The year Ming China collapsed was 1644. A few decades later, in the Korean capital of Hanyang, a scholar picked up his brush and dated his letter — not by the reigning Qing dynasty’s calendar, but by the era name of a dynasty that had been dead for decades.

This was not confusion. In his view, and in the view of his generation, the man sitting in Beijing — shaved forehead, braided queue, speaking Manchu — was a yi, a barbarian, a usurper who had seized the Central Plains by force. The true civilization of Huaxia had not died with the Ming. It had simply moved. And where had it gone? In Korean eyes, here — to them. Some among them spoke seriously of a “Northern Expedition”: one day marching back north, driving out the Manchu savages, restoring the Middle Kingdom.

It’s been a month since I arrived in Sweden. Yesterday, while at the shooting club, I suddenly missed Lao Yang — my dad.

When I was little, I loved shooting games. It’s probably a boy thing. My mom thought it was dangerous, so Lao Yang would secretly take me to the children’s park to play. When he saw I couldn’t win a prize, he’d step in and try himself. If he failed too, our only consolation was going together to eat cheap starch sausages from a street vendor. Buying flowers and carrying wine are the carefree matters of youth; today, the mood is simply not the same.

A while ago, I went to Berlin to see an Omnipotent Youth Society concert. When that melancholic, metaphorical, and epic Chinese rock echoed through the Berlin night sky, I suddenly felt a bizarre resonance between the city’s temperament and this music. This city has simply experienced far too many moments of “until the building collapses.”

Over the following days, I took aimless city walks through the streets and alleys of Berlin. From the retro-futuristic Weltzeituhr (World Time Clock) in Alexanderplatz, to the towering Berlin TV Tower, and the monumental architecture lining Karl-Marx-Allee. Wandering through the remnants of East Berlin, you see a massive number of “Khrushchevki” (known in Germany as Plattenbau). Yet surprisingly, even today, the color schemes and spatial design of these standardized, industrial pre-fab buildings still feel comfortable, even refreshing.

Of course, I am only talking about basketball.

I’ve been watching the NBA and CBA since 2001. I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of the Shaq-Kobe era and the legendary battles between Shanghai and Bayi. Those days got me hooked. But lately? As my favorite stars retire and the NBA product starts to smell a bit… off, I’m watching less and less. A huge reason for that is the arrival of the great LeBron James to my beloved LA Lakers, combined with the nauseating “GOAT” propaganda pushed by the “Bronsexuals” (fanboys). This toxic stan culture hasn’t just ruined the games; it’s turned every basketball forum into a cesspool. So, I opted out.

My fascination with jazz started with a story about fake books. The first time I heard the phrase “fake book,” the image that popped into my head was a book whose cover says, “Don’t look, it’s fake.” Later I learned it was something completely different.

Its “fake” does not mean counterfeit. It means pretending. You can think of a fake book as a lifesaving crib sheet. It usually is not a full score, but a single melody line plus chord symbols, sometimes with lyrics. The purpose is almost embarrassingly practical. Tonight you are playing a regular gig in a bar, a dance hall, or a restaurant. The audience requests songs the way they order dishes, and they do it with an impressive level of confidence. You cannot possibly memorize everything, and you cannot haul a cart of sheet music everywhere you go. So what do you do. You bring a fake book. You flip to the tune. The melody and the harmonic skeleton are there. The rest is on you.