writing 🖋️ — shan x. liao / psdgothic.com

Shan X. Liao is a visual designer, agency veteran, image maker, and poet. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.

廖玄林，位于纽约布鲁克林区，是一名高级平面设计师、制作总监。

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Diary of a madwoman, 2021–2025, autofiction

what an odd hour of the day to be out right now, i thought, as i raced past the exit ramps of my youth. under the floodlight of the midday sun, casting short shadows on old trees and new skylines, i am awash with a temporality i had not felt since i was a child. for, at noontime, people have a place to be.

here i am, arms outstretched, as if in a cursed embrace, i am locked in a danse macabre with the four wheels of Progress.

i feel neither push nor pull. my words froth at the tips of my fingers, held back in balance by the lullaby of the lanes. this is the tail end of a bargain for a life of leisure at the risk of a gruesome, senseless death by gravity.

and when i get the chance to pull over, finally, heaven willing, i will write them down.

On the weekdays, I spent three hours a day taking violin lessons from a man in his twenties. He was a part of the People’s Liberation Army. I practiced in the concrete stairwell of his dormitory until my violin gave me a hickey. He gave me a military pin as a parting gift. I didn’t think much about it as he joked about an American customs officer finding the pin on my way home.

By the end of that trip, dayi and yifu had purchased a luxury condo in Changying. It was situated in a brand new neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Out there, sprawling boulevards terminate at ancient dirt paths; villages crumble to ruin beneath the encroaching apartment towers; and fields give way to golf courses and Sam’s Club parking lots.

My mother had bought one too. “When we visit in the future, we can be practically neighbors,” she said to her sister. Looking back, it makes sense that the bank was nowhere to take a restless child.

I couldn’t recall whether he had showed me this band called The National in class or I had found out about them by stalking his Tumblr, but after that, I became fixated on their music and still like their old stuff to this day.

Maybe it was because that my voice, gutted by the ravages of adolescence, had found a temporary home in Matt Berninger’s distinct baritone range, but it definitely was because that I couldn’t put my finger on whatever business that boy had to be romanticizing the loss of friends in adulthood or the malaise of a marriage hanging on by a thread.

Maybe deep down I didn’t want to believe any of this could happen; that this will never happen to him, me or us; that maybe the best we can hope for is to be seen in a photograph, placing a bet with yourself that there will be a future to look back from.

Maybe I had a crush on him. Maybe at the time I wanted to experience it all with him.

Last I heard he now lived in Bay Ridge with his girlfriend? I can’t be too sure anymore about it anymore.

M.A.D.

we stood under the flatiron watching the lovers collect their snowballs. i felt the palm of your hand hover closer and open, and i reach over to trace its landscape to follow instinct and have a little fun.

a stillness settles shortly into a standoff. projectile in hand, they laugh, flinch, duck at nothing, and at the promise of mutually assured destruction, desire takes over and they throw them anyway.

my grandmother said that after my grandfather returned from korea, they were given job assignments by their local communist party in zhejiang. as outstanding comrades of revolutionary thought, they were recommended to migrate west across the country to the autonomous region of xinjiang—the homeland of the uyghur people—to start a family and carry on their duties in this grand project of nation-building. this news came to her disappointment, as she wanted to go to university instead, but this was an ideologically more pressing task and a more secure opportunity.

when my great-great-grandmother—my grandmother’s grandmother—eventually caught wind about her granddaughter moving across the country, however, she became extremely distraught and stormed off to the village party office kicking and screaming as if heaven itself were collapsing and she was the last one holding it up. the local head cadre found her absolutely inconsolable, causing an incredible scene. when my grandparents finally caught up with her, the head cadre had managed to calm her down and sent her home with them, assuring her that he’ll look into other options for them.

