance does writing have?
Uber drivers probably write better.

Meet AI, and coder literature becomes "scar literature" the day it's born.

Writing is good. Everyone should write.

The forum's mainstream mood doesn't suit writing…
too restless.

Support you, keep going!

He turns on the computer.
The GPU fans roar.
The model starts training.
He looks out the window and thinks of home.

He starts the car.
The engine roars.
The car pulls onto the highway.
He looks out the window and thinks of home.

As a child
eyes → mountain

Later
sensors → data → model → world

As machines get better at "seeing" the world, how do people still see it?

Capital never rests.
Neither do the clouds.

Ch. 11 · Cloud

The clouds I looked up at as a child;
the cloud at work,
a system that never goes down.
Childhood clouds drift by;
the clouds of the tech age can't stop.

Hometown

China

Abroad

That gate was built for many people.
But that year,
one brick
was left for me.

Ch. 3 · Gate

But I still remember that little fire.
Small,
but very bright.

Ch. 4 · Fire

When you had no money,
you felt hollow inside.

Ch. 7 · Sea

Once the boat leaves shore,
you're not the person you used to be.

Ch. 7 · Sea

The world is vast.
Vast enough to hold many ways of living.

Ch. 9 · Street

Wandering alone, everywhere—
maybe it was only a way of searching for the road home.

Ch. 9 · Street

I think maybe "genius" is only
someone who walks the same road a little faster.

Ch. 12 · Emptiness

A reader asked:
why write it like poetry,
when it's really prose?

Explain a little less,
and let memory
rise on its own.

Is the edge of the world far?
No!
A man is at the edge of the world—how can it be far?

What color is the moon?
Blue, blue as the sea,
as deep, as melancholy.

Where is the moon?
In his heart;
his heart is the moon.

And the saber?
The saber is in his hand!

Is the edge of the world far?
No!
A man is at the edge of the world—how can it be far?

And the saber?
The saber is in his hand!

Gu Long: he asks, he answers, and the answer is final

Such a large rock—
gone.

Who took it?
No one knew.
Where did it go?
No one knew either.

A rock was just a rock.
Gone was gone.

Ch. 1 · Mountain · Stone: questions again; the answer is "no one knew"

在人死去之后，
在人生无解的时候，
在人知道终将失去的时候。
停下来。

when life has no answer,
when you know you will lose in the end,
you stop.

不用担心，
“天生我材必有用。”

Chinese: the marks fence off the allusion—"he is quoting"

"Don't worry—
Heaven endowed me with talent;
it is bound to be of use."

English: the whole line goes in quotes—"someone is speaking"

看见她躺在草坪上打电话，
一会儿像一个“人”字，
一会儿又变成一个“大”字。

Chinese habit of seeing: the shape of a character is a posture (人 "person," 大 "big," a figure with arms spread)

sprawled out—
arms and legs stretched wide across the grass.

English: describe the body, not the character

麻省 · 麻雀

书名是：
麻雀理工大学。
我愣了一下。

Chinese: no explanation needed; readers' eyes blur the two on their own

Massachusetts · Sparrow

The title was: Sparrow Institute of Technology.
In Chinese, Sparrow and Massachusetts look similar in writing.

English: the two words look nothing alike, so it takes one more sentence

那时候我们的系统跑得很快。

有时候屏幕上的盈亏
每秒钟会变动上千万美元。

Chinese: one thought, said in several breaths

Our systems were fast then.

Sometimes P&L on the screen could move by more than ten million dollars per second.

English: one sentence on one line, not broken where the Chinese breaks

是一位青春可人的美女主管。
……
我和美女主管一起合作，

Chinese: one epithet, used again and again

she turned out to be a manager—young and lovely.
……
The young manager and I worked together

English: say it once when she appears, then leave her looks alone

Hardworking · June 2, 1989

Today, after Dad came back from the commune, he kept working without a break. First he cooked, then he harvested the broad beans, until he was dripping with sweat. I thought: when I grow up I must learn from Dad and be as hardworking as he is.

Stealing Bird Eggs · June 3, 1989

Today Dad and I went to the junior high. I played with Fan Zhi while Dad went to teach. I said to Fan Zhi, "Let's go get bird eggs." Fan Zhi said, "OK." We set up a ladder and climbed up for the eggs. Then, by accident, all of a sudden…

https://diary.wu-99.com · translated from a nine-year-old's Chinese

But somehow my piece made the final show
and was hung in the county hall.
That exhibition certificate—
I've kept it to this day.
Later Jianyang County became Jianyang City,
but the certificate still carries the old name.

Ch. 3 · Gate

Somehow the ball hit me straight on.
Before I could react,
I was pushed up front.
That day I was still wearing
my high school uniform.
I've kept that group photo ever since.

Ch. 5 · Song · Embroidered Ball

About how the school gate was still there,
just more run-down.
Mr. Li, who taught chemistry,
was now the principal.
He said my story was written into the town gazette.
We had our picture taken together at the gate that day.

Ch. 8 · Net

One office perk
was standing in line to pet the dogs—
stroking puppies, they said,
could ease anxiety.
I waited in line a long time
before my turn.

Ch. 10 · Valley

Many passages in the book
were copied, word for word,
from my old WeChat posts.

I still dream my way back to school.
Whenever I have that dream,
I sleep soundly.

Ch. 12 · Emptiness

A blonde white girl walked over
and asked for a drag of my cigarette.
……
She smiled,
and she really did take a picture with me.

Ch. 9 · Street

Later I got full marks on a quiz.
I was so glad I posted it to WeChat Moments—
friends congratulated me.
They knew it wasn't easy.

Ch. 10 · Valley

Emptiness is not absence—
it is making room.

Ch. 12 · Emptiness

Articles aren't written—
they grow.

Ch. 12 · Emptiness

What the times buried wasn't just jobs,
but what people believed.

Ch. 11 · Cloud

Something you think is barely useful to you
might be a lifeline to someone else.

Ch. 9 · Street

DeepSeek

The stolen limestone rock
becomes the first domino of a lost home.

The MIT sparrow—a stroke of genius.

Doubao

A poor village boy's legendary comeback!

A comeback is just turning a muddy road
into a smooth path above the clouds.

Small changes where they help the prose without changing the substance—this isn't a diary, after all.

• Big Sister Song → Big Sister Bing
• The order of my Wall Street experiences was rearranged a little
• The chorus leader was actually the deputy leader at the time
• The ninth-grade teacher who docked my points taught politics; the book makes him the chemistry teacher, to keep politics out

Human civilization
may have a ceiling.
……
As for where people will be then?
Not really worth caring about.

Liu Cixin · China Daily interview · September 2025 (paraphrased)

At the moment the cosmos rebooted,
those civilizations
already standing like gods,
perhaps because they couldn't bear to,
actually kept some of their memory.
……
Liu Cixin never said why.

Above the Clouds · Ch. 12 · Emptiness

The times are not weeding us out;
they are forcing us
to stop being a handy tool
and truly become a whole person.

Liu Zhiyu

Maybe one day
AI will take over the logical work.
Then people will finally be free
to become, fully again,
"sentient beings."

Above the Clouds · Ch. 12 · Emptiness