earthlings and dumplings

Many books from my spacious home in Canada I didn’t bring with me to Hong Kong. Amongst these are the many short story collections that are just sitting on my bookshelf now, untouched. Tonight, I thought of Sheila Heti’s “The Middle Stories”. I thought of this book because I was thinking about dumplings, and in this book, there is a story about a dumpling… I think the story is called “The Dumpling”. It’s about how a dumpling struggles to climb up to the edge of the pot and skips over and lands (kerplat) on the tiles of the kitchen floor. The night is cold and no one helps him or even notices that he is on the floor. He is away from the pot and away from his family and he starts to think of why he did what he did. As he drowns in his own thoughts and regrets he gets cold and becomes hard and dries up…

I used to read this story to my class because it is short and philosophical in a quirky way. The kids loved how the dumpling dries up and dies a slow death.