The Deer's Dream

May 20, 2026·Everyday musings·Read in Chinese

She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looked up at me.

That was the year Nanjing first turned cold. Not the cold of deep winter — the kind that slips a little chill into the autumn wind. The stone-elephant road at Ming Xiaoling is at its best around then. The maples on either side seemed to be finishing everything before the first frost: one tree holding layer upon layer of colour, and with the sun coming through it, the whole road was warm. She walked ahead of me, stepping through fallen leaves.

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The deer park was small; at the gate each visitor was handed a little bundle of hay. The deer are used to people. They came over without hurry, nose first, damp and cool; she pulled her hand back by instinct, then slowly reached out again. In the end she simply crouched down and a deer stood right in front of her, quietly eating from her palm. She freed her other hand and stroked its forehead. The deer did not move. Its eyelids sank slowly, as if it had fallen asleep.

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The deer was calm and understood nothing. Nothing about seasons, nothing about partings — it only knew that a palm was warm and the hay was sweet.

Neither did she, really. And not only about the deer; there was a great deal she did not understand. She did not know I was about to graduate, did not know that some things come with a deadline, did not know that no autumn lasts longer than a frost. She knew very little. The deer was lovely.

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And Nanjing's autumn is too short. That day she crouched on the grass feeding the deer in small pieces, and I stood one step away watching her back. She was so light — light as a leaf in autumn.

I was afraid I wouldn't catch it, and afraid that if I did, the wind would carry it off.

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That year the maple leaves fell fast. Before anyone had looked their fill, the branches were bare.

Later I lived through another autumn. The maples turned red just the same; people still queued for tickets at the deer park.

I have never been back to Ming Xiaoling.

The wind came in the end. I never did hold off that frost; I could only stand where I was and watch autumn come loose from the branches entirely. Perhaps some people are like seasons — meant to walk only one short stretch of the stone-elephant road beside you.

When the wind carried the leaves away it took that early autumn with it, the one I never had time to button my coat against, and set it down quietly inside a deer's dream.

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Red maple leaves backlit by the sunA spotted deer standing on a leaf-covered slopeA person with a backpack on a forest pathThe red wall and golden glazed roof of Ming XiaolingAutumn trees mirrored in a pondA deer leaning into the lens with a stalk of grass in its mouthA visitor crouching to feed a deer

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