XUAN  KAY QI

Anna of the Dew and the Dolphin
by Xuan Qi. This piece was written in 2011 and published in July 2012.

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Judge's Commentary:

Letters from strangers gradually construct a vast yet hollow inner world—it could belong to ‘Anna’, or ‘An Jizai’, or perhaps every one of us. Thus, as the reading unfolds, all fall into the riddle-like tapestry of Qi Xuan’s words. Her signature lies in the serene magic permeating each line; whether expressing intensity, calm, or undercurrents, she never resorts to hysteria. Like Anna’s restlessness or An Jizai’s retreat, in shared youth, who can claim ‘they’ are not ourselves? May Qi Xuan walk far on her writing path, with a heart as tranquil and fervent as her prose.
(Zijin)

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1

A letter arrived from the city beyond the long-winding river, its paper burnt yellow, bearing water-stained traces as if soaked then baked dry—a relic from distant time. I carefully unfolded it, fingers tracing the faintly comical pencil strokes: rounded, childlike. The writer felt earthy and unadorned, trapped yet stubbornly hopeful, though her thoughts tangled like a child’s murmurs:

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An Jizai rejects solitude, rejects forced punishment, rejects control, rejects lies. Tight confinement now means cleaner escape later. Anna and An Jizai are one.

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The date claimed it was written three days prior. I had no ties to the river’s southern district. Suspicious. Frowning, I propped it on the desk corner. A faint scraping echoed in the hallway. Startled, I swept the letter to the floor just as the door cracked open—a sliver of shadow seeping through. Back turned, I knew: Mother. Time froze in silent standoff. She stepped in, perfume diffusing like vapor. Her voice was steel wrapped in velvet:

"Your self-control disappoints me profoundly."
A statement. A verdict. An exclamation. No room for rebuttal. I scooped up the envelope, glimpsed the return address, and flung it into the ashtray. Match struck. Paper curled into smoke. When I finally met her eyes, my expression must have been a cub’s defiance, but she looked satisfied. The door shut softly behind her bare, soundless feet.

Only after the perfume dissipated did I take out snow-white stationery. Reveling in the thrill of rebellion, I wrote:

Who are you? Why write to me? How did you find my name and address?

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2

Seven days later, another letter. Same rounded pencil script, now on floral paper:

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I am An Jizai, also Anna. Call me Anna·An. Our meeting is fate—yet not entirely chance. I found your address in a café notebook near the library. I knew only that your name contained ‘An’—never guessed we shared it. I sought a pen pal, but heaven granted this miracle. You ask my purpose: history tells us where we come from and where we go. I only wish to touch strangers’ worlds—not to be forgotten when I die.

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He called her Anna, rejecting her English name. She called him An Ji or Jizai.

They lived among 500,000 souls in Shiyi. *This southern bay city, split by a nameless river: North District gleamed with government towers, luxury hotels, and private schools—all built in a decade; South District festered with fishponds-turned-slums, cramped alleys where grandmothers cursed smokestacks and noise. Typhoons haunted Shuoyi ten months a year. Its name echoed “amnesia”—fitting for a place with no history, choked by pollution and failed farms. People survived on transactions, profits funneled north to feed the illusion of prosperity.

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"Equivalent, inequivalent. Profit, loss. Like a game mocking humanity—no mercy. Money leaves us hollow, grinding us down as we await death."

Anna wrote this to An Jizai as typhoon rains battered his window. Her words felt ready to take flight.