“i understand that the elderly can be very passionate,” he said to my grandparents as they apologized repeatedly for the trouble.

a few weeks later, my grandparents return to the party offices and they learn that they are given assignments in the young socialist republic’s showcase capital city, beijing. it’s still away from home, but it’s certainly not as far and only a 20-hour’s trip by rail.

i’ve tried to imagine the scene as a fly on the wall: in which a young couple in their mid twenties are standing silently in a dimly lit room facing a man seated at a desk—the woman is wearing a floral blouse, her hair neatly parted into two, and the men wearing their standard-issue work jackets.

the concrete walls are painted halfway in a drab olive green, and a single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling from its cable.

the head cadre is seated, signing and stamping his way through a pile of papers, forms, and letters. a single trail of smoke emanates from the lit cigarette in the ashtray. the only sound in the room is his fountain pen scribbling quickly away over the hum of this year’s cicada bloom. in the distance, a staticky radio ekes out an interval signal from my grandparent’s future home—it’s now the top of the hour.

“here are your new residency permits and your train tickets,” he says, handing them a burgundy-colored card holder. “comrade liao, comrade zhao, congratulations.”

their shadows flicker with the oil lamp on the desk, and a smirking portrait of chairman mao watches over.

* * *

three years later, a great famine rips through the countryside with tremendous devastation.

thirty years after that, my mother finds herself with her colleagues on a bus rumbling through the lower deck of the bay bridge taking them to their internships at the oakland city center marriott. she gazes out the window at the passing cantilever in wonder: she’s never crossed a bridge this tall before.

another thirty-odd years later, my grandmother finds herself once again wandering the cavernous hallways of the mcmansion where she currently lives with her daughter.

she’s been doing this for years, turning the corners in search of her grandchild who had already left to move on. she approaches her own daughter, sitting in her home office flanked by dual computer monitors, to check and see if she is still there.

estrangement: i wear it like a statement piece—

the choker, formerly a collar, seeing another in yourself. be it sights, sounds, and locations familiar, i grow a fondness for ghosts, like a hole-in-the-wall, remodeled, but it still remains present.

the broth tastes the same, but the portions are now smaller.

i don’t trust you to see me in the same way as i do, so i hide in plain sight as not to fully erase myself.

i’ve been telling people that lately i’ve been having daily, recurring “doll moments” in which i give myself a few minutes to just lie there, be still, and do nothing.

for just a brief part of the day, i don’t have to think about worldly concerns like self accountability or personal responsibility. as a doll, i don’t have to worry about my vibe and aesthetic or the shape of my body and happily wear whatever i’m given for the day. i don’t have to change my face twice a day, and hats and button-downs and denim jeans would look cute on me every day and not be some kinda hit or miss affair. i don’t have to stay hydrated or socialize or call my insurance provider or correct my posture. as a doll, i am afforded a moment to not exist in accordance to anyone’s wants including my own and not dwell on if this is the kind of life that i saw myself living.

“thank you for visiting us, teacher!”
said the engineer, wistfully
backed by her ranks, nodding in unison

in this life,
if, and only if
you manage to 努力學好數理化,
you will never have to have a boss at work again

in fact,
(as the rest of the saying goes)
if, and only if
you manage to try hard studying 數理化,
走遍天下都不怕

and nobody except for me will tell you this, that,
if, and only if
you fully exert yourself mastering 數理化,
you can walk to edges of all under heaven
and not be afraid

these three worn words,
math, physics, chemistry,
are just a way to say that i love you

I think this current Yeah Yeah Yeah’s revival is a way to mourn the fact that I didn’t drop out of school and run away from San Jose to be a part of the Greenpoint party scene that died in 2012. Sometimes I look around and I feel like I’m ten years too late.

* * *

O WHAT WOULD I GIVE TO HAVE RUN AWAY FROM HOME TEN YEARS AGO TAKING E******** THAT MY FRIEND GAVE ME, TO SNEAK THROUGH THE BACK DOOR OF A DIVE BAR TO SEE KAREN O CROON, SCREECH, MOAN, AND SQUEAL IN ITS BASEMENT WITH A NO-NAME BAND CALLED THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS BUT I WAS ONLY A CHILD I DIDN’T KNOW BETTER I’M SORRY

* * *

An old friend came to see me after work today. I haven’t seen him in two years at this point. He was in town for the week for business and hit me up for dinner. I shared with him how when we went on that high school trip to New York, part of me wanted to ditch the returning flight home and stay.

Part of me knew that I also I probably would have died at twenty-seven if I did that. He celebrated with me in the way he knew best: he reminded me that my life today really is the best way everything could have turned out.