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reasons to go out.
    I don’t want to go anywhere. I have to write to Yulong. This morning, though, I took the baby fly out for a half-hour stroll in a matchbox. But I was afraid that the chocolate would melt and hurt the baby fly, so I put it back in the fridge as soon as possible.
    Yesterday, Dr Zhong gave me a warning when he did the rounds. He said that even though the results of my blood test had shown that I had no serious blood disease, my blood was abnormal because of repeated high fevers and the side effects of the medicine. If I didn’t rest properly, I would be very likely to get septicaemia. Nurse Gao frightened me by saying that people die of septicaemia. She also pointed out that after ten hours on a drip I shouldn’t sit at the desk writing, without rest or exercise. Nurse Zhang thought I was writing another essay for the People’s Liberation Army or Youth of China magazines and asked me eagerly what I was writing about. I have managed to get several of my essays published and Nurse Zhang must be my most enthusiastic reader.
    24 August – Sunny
    Today I sent a letter to Yulong by recorded delivery. The letter was very thick, so it took all the money I had received for one of my essays to pay for the postage.
    I used to dream that my pain could be cleared away somehow, but can I clear away my life? Can I clear away my past and my future?
    I often examine my face closely in the mirror. It seems smooth with youth, but I know it is scarred with experience: heedless of vanity, two frown-lines often appear, signs of the terror I feel by day and night. My eyes have none of the lustre or beauty of a young girl’s, in their depths is a struggling heart. My bruised lips have had all hope of feeling ground from them; my ears, weak from constant vigilance, are unable even to support a pair of glasses; my hair is lifeless with worry, when it should shine with health.
    Is this the face of a seventeen-year-old girl?
    Just what are women, exactly? Should men be classed in the same species as women? Why are they so different?
    Books and films may say it is better to be a woman, but I cannot believe it. I have never felt it to be true, and I never will.
    . . .
    Why is this big fly that came buzzing in here this afternoon always landing on the picture I’ve just finished? Can it be that it knows the baby fly in the picture? I shoo it away but it is fearless. Instead, I’m afraid – what if it is the baby fly’s mother?
    This is serious. I must . . .
    25 August – Sunny
    Yesterday I hadn’t finished when it was time for lights out.
    That big fly is still in my room today. It is very clever. Every time anybody comes in, it goes into hiding, I don’t know where. As soon as the coast is clear, it either lands on my picture or buzzes all around me. I don’t know what it’s doing. I have a feeling that it doesn’t want to leave me.
    In the afternoon Dr Zhong said that if my condition stabilises, the treatment will be proved effective, and I will be discharged to build up my strength at home on a course of medication. The head nurse said that they will be very short of beds from the autumn on, so the people with lingering illnesses will all have to leave the hospital.
    Go home? That would be dreadful!
    I’ve got to think of a way to stay on.
    26 August – Overcast
    I hardly slept all night. I thought of many ways out, but they all seem impossible. What can I do?
    It’s probably quickest to infect myself with a disease, but access to the contagious-disease wards is restricted.
    Today my head was so full of how to stay on that I missed a step at the canteen. One foot stepped into mid-air and I fell down. I got a big purple bruise on my thigh and a gash on my arm. When the shift changed, Dr Yu told the nurse to dab some more ointment on my arm. She said I had a weak constitution and could easily get septicaemia, and urged the nurse to watch out for flies when she changed my bandage, saying that flies were great