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*Dear An Ji,
Please congratulate me. I escaped. Dragging Father’s leather suitcase, I ran at 5:49 AM through rain-puddled streets. By 6:23, I reached my childhood home. Hidden on the corner stood a tattoo parlor. As a child, I’d linger before its flash sheets—dragons, phoenixes blooming in pink-tinged skin. Beauty. Back then I craved adulthood; tattoos became my emblem of freedom.
At 7 AM, the artist prepped her needles. When she lifted her head, a delicate black script curled on her nape. I knew instantly. Bent over her desk, I scribbled letters. Soon, gauze covered my cheekbone. On the bus, I peeled it back to gaze at my reflection: Anna·An—no larger than font size 4, yet perfect. I whispered: An Jizai, look—you’re barely seventeen, yet you have everything: a suitcase in dawn’s light, red shoes pounding wet pavement, a tattoo no one else owns. You’re free.
Why flee? My mother’s obsession: she trained me in vocal music since childhood, demanding I fulfill her abandoned dream at the conservatory. But painting is my truth. Her disappointment curdled to cruelty. When visitors bought my oils at school, I seized my chance. I’ll work at the city’s edge, save money, study art abroad—anywhere far. We’re better apart. Her new lover heals her; my absence will help her forget Father, forget pain. Shuoyi suffocates me. Equivalent, inequivalent; profit, loss. A game without compassion, wearing me down as I wait to die. My heart is redeemed. I’ll resurrect my dead self. After tunneling through darkness, I finally see light.*
—Anna, 4.28

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(*Shiyi: Fictional city name homophonic with “amnesia” in Chinese, reflecting its rootless despair.)

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3

Midnight. Mold crept along walls as a sliver of blue-white moonlight settled on Anna’s neck. She woke sweating, white dress clinging to her spine. From beneath the mildewed pillow, she pulled An Jizai’s letter—neat rows of gel ink reviving her. Barefoot, she walked to the mossy windowsill.

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Dear Anna,
Your wild freedom sets you apart. My homeland lies on a remote plateau. Once I climbed an ancient peak, clouds pooling below. Mountains and sky swallowed me whole—my soul stilled. I crave to break free but cannot. I’d take you there. You’d love it.
Whimsy and recklessness—that’s how life treats me. Torn apart, reassembled. My body, mute from inner ruin, is blamed for everything. Enduring pain is my birthright, yet now I don’t know what pain is—flesh wounds, heart’s prison, or wasting time. My ancestors scarred newborn boys’ cheeks—taught them to endure before they learned to suckle. Did this “virtue” doom me?
Mother sees me as her last hope. When we fled Father’s mansion, she knelt drunk before me—tearless. “This unearned life will end,” she said, nails digging into my shoulders. “Study hard.” I obeyed. Top three grades always. But I’ve lost myself—a test-taking machine. I thought I’d be her puppet till age ten, but childhood doesn’t end at midnight. There’s no escape.
—An Jizai, 5.17

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4

An Jizai read Anna’s reply by flashlight, mouthing each pencil-smudged word:

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Dear An Ji,
My Chinese name comes from my grandmother—she wished me “safe and settled,” unlike Mother who left for the city at twenty. She met Father, married, bore me. He regretted it instantly. Western autonomy—he left. Mother couldn’t return to music school. She sang in bars, taught voice lessons. Because of me, her dream died.
She loves me, yes—but resents me too. She molds me to mend her brokenness. Alcohol, exhaustion, anxiety ravage her beauty. Father was gentle but owed us too much. He consumed her youth, fled when joy faded. I remember his coffee-brown hair, how he’d lift me, pin white peonies in my hair, murmur: “Anna, you’re a forest nymph—I’d melt for you.” His praise once warmed me. But he broke his vows. Only letters remained—paper-thin affection.
Remember my first letter’s paper? His. Dated ten years back. Green ink. He sent two letters—mine full of clumsy Chinese, sweet as if I were still four; Mother’s, in English. One night I stole hers. My child’s English caught fragments: “Can’t send money... court useless... grateful you divorced... our mistake... her birth a sin.” I picked up his letter to me: “I’ll love you till death.” His lies crystallized. I crouched in the bathroom, stifling sobs—ashamed of my existence. Now I understand his burden. I’d visit him in Italy—the “sin” standing before him, whole. But Mother forbids his name. Sometimes she sees him in my face, claws at me.
Why tell you this? Mother never returned to her hometown. Shuoyi trapped her. She forgot her dialect. This tragedy is mine alone: I ache for the land my ancestors tilled.
—Anna, 6.29

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An Jizai reread it seven times. Anna laid bare her marrow—tender yet ruthless. They were the same: shouting questions into the void of youth, hearing only echoes. In her words, he saw their twin souls: two An Jizais, rebellious and solitary. Letters merely unveiled what always was.

