Moonlight at Kilometer Zero
Luna Tian
“In my heart there is a bright moon, eternally whole through the ages.” — Wang Yangming
I. The Metro as a Rift in Time
I caught the scent of Beijing. On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2024, aboard Stockholm’s Tunnelbana Red Line, I smelled something familiar.
It was almost unbelievable. You know, Stockholm’s metro stations have always only carried the smell of disinfectant and cold wind. You could never catch that intimate scent unique to Beijing’s hutongs—crispy fried youtiao paired with steaming hot soy milk, the aroma of braised offal mixed with the garlic sauce of fried sausages and the orange zest of Arctic Ocean soda. With my eyes closed, I felt like I was standing in front of that braised offal shop at Jiaotong University’s entrance. Grandma was walking toward me with a blue-and-white porcelain bowl, saying, “Your ancestors all loved eating this.”
I missed them so much.
Moonlight Zero Kilometer
When I opened my eyes again, everyone in the carriage had disappeared.
In their place was another group of people. They wore 2008 Olympic volunteer uniforms. An elderly man held a newspaper, students carried backpacks, and the sounds in the carriage shifted from Swedish to the rolled-tongue Beijing dialect. The announcement came on—“Dear passengers, next stop: Tian’anmen East.”
I stood up in shock. The doors opened, my legs went weak, and I scrambled off the train. The surroundings weren’t as I remembered them from 2019 when I left, but rather as they were in 2008. The walls were plastered with Olympic-era posters. The station speakers played “Beijing Welcomes You”—sharing breath under the sun.
I walked out of the carriage, trying to grab someone to ask what day it was, but I discovered they couldn’t see me. My shadow didn’t cast on the glass. I think I understood what was happening—I was an observer, a ghost who had slipped from 2024 Stockholm into 2008 Beijing.
This was the first time I discovered that the metro isn’t just a means of transportation, but a portal into different worlds.
II. I Think My Memories Are Disappearing
After I got back on the train, everything returned to normal. I was back in my Stockholm apartment, beginning to sort through the things Grandma had left behind.
A prayer book written in Manchu, with yellowed photos tucked inside. An embroidered pouch with green satin butterfly patterns. These things only reached my hands after she passed away, and I hadn’t had the courage to open them. When I finally did, I found a letter inside. The sentence structure was odd, as if directly translated from Manchu.
“Nannan, this is my last letter to you. When you see it, I’ll already be gone. What I need to tell you is our family’s secret. We are Aisin Gioro people. We can see what happened long, long ago—not from books, but written in our bones. Your great-great-grandfather remembered Nurhaci riding into Beijing, remembered the first snow in the Forbidden City. These memories pass down through our bloodline, flowing like a river.
But nannan, our river is running dry. No one speaks Manchu anymore. Our banners are gone. The hutongs are disappearing. Over these three hundred years, we Manchu people in Beijing have been like water vapor, slowly evaporating. Now I’m dying too. When I die, there will be one less person who speaks Manchu. When you die, there will be one less person who remembers these things. Can you remember? Can I count on you to remember?
Our ancestors came from the white mountains and black waters. They built palaces here and buried themselves here. Remember us—not just as background, but remember our language, our voices, the prayers we recited to the moon on Mid-Autumn nights. Things older than Chinese characters and city walls.
The name I gave you means moon. The moon remembers you, remembers everyone, all languages, all things that disappear.”
I read the letter three times, then cried all night.
III. In Different Worlds
I once thought it was a hallucination, until I discovered the metro rift wasn’t a coincidence.
As long as my longing was strong enough when riding the metro, as long as I closed my eyes and recited the Manchu prayer Grandma taught me, the carriage would change.
I became curious about where the doors would lead. Sometimes it was 2008 Beijing, sometimes 1966 Beijing, sometimes 1949, and even earlier times—late Qing Beijing, Republican-era Beijing, those Beijings I never personally experienced but that my bones remembered, Beijing under heavy snow.
So I began writing these down.
2008—smiling faces everywhere, “Beijing Welcomes You” everywhere. The city was a gift waiting to be unwrapped. You could hear a song in the malls, “Beijing, Beijing.” We laugh here, we cry here, we live here, and we die here. I saw my seventeen-year-old self standing in the center of Tiananmen Square, volunteering, smiling at foreign tourists. Back then, she had so many tears and so much sweat, but she didn’t know that eleven years later she would lose her passport and become someone who could never return.
2012, my first year as a journalist. The hutongs hadn’t all been demolished yet. I loved the lush lotus flowers at Shichahai most. An orange kitten would come to my hand when I crouched down. I was 21, interviewing families about to be relocated, photographing their last dinners. That report was quickly deleted.
