{
  "_note": "English versions of the 31 stories. Translated by Claude, to be checked by Katherine. Pen names are kept as the respondents wrote them. Keys match data/stories.json ids.",
  "stories": [
    { "id": 0, "place": "An old, run-down housing estate in Pudong", "feel": "From anger to pity and sadness, and then, thinking it over, to confusion", "text": "I live in an old, run-down estate where most of the owners are elderly locals. The residents' group chat is always fighting over trivial things, and the ringleader is always a grandma from my building. One day a younger owner finally lost it and cursed her out in the group, and she fired back with sarcasm. Just as it was getting really heated, she suddenly replied that she was a parent who had lost her only child. The whole chat went silent at once, and afterwards lots of people who never joined the fights came out to apologise to her. Since then, she rules the estate, and everyone does exactly as she says." },
    { "id": 1, "place": "School", "feel": "Speechless, shocked", "text": "My ex-girlfriend from high school cheated on me, with a guy whose face had been badly scarred by burns." },
    { "id": 2, "place": "151 North Shaanxi Road", "feel": "Happy", "text": "I go to the same bar in Shanghai regularly, and the bartender is a good friend of mine. When I go alone I sit at the bar. One time a man from Beijing who seemed like some kind of 'boss' started talking to me nonstop. He said he owned three bars, and when he heard what I do for a living, he insisted we start a company together. I was puzzled, but I'm a friendly person, so I kept chatting. Later he got drunk and started criticising the bartender's drinks one after another, mocking how overpriced they were. In the end the bartender asked him to leave, and as he walked out he swore at the place. The customers smoking outside all told him off together, and he slunk away." },
    { "id": 3, "place": "Hachimitsu-ya honey café, Shuicheng South Road", "feel": "Happy, inspired", "text": "Early this year I was reading at the Hachimitsu-ya café in Gubei. At the next table were three or four mothers in their forties and fifties, talking about how they get along with their families and children. Through the friction with their kids, they had come to realise that their own lives matter more. By the traditional idea of a mother, they should be anxious about their children's grades and worried about their rebellion. But they had realised that their children have their own lives, that a parent is only a companion for one stretch of a child's road, and that their own lives should be more in their own hands. Hearing these middle-aged women wake up to themselves as women, and take hold of their own lives, moved me deeply as a younger woman." },
    { "id": 4, "place": "Disneyland", "feel": "Healed, moved, happy", "text": "Shanghai Disneyland holds a lot of my early-twenties memories. I watched the castle rise, and when the scaffolding came down it became a place where people's dreams come true. Working somewhere and visiting it are not the same thing, but every time I look up and see the castle, the fireworks, and hear the music, it's as if I'm healed all over again. Love fades the moment you check in for work, and fills you up again the moment you look up. It's a strange and wonderful feeling." },
    { "id": 5, "place": "Shanghai Disney Resort", "feel": "Happy", "text": "In the Disneyland parade I danced along to the happy music and waved to the characters. I forgot every worry of real life and felt completely free and happy." },
    { "id": 6, "place": "A pet hospital in Huangpu", "feel": "Sad", "text": "My friend's Ragdoll cat got sick, and we took it to the hospital together. After several rounds of resuscitation, the cat crossed the rainbow bridge. My friend cried and cried. I was heartbroken too, and lost, not knowing how to comfort my best friend." },
    { "id": 7, "place": "Shanghai Maritime University", "feel": "Sad", "text": "During my TOEFL exam I went to the bathroom, and that cost me a score of 100." },
    { "id": 8, "place": "A Covid testing site in Minhang", "feel": "Agitated", "text": "On my way to a Covid test I ran into an old Shanghai man who spent the whole walk cursing a certain great figure. I was furious." },
    { "id": 9, "place": "Shanghai Library, Huaihai Road", "feel": "Total creep. Angry, scared, baffled", "text": "At the Shanghai Library, a creepy man who looked over thirty added my friend and me on WeChat. When he saