Zhou Hau Liew’s “Quarantine Hotel” is a lyrical ekphrasis, as if a quarantine hotel were an installation art piece that places participants after the whip and before the lash of a sudden global pandemic, triggering ethereal eidetic imagery across space and time.

Giant Ape by Lu Nei, translated from Chinese by Edward Allen from the 8th edition of TSLR. A short story from within a chapter of Lu Nei’s five-part work Mistwalkers 雾行者, published on Jan 1, 2020.

Chris Song’s translation of Ye Si’s “Amélie in Tuen Mun”. After graduating from high school, Amélie and her classmates moved to the city to seek their fortunes. While some joined Triads, committing robberies, and others took part in the Miss Hong Kong pageant, Amélie found work in a diner.

Criticism editor Carlos Rojas introduces the section's contributions, from global climate change, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the political-economic crisis facing contemporary China, and how we understand failure itself, describing the essays as observations as well as interventions into the phenomena they describe.