As part of its series on “what writers from around the world see from their windows,” the Paris Review Daily recently featured Matteo Pericoli’s drawing of the view from Xi Chuan’s studio window. The feature also includes a passage from Xi Chuan, which he wrote in English, about his view. It ends:

But the whole city of Beijing was a giant construction site in the 1990s and 2000s, and the view couldn’t last. Once I got used to the buildings in the window, I seldom looked out of it. No trees can reach the fifteenth floor, so no birds perch at my window. When I look out, I see cars running on the bridge. Nothing else.