A game you play by yourself

This issue of One-Way Street grew out of the "New Voices Project". With the support of the Pro Helvetia Shanghai office, One-Way Street collaborated with four overseas independent literary magazines/platforms to launch a call for submissions in three categories: non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. They selected literary "new voices" within their respective scopes. Ultimately, One-Way Street compiled fourteen works written in five languages from Australia, Ireland, Africa, Switzerland, and China.

These emerging writers played a "game with themselves" in literature. They used unconventional language and narration, heterogeneous expressions, and their own unique literary voices to write about the life experiences and emotional journeys of the "new generation": the mixed feelings about giving birth to life, the intertwining of games and reality, efforts to retell colonized history, and the traces left by isolation. Amidst universal fear, pain, and confusion, they try to find what hope for the future remains when the familiar has already become blurred.

This issue of One-Way Street also features Yan Jiacheng's photographic work, "Night in the Suburbs". This young Chinese photographer focused his lens on a riverside in a "dormitory town" on the outskirts of a large city, documenting the inconspicuous yet hardworking people in its corners...