Doomsday Practice

Twenty years later, Liao Weitang publishes another collection of short stories

"It's the insomnia of the times that has haunted me, but I like this constant awakening."

In "Doomsday Practice," the Earth is enveloped by an alien as vast as Mexico, leaving humanity with no secrets from it; a poet and other passengers experience an airplane malfunction, and this flight becomes the greatest mystery in aviation history; a reincarnated Tibetan lama engages in hundreds of legendary battles with a devil, each serving as a rehearsal for the end of the world; in the early years of the Republic of China, after a long drought, rain falls, and a mysterious merman prince transforms unpredictably; the ghost of an old love appears, only to die again...

Liao Weitang shuttles between science fiction and fantasy, dreams and wakefulness, connecting trauma, riots, and injustice, as if in a series of nightmares, constantly awakening. "Doomsday" may not be in the future, but rather omnipresent; what shouldn't have happened has already occurred, and what was about to happen has already become the past. "Practice" is not about preparing for a rainy day, but rather about repeatedly mourning, predicting the return of ghosts.

Liao Weitang: My short stories are much more relaxed to write than my poetry, even though I never forget my identity as a poet in my stories, nor the strong presence of poetry in this literary universe of mine. In this relaxation, I gradually regained the pleasure of structure, the pleasure of fiction and imagination, which is impossible when I write those increasingly heavy and difficult poems. I hope the boundary between poetry and short stories becomes more blurred, allowing the souls of authors and readers, the souls of exiles and those who remain, to wander and traverse through the labyrinth of these words, holding candles through the night.