He dreamed of wandering deserts as the world died—then woke. Anna walked toward him. Dawn cracked his chest. Her hand reached out. He knew: they must meet. At dawn he wrote:

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An Jizai will find Anna when the next typhoon comes.
—An Jizai, 7.04

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5.

*Rain sheeted down. Visibility: 20 meters. A red dot bloomed into a girl—red dress, red heels—sprinting toward him. She ducked under his black umbrella. They laughed, effortless as old friends. Water dripped from her hair onto brows, trembled, fell onto cotton-red fabric. Her eyes: lotus-blue, holding no pain, only untamed life.
Silence. Words felt cheap. Under the umbrella, they became one An Jizai—he armored and distant; she luminous, humming, kicking puddles till mud splattered her hem. She vanished as suddenly as she came. He couldn’t recall if they’d said goodbye.

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6. 

"Last night I dreamed I sang in the ocean, calling for companions. None came. A deer kissed a sleeping rabbit in sunlit shallows. Then you jumped in—white linen shirt glowing. I tried to embrace you but had no arms. Perhaps I’d become a dolphin.
...My paintings are now tools—not ideals. I copy landscapes for galleries, scrub pigment from cracked hands. In bars, strangers touch my tattoo: ‘Anna·An, your silence is beautiful.’ I recoil. I’m fraying.
...Lian is my fantasy—a boy who plays soccer, eyes bright. I polish myself flawless for him. But the girl chasing dreams is gone. I understand Mother now: why she followed Father knowing it’d ruin her.
An Ji—will I ever be happy? Or am I deluded?"

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An Jizai’s reply: "Why not speak?"

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*Anna’s last words:
"When I read your letter, a beast howled in my chest—it was me. No, Jizai—I need no words.
...Bodies are vessels; they contain, not express. Words turn feelings to ghosts. I once believed writing could preserve love. Fool.
...Let me dream for you: We sit by fireworks. Your dry heart sprouts chamomile. I’m a drenched moth sleeping in its petals. ‘Listen, Anna—I’m blooming,’ it says. ‘Yes, Jizai—I hear you.

 

Jizai Jizai Jizai Jizai Jizai........"

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7. 

The Living An Jizai

 

The entire back of the letter was densely covered with repetitions of my name. I detected Anna’s unease and dread in those scrawls, yet failed to foresee how she would transmute that anxiety into a final, explosive performance.

Confined for three months by a pivotal exam, I emerged to learn:
Anna—no—An Jizai was dead.

It happened in November. Shiyi’s rainy season had just ended, the air still damp. A journalist came to my home, claiming I was the sole person Anna corresponded with before her death. He sought details of her life. I stammered, “What? Anna’s dead?” “When?”

He recited the facts mechanically:
One week prior, she leapt from the abandoned library. Bare foot, hair loose, wearing a red dress. When found, her body had paled to marble, folded like a butterfly’s wings. No suicide note—only symbols drawn on her left arm in black marker: a deer, a rabbit, and a black umbrella. The tattoo “Anna·An” beneath her left eye glared stark and perilous against her desolate skin. Police initially treated these as clues to her killer.
Later, in her rented room, they discovered empty fluoxetine capsules—antidepressants—scrawled with her will, alongside monochrome paintings repeating those symbols. The meaning remains unbroken.

The hallway light flickered. His rigid, rapid speech shattered time into viscous shards at my feet. Rotting dampness swelled in my pores; my body plummeted into an abyss. Teeth chattering, I swayed as Mother gripped my arm. Desperate, I staggered to my room, and collapsed. Forcing calm, I groped for logic in the chaos. Anna—her name echoed in my skull. A wave of terror crushed me; her face vanished from memory. Later, I tasted salt and mucus tangled at my lips—I was silently weeping. This grief arrived with brutal clarity, an unfamiliar sensation I could only dissect internally.

