Translated by Tiantian Yuan
A masterclass in hyperbole, Wen Zhen’s uncompromising “Item Log” is a comedically proficient takedown of contemporary materialism, indulgences, and millennial woes. As the text builds, the claustrophobic cycle of consumption is rendered with biting precision and bold lyricism — so much so that one must almost come up for air in the middle of a paragraph. Translated by Tiantian Yuan, Wen Zhen’s sentences run on as if they have their own ideas.
Spittoon Literary Magazine Issue 7 — featuring more Wen Zhen — will be released April 3rd at our release party in Beijing. You can sign up to attend here.
物品志
郑天华最喜欢问刘梅的问题是：你为什么要买这么多东西？
刘梅每次答不上来就耍赖：反正也没钱买房，银行里的钱闲着也是闲着。
这是实话。结婚八年银行里就存了那么百来万，每月工资租房和维持中等生活水准没问题，唯独买房欠缺一点希望——北京城四环以内房子已从均价三万涨到八万，存款速度远赶不上房价飙升，最新情况是只够买个厕所加半拉卧室，总面积还不能超过二十平方。租房也只敢租五十平方不到，根本没勇气再造个小人儿霍霍。从宜家搬回来各种组合家具，螺蛳壳里勉强做了道场，却架不住刘梅买不停手，分分钟物满为患。她囤积一切可以囤积的便宜货，尤其是超市里的特惠精选，会过期的德清源蛋大清仓，她也即兴买那么三四板：接下来一个月，天天吃西红柿炒鸡蛋、韭菜炒鸡蛋、香椿炒鸡蛋、小葱炒鸡蛋。
郑天华每天都生存在便宜衣服、便宜书、便宜锅碗瓢盆、便宜沐浴露洗发水洗衣液、便宜洗菜盆洗碗布的海洋里，载浮载沉地被这些限期打折的超市成员彻底淹没。他这五十平方不是为肉身灵魂得以休憩租的，而是为了洗涤产品和它的姑表兄弟们。一瓶雕牌生姜去腥洗洁精，不伤手配方，放在架子上盛惠人民币三块五，和其他五瓶一模一样的同批次产品被刘梅从麦德龙拉回家就成了六千块钱出租屋的新贵。郑天华是此地最可有可无的角色，刘梅颐指气使手下所有超市奇兵和他争夺有限的生存空间。他写诗时连饭都想不起来吃，越来越瘦。而刘梅则越来越胖。她和她的超市近卫军们在这五十平方是绝对的统治阶级。
只有翻箱倒柜都找不到一把牙刷、而明知道家里至少囤积了二十把时；以及收拾换季衣裳必须耗费整整两天时，刘梅女王般的虚幻幸福感才会打折扣；但这灵光乍现的瞬间和每天都在打折的世界相比，何其之微不足道。
Item Log
Zheng Tianhua’s favorite question to Liu Mei is: Why do you have to buy so many things?
Every time Liu Mei fails to come up with an answer, she throws out the same flimsy excuse: We don’t have enough money for an apartment anyway, better to spend it than to leave it lying in the bank.
That’s the truth. After eight years of marriage, their savings only came up to about a million yuan. Although their salaries were enough to cover rent and a decent standard of living, buying an apartment was still beyond hope. The average cost of housing within Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road had rocketed from thirty thousand to eighty thousand yuan per square meter, and their accumulating savings have never been able to keep up with the soaring real estate prices. The closest they could ever get was having enough only for a washroom and half a bedroom, with a total space of under twenty square meters. Even for a rental, they didn’t dare go over fifty square meters, let alone try for a bun in the oven. Their apartment—a tiny space fully exploited with all kinds of IKEA furniture sets—was just barely habitable, but Liu Mei has been unstoppable in buying things, so the space has irritatingly continued to fill up. She has been hoarding any discounted items that can be hoarded, especially special selections from supermarkets. During a clearance sale of about-to-expire Deqingyuan eggs, she bought three or four dozen impromptu, and in the following month, the couple had eggs everyday—scrambled with tomatoes, scrambled with chives, scrambled with toon leaves, and scrambled with scallions.
Zheng Tianhua goes through each day in an ocean of cheap clothes, cheap books, cheap pots and pans, cheap shower gel, shampoo, and laundry detergent, cheap colanders and dishcloths, barely keeping his head above these briefly discounted family members adopted from the supermarket. His fifty square meters are not for the purposes of putting the body and soul at ease, but rather serve the dish washing products and their cousins. A bottle of ginger-scented Diao dishwashing liquid, ideal for sensitive skin, marked down on the shelf for ¥3.5 RMB, was hauled home by Liu Mei from METRO with five identical bottles from the same batch, and immediately became the nouveau riche of this six thousand yuan apartment. Zheng Tianhua is the most dispensable one here; Liu Mei rallies her supermarket platoon, warring with him to occupy this limited living space. While writing poems, he forgets even about eating, growing thinner and thinner while Liu Mei gets fatter and fatter. She and her supermarket forces are the irrefutable ruling nobility within these fifty square meters.
Only when neither is able to find a single toothbrush even after turning the house upside-down—knowing full well there are at least twenty stocked up, or when it takes two full days to rotate the wardrobe for the changing season, will Liu Mei’s illusory happiness of queendom be compromised. Yet compared with the world of daily discounts, those moments of epiphany shrink to nothing, utterly insignificant.
文珍，作家。已出版小说集《夜的女采摘员》《柒》《我们夜里在美术馆谈恋爱》《十一味爱》，散文集《三四越界》，诗集《鲸鱼破冰》。历获老舍文学奖、十月文学奖、上海文学奖、山花双年奖、华语青年作家奖、华语文学传媒最具潜力新人奖等。
Wen Zhen is a writer. Publications include the fiction collections Ye de nu bian zhai yuan (The Female Night-Harvester), Qi (Seven), Women yeli zai meishuguan tan lianai (At Night We Are Falling in Love at the Museum), Shiyi Wei Ai (Eleven Flavours of Love), the nonfiction collection Sansi Yuejie (Three or Four Outbounds), and the poetry collection Jingyu Pobing (Whale Breaking the Ice). She has won the Laoshe Literary Award, the October Literature Award, the Shanghai Literature Award, the Shanhua Biennial Award, the Young Chinese Writers Award, and the Most Promising Young Writer in Chinese Literature Award.
Tiantian Yuan sojourns in Beijing. The Word has given her life and eternal home. Ecclesiastes 12.