2016, the year of the worst smog. The sky was always gray-blue. Through the haze I couldn’t see clearly. The version of me in that world started wearing masks, rushing to finish articles on the metro. Investigative journalism became increasingly dangerous. This city, in every sense, made it hard for me to breathe.
2019, my last Mid-Autumn night before leaving. For the last time, I was at Shichahai. The moon hung above Wanchun Pavilion. I vaguely sensed it might be the last time. I sat by the lake, reciting the Manchu prayer Grandma taught me toward the moon. After finishing, I stood up and walked into the hutong shadows. Now, that receding figure looks like a ghost.
Then 1966, a world I never truly lived through, but my bones remembered it. Red slogans everywhere, parading crowds. Many elderly Manchu people in qipao were dragged out for struggle sessions. The Eight Banners scrolls in their homes were burned, Manchu books torn to shreds. Grandma’s grandfather was among those people. At the struggle session, he was forced to say: “I am not Manchu, I am the people.” Three days after saying this, he hanged himself. Grandma told me this story once, only once, and never wanted to mention it again.
1912, the world just after the Qing Dynasty ended. Living in the Forbidden City was an emperor who was no longer an emperor. Eight Banners descendants wandered the streets, not knowing their world had ended. Under the city wall, I saw a young Manchu woman in traditional dress, crying beneath the wall. She looked a bit like Grandma, and a bit like me. What was she crying about? The disappearance of a dynasty, or the death of a language? I didn’t know.
Each time I went to those places, I brought something back—a scent, a phrase, a fragment of imagery. The fragments piled up in my apartment like ruins constructed from time.
IV. All Stories, All Times
I began to realize I wasn’t the only one who could traverse time rifts.
At an exchange meeting in Stockholm, I met people like me, people who had encountered other worlds in the metro.
Guli was a Uyghur girl. She told me that through the metro, she could return to Urumqi in 2009, before the July 5th incident, to the world where her brother still existed. “Every time I go back,” she said, “I want to grab him and tell him not to go out that day. But I can’t hold him. I’m just a ghost.”
A Tibetan man named Tashi had returned to Lhasa in March 2008, before the incidents. “Back then, the prayer wheels at Jokhang Temple were still turning,” he said. “Monks could still freely chant sutras. Now those prayer wheels are still there, but fewer people turn them. Not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t dare.”
A Mongolian girl named Naren could return to even earlier times, to the days when her grandparents were still on the Inner Mongolian grasslands. “Mongolian on the grasslands is disappearing,” she said, “like Manchu. Our children can’t speak their mother tongue in school, only Chinese. In another generation, no one will be able to sing those ancient songs anymore.”
We sat together, sharing our experiences, talking about how each ethnicity was disappearing. We discovered that everyone who could pass through time rifts had experienced profound loss. People had lost homelands, languages, identities. All these losses carved enormous gashes in our consciousness, and time poured out through those wounds.
Because true refugees are refugees of time.
Guli said, “We’re not just exiled in space, but also in time. Time and space are actually the same thing. We live in the present, but our hearts are in the past, in all the worlds we can’t return to.”
V. The Kilometer Zero Experiment
In December 2024, the four of us, plus a new friend, decided to conduct an experiment together.
We chose Stockholm’s oldest metro line—the Green Line. Its stations were built in the 1950s, around the same time as Beijing’s Line 1.
Our hypothesis was: If the metro truly is a rift in time, if metro networks in different cities are connected in some dimension, then perhaps we could return to Beijing’s metro through Stockholm’s metro, and thus return to the worlds we each once inhabited.
We met on the winter solstice, during Stockholm’s longest night. Each of us brought something from our homeland—I held Grandma’s Manchu prayer book, Guli brought her brother’s photo, Tashi brought a string of bodhi beads and a dzi bead, Naren brought a fragment of a morin khuur, and there was a Han Chinese boy named Lin Hao who brought a newspaper from 1989.
We boarded the train at T-Centralen station—Stockholm metro’s kilometer zero, the convergence point of all lines, among the blue water-grass-like murals. We sat in a circle, closed our eyes, and whispered prayers. Manchu, Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Hakka—
The metro began to move.
We felt the carriage shaking, but the vibration wasn’t normal, not like an ordinary metro. It was more like the entire space was twisting, folding. Then the lights in the carriage went out. We were plunged into complete darkness.
In the darkness, we began to hear many voices together, from different eras, in different languages, overlapping to form a vast chorus. Grandma reciting Manchu, Nurhaci’s army entering the city, horse hooves clattering, slogans from 1966, “Beijing Welcomes You” from 2008, “Beijing Blesses You” from 2012, the sound of my own footsteps in the empty metro station in 2019.