Mother hauled me back from the edge, slapped me hard across the face, and demanded why I’d hidden this correspondence. In the eye of our storm, clarity struck: my temperament allowed me to endure this cage, to wait for my own corner of freedom someday. But Anna—her ferocity, her naïveté, her proud selfhood, her solitude, her stubbornness, her love screaming for reciprocity—could never comprehend or bear this world’s temporary accommodations. She and I were but pen pals who’d met once. I could rage, yet ultimately forget her. Death was our interim farewell. I needed to bury this rupture, bide my time.

Her funeral was held at a nursing home on the city’s fringe—a converted chapel. Strangers filled the seats. Her mother did not come to claim her: she’d died in a violent incident the night before my meeting with Anna. They’d reunited in the adjacent world.

Media amplified Anna’s story, winning Shiyi’s sympathy. This ironically secured her family’s welfare. All her paintings sold at high prices to a Shiyi-born tycoon, exhibited nationwide and in Europe—her sole stroke of “luck.” Her grandmother, suffering dementia after years of solitude, had been brought here years earlier by her mother for treatment. With her daughter dead, the old woman owed months of fees; Anna’s savings would barely sustain her until death. She clutched every visitor, beaming: “Jizai, you’re back! I’ll make you sticky rice balls!” Oblivious, her beloved granddaughter lay cold in a nearby room.

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Proceeds from the art sales, per her will scribbled on pill boxes, were divided:

• Part to buy the grandmother’s grave in her hometown

• Part for Anna’s own burial

• The rest to her parents

She hadn’t known of her mother’s death or the paintings’ value. Thus, her labor’s fruit went entirely to her father. Neither he nor the boy “Lian” attended the funeral. While Lian’s existence was unverified, media revealed her father: a long-haired, handsome Frenchman living in Italy, unemployed, penniless, obsessed with photography. Anna’s inheritance hadn’t reached him yet—he couldn’t afford the flight. Interviewed by journalists, he received the will, stubbed out his cigarette, and said in stiff Chinese:
“I’m grieved but helpless. I can only pray. Anna left me one line: ‘I am the sin ensuring your retirement.’ She held a grudge—like her mother, denying me peace even in death.”

I too was absent. After learning everything, Mother locked me in my room indefinitely, meals delivered like rations. When I first wrote to Anna, I knew this imprisonment was inevitable—my own muted rebellion, parallel to her flight.

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8.

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I’ve heard that lost dolphins sing. Instantly, I thought of Anna and me. Adrift from human companions, unable to breach each other’s hearts, we could only sing across the void, sinking slowly into the ink-black deep where a single moonbeam pierces.

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​9.

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Years passed. I still inhabit Shiyi.

Obeying Mother, I work at a foreign firm in the North District, bought her a small apartment. I rent a studio alone. Life remains numb and busy. Brief stints studying or working elsewhere changed nothing—still the sterile triangle of existence. Isolated from peers since childhood, I have no confidants. After circling through cities, I understand: desolate, hopeless Shiyi offers me the deepest belonging. Here, transactions are equivalent, emotions unpaid. Distance preserved. Spiritual fastidiousness intact.

Anna was a rare azure butterfly in Shiyi’s history. Her departure first ignited media frenzy—endless speculation that ultimately faded. Now, no one remembers her: the mixed-race girl who clashed with her single mother, dropped out, worked nights in unlicensed bars, days copying kitsch for galleries, squeezing in time to paint, then ended her life at adulthood’s threshold.

She left behind nearly 70 artworks—sketches, oils. Some framed in gold-leafed grandeur; others lying bare on paper. Eclectic styles, violent clashes of color and form, each piece a self-doubt, a self-reinvention: flesh torn and reassembled.

Once, her exhibition came to my university town. I skipped class, loitered outside until crowds thinned, then slipped in. A corridor met me: photographs of Anna’s life with captions. Holding my breath, heart drumming, I advanced. Walls papered with images—likely her father’s work—mostly from childhood, sun-drenched years unknown to me:

• A long-haired girl chasing a dog in a floral dress

• Chubby hands gripping a sunflower

• Giggling in a polka-dot raincoat and boots, grinning at her father’s lens

• Peering from a windowsill, curious...
  Candid shots. Intimate. Alive.

At the corridor’s end, I froze: a giant monochrome portrait—Anna·An.
Her hair cascaded over shoulders; jawline sharpening into adulthood. She sat by the tattoo parlor’s window, gauze taped above her left cheekbone, gazing intently at the camera. A faint smile. Serene yet startlingly vivid.
I stared until my blood boiled. I could go no further. At closing, I told the curator I knew her. He gifted me a hand-printed miniature of the photo. This image crystallized my feelings: all these years, she’d surfaced unpredictably—her brows, her voice, the rain, the red dress, the paintings.

One late-summer night, cold and still, I dreamed her: faded red dress, standing across the great river, extending her arm with uncharacteristic tenderness.
“Come,” she said. “To our own world.”
Echoes in my mind resonated with her voice—I knew I couldn’t refuse.

I woke. The wall clock read 3:21 AM. Ticks echoed. Urgency seized me. I sat up, mind scrambled, limbs clumsy, yet utterly certain:
It was time to leave.

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10.

On the Northbound Train

I boarded the train heading north. It departed from southern Shuoyi, slicing through half the nation like an ugly scar. Tourist season had waned; passengers clustered in small groups chatting, the carriage humming with muted warmth.

Outside my window: clone-cities roaring past, then wilderness—stretches of grassland empty of souls. I sat motionless, no music, no books. Against my chest hung an antique locket I’d commissioned, its interior holding a newly printed miniature of Anna’s photo. This journey birthed in me an unprecedented loneliness. Skies shifted between harsh sun and gloom; inside, the compartment stewed in grayish dimness, air thick with stagnation. I maintained rigid boundaries with strangers.

When the train pierced mountains, my mind entered a tunnel of calm. Through the glass, gloom-green frangipani trees flashed by—their veins stark, emitting a gelid-thick radiance in the dark. Years of dammed sorrow bloomed inside me like some poisonous flower, petal by icy petal.

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Three days later at dusk, I climbed the mountain I’d promised her. Rapeseed flowers blazed gold to every horizon. I’d lost count of the years since that vow, yet here we were.

No one else. Only weeds and scattered, untended graves. At 4 PM, the highlands already whispered of endings, though sunlight still blazed.

“Now we crush our city and past beneath our feet. You must judge for yourself, Anna—is this view splendorous or desolate? Blooming or scattering?” My voice barely stirred the air. A late-summer wind sharpened its teeth, gusting through gullies, wailing like a huqin—that shrill lament of frontier bows.

I turned. There she stood on a stone slab—red dress, red shoes, brown hair whipping wild. Her tattoo gleamed. The girl I’d met in the typhoon. We’d waited lifetimes for this.

She smiled, childlike in its purity: “Jizai, we forgot goodbyes last time. I came to mend that.”

My own face eased. “Where will you go?”

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She stepped down, approached, fingers brushing the locket at my throat. Her dusk-blue eyes held a sly glint as she leaned close, breath grazing my ear:

“Remember what my first reply letter said?”

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“History tells us where we come from and where we go.”

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She huffed a soft laugh through her nose—then vanished. I looked down. The webbed juncture of thumb and forefinger bore a black stain: AnJi. The pathological self-enclosure that had choked me for years dissolved.

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I raised my head. The sun’s last gleam drowned below the earth. A laugh escaped me—then I felt tears carving salt trails down my face.

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Yes. She came.

Now she has left.

I, too, am departed.

We are both gone now.

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【END】

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Award note retained verbatim:

(This work won the 11th "New Composition Cup" Fearless Writing Contest Junior Division New Talent Award)

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Author Note:

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This piece began in July 2011 and was completed by the end of that year.
I often felt as though a waterfall was boiling inside me — a sensation of needing release,
and so it transformed from a fleeting scene tumbling in my mind into words, and then into a story.
As new ideas kept emerging throughout the months of writing,
the novel’s structure and language became disordered, even clumsy at times,
but perhaps it is precisely this raw, youthful roughness that allows it to resonate with readers.
All that I wished to say has already been spoken through the letters between Anna and Jizai.
My thanks to everyone who has read it.