This is Tianyao, who spent nearly three weeks after publishing Diary 126 writing an essay titled “Why People Should Start Keeping a Diary.” Ironically, he did not write a single diary entry during that period. (

Now, faced with a new proposal for Composition class, he has finally remembered the starving little essay series abandoned in a corner, with only 127 entries to its name. Ah! (Seamless transition.) At this point, attentive readers may ask: no matter how hard we search, why can we not find the nearly sixty entries between 34 and 91? Was some mysterious power at work? An exotic numeral system, perhaps?

Nothing of the sort. During that stretch last year, my urge to write was considerably stronger than it is now. If we counted carefully, it was probably the most frequently updated period of the entire series, nearly one entry per day. At the same time, the series reached an unprecedented depth of theme, so I have always wanted to archive it somewhere. Unfortunately, ever since they were written, those words have only been visible to a small circle of friends on the mysterious messaging app T.

I consulted the heavens with my fingers and realized that the first anniversary of my time as a “Beijing drifter” is approaching. In keeping with this series’ fine tradition of restoring its archives a year late, I can now openly and honorably pad my updates for a while—and give Sojourner’s Diary a complete life story (?).

Naturally, the ancestral law must not change: some of these restored entries will undoubtedly embarrass me so badly that I refuse to read them twice, but I will publish them faithfully and unaltered. As for why… the answer will soon be revealed in the February 17 entry.

When will we be able to return to Beijing?

(The restored entries will not include specific personal names or place names.)