Then the lights came on.
VI. The Impossible Platform
When the doors opened, we saw an impossible platform.
I knew it wasn’t Stockholm, but it also wasn’t Beijing from any specific period. It was Beijing with all moments superimposed. The platform was crowded with all kinds of people—Qing Dynasty bannermen, Republican-era students, 1949 Liberation Army soldiers, 1966 Red Guards, 2003 journalists, 2008 volunteers, 2019 pedestrians wearing masks, and some people I had no idea which era they were from. They wore clothes I didn’t recognize, spoke languages I couldn’t understand.
They were all waiting for the metro, just unable to see each other, each person in their own timeline.
On the platform outside the carriage, posters from different periods overlapped into patches of mottled color. The markings on the ground were composed of various scripts—Chinese characters, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, and some ancient scripts we didn’t recognize at all.
“This must be kilometer zero,” I said. “The true kilometer zero—not geographical, but temporal. All moments converge here.”
We walked along the platform, passing through crowds from different eras. I heard station announcements: Anhe Bridge East, Gaomidian South. I saw my past self in the crowd, handing out flyers with a naive smile. I wanted to go ask her—do you really believe everything will be okay? I wanted to tell her not to love this place too much, because if you don’t love, you won’t be sad. I wanted to tell her not to believe “Beijing Welcomes You”—even though you’ve lived here a long time, you’ll never get a Beijing hukou. But I was just a ghost. What could I do? When I turned around, I saw Guli threading through the 2009 crowd, chasing after her brother. What was she trying to do? Was she trying to grab him? But her hand passed through his body. I saw her kneel down, kneeling on the ground, crying out in Uyghur, but no one heard. No one answered her.
I saw 1959 Lhasa, saw those destroyed temples and exiled monks. Tashi stood before that scene, holding prayer beads, murmuring continuously. Naren sat on the grassland—yurts, bonfires, morin khuur. She sat on the ground, singing ancient songs in Mongolian. Her grassland hadn’t yet been turned into an industrial zone. Everything had not yet disappeared. Listening to the melodious music, even their sorrow seemed so expansive. Was she, like me, missing the home she couldn’t return to?
Following Lin Hao’s silhouette, I saw the 1989 square, saw those students, those tanks. He stood among them, motionless, like a stone statue.
I don’t know how long we stayed on the platform. Maybe hours, maybe minutes. Maybe time had long ceased to exist. When we saw the vanished moments, saw the erased memories, and all the things we had lost, time ceased to exist.
VII. Bright Moon, Shining Earth
At the end of the platform, we saw a staircase.
Where the staircase led, moonlight poured down. We climbed the stairs, and the moment we emerged from the metro station, we found ourselves standing in Tiananmen Square. But this square wasn’t from any particular period. It was the square of all moments, time’s zero point. The moon hung above the square, enormous and distorted.
Like countless moons overlapping, from the beginning of history to now, from now to the future—everyone’s moon, forming a huge halo.
Not one moon, but countless moons overlapping, from the Yuan Dynasty to now, from now to the future, forming an enormous corona.
We stood in the moonlight.
Somehow, a phrase suddenly came to me.
“The bright moon of ten thousand years has no past life; it illuminates those who alone are awake through ancient and modern times.”
Naren heard what I said and told me, “However you put it, we can all be counted as those who are awake. We remember quite a lot.”
But does remembering matter? Guli said remembering can’t change anything—it only makes us more lucidly watch loved ones die in history, have more painful dreams, watch cultures be erased, languages perish.
The rest of us fell silent. Until Tashi said, memory itself is meaning. “We can’t change the past, but we can preserve it. Things that disappear won’t completely die.”
Grandma’s prayer book had a page about prayers to the moon. I began to read, began to recite these words in my clumsy Manchu. Guli and Tashi joined us. They all began to speak everything they wanted to say in their own languages. Naren in Mongolian, Lin Hao in Hakka. Our voices grew louder, overlapping, forming a strange harmony at this eerie zero point.
Until the moon shone so brightly we could barely keep our eyes open.
The enormous radiance illuminated everything. In that light, I saw all time—past, present, future—unfolding simultaneously, forming a vast net. I saw everyone’s lives, our ancestors, our descendants. Vanished languages still spoken in certain times, destroyed cultures growing powerful new life in new worlds.
Time doesn’t flow linearly, isn’t irreversible. It’s a net, a labyrinth, a miracle of infinite superimposed possibilities. We people who have experienced enormous spatial dislocation and loss have also become refugees in time, thus gaining the opportunity to see the structure of this net, to shuttle between different possibilities.
There’s always something to fill the void.
This is my favorite Mid-Autumn gift.
VIII. Return
When the radiance faded, we found ourselves back at Stockholm’s metro station.
T-Centralen, kilometer zero. The station still had the same passengers. A few Middle Eastern people greeted each other in Arabic, shaking hands. A blonde girl leaned against a pillar reading. The five of us sat on a bench on the platform, not speaking for a long time.
“So,” Lin Hao was first to break the silence. “What do you think we saw?”
“Opportunity,” I said. “Perhaps we’ve always had the opportunity to pass through time, return to all moments, to preserve memory.”
“And we’re not alone,” Naren said. “We’re a network. Each of us is a node, connected to different timelines, different worlds. Our memories added together can write a complete history—the real history that official history books won’t record.”
“Then we should start writing,” Tashi said. “Record everything we’ve seen. All the people living in time’s folds, the vanished languages and names. We should go see more of them. This is our responsibility. We were chosen to do this.”
We agreed that each person would write their own story. I would write about Beijing—the multilingual, multiethnic Beijing in time’s creases.
I thought perhaps we could create a new kind of map—a map of time, a map of memory. On this map, all the erased boundaries still exist, all the forbidden languages are still being spoken, all the expelled people are still in their homelands.
IX. Another Mid-Autumn Festival
Mid-Autumn 2025. In my Stockholm apartment, I completed my manuscript.
I named it Moonlight at Kilometer Zero—about time rifts in the metro, about us wandering between different worlds, how we write memory before everything disappears.
The moon rose outside my window, still so cold. But this time, I took out Grandma’s prayer book and recited that prayer in Manchu. After finishing, I closed my eyes.
I saw those scenes again.
Long, long ago, before everything happened, in 2008 Beijing, in 1912 Beijing, in some distant cold morning, the Eight Banners army had just entered the city. My ancestor dismounted at the city gate, gazing at this city about to become the capital.
I saw young Grandma, wearing blue clothes, teaching a little girl Manchu at the hutong entrance. That little girl might be me, but might not be only me—might be everyone who ever learned this language.
I saw Guli and her brother in Urumqi in 2007, happily discussing the future. Tashi circumambulating at Jokhang Temple, those prayer wheels still turning, forever turning. Turning in all timelines.
Naren riding a horse on the endless grassland, singing. Those ancient songs like the wind. Lin Hao standing in the crowd on Wulumuqi Middle Road with many others, holding up a blank piece of paper with nothing written on it, yet everything written on it.
And so once again, I saw us, saw all of us, meeting at time’s zero point. Under the moonlight we spoke different languages, but with the same memories, we could always understand each other.
Two words suddenly came to my mind. Return. Return.
Some people think return means going back to a geographical coordinate, going back to homeland. But true return is actually a state—a state of understanding and connection that transcends all time and space.
I opened my eyes and began writing the final paragraph:
I miss every moment we spoke in our mother tongues. I love every place where we exist. When I close my eyes, I can always feel the flowing moonlight, illuminating all places. In my heart there is such a perfect moon. I wait for all worlds to be illuminated by moonlight.
And we will go back again and again, to prove that memory is inexhaustible. We wait for the day when some archaeologist will see our stories. You can make a name disappear, make a date disappear, make a place disappear, but what about memory? Our memory can be a monument.
Epilogue
I published this story on a literary website for exiles. The click count wasn’t high, there weren’t many comments, but every comment I received was long—stories from other exiles, from Myanmar, from Tibet, from Xinjiang, from Hong Kong, from all those places people cannot return to.
I received emails. Some told me they too had seen time rifts in the metro. Others said they would start writing their own stories. Still others said, thank you for telling us we’re not actually crazy.
Among them was one email written in Manchu. I couldn’t understand it and had to translate it word by word with translation software. It read:
“You are Grandma’s descendant. You did well. Because you preserved our memory. Languages die, cities change, but memory lives on—in writing, in people’s love. Keep writing. This is your way home. Don’t forget the dream.”
No signature.
I printed that email and put it on my wall, together with Grandma’s photo. Grandma smiled so happily.
I asked her, am I your pride, Mama?
Am I doing the right thing? I don’t know, Mama.
I miss you so much, Mama.
Outside the window, Stockholm’s moon rose again. I no longer felt it was cold.
I thought of a line from the ancient poem “Drinking Wine and Asking the Moon”: “People today cannot see the ancient moon, yet today’s moon once shone on ancient people.” I wanted to change it—to “People today have seen the ancient moon, and the ancient moon can also shine on people today.”
Because the moon from any time and place is the same moon, shining on everyone, reflecting souls waiting to meet beyond time’s zero point.
I put on my coat and walked toward the metro station.
Tonight, I want to visit those worlds once more.