EXCERPT 躺平的韭菜不好割 [Chives that lie flat are difficult to harvest]. Tangping slogan Li Gui stood up. He had spent several hours squatting in the queue that was forming alongside the low black glass and ceramic shell that marked the border of Auspicious Nourishment and his left knee was beginning to ache. There were only twenty or thirty people so far, mostly tech industry looking types, but Gui knew there would soon be a lot more. As he shifted the weight off his stiff leg and attempted to lean on the glass for support, a burst of dark blue light erupted angrily from the point where he had touched it and gently rippled away from him. A warning from Auspicious Nourishment that he was obstructing its capacity to absorb energy by blocking the photovoltaic cells embedded in its shell. He squatted down again. Regaining entry was going to take a lot longer than he had hoped and it was starting to look like he would need to ask someone to bring him supplies. Food, a jacket, probably a sleeping bag. The Gansu region gets cold at night, even in spring. Gui knew this because he had once been a resident of Auspicious Nourishment. Only three years had passed since he’d left but it felt like a lot longer. Ordinarily his wife would have been the first person he would contact in a situation like this, but as of yesterday she wanted nothing to do with him. Next on the list were his parents, but he hadn’t drummed up the courage to tell them what he’d done yet. It would do him no good trying to explain it right now, better to wait for the media to catch up and make an official report. That way there would at least be some context for his actions. Gui exhaled anxiously. He was full of contradictory feelings he couldn’t quite describe. Excitement mixed with fear, hope muddied by doubt. But most perplexing of all was the combination of guilt with a sense of quiet condescension, as if he was ashamed of his decision yet proud of it at the same time. He thought about his apartment in Lanzhou and the comfortable bed he and his wife had just purchased together. He thought about his job at Silk Cloud and how hard he’d worked to succeed in it. He thought about how badly he’d always wanted to impress his parents and his superiors and how he was letting everybody down. But they would be the sorry ones in the end. Once the truth about what was happening in Auspicious Nourishment came out his wife would forgive everything and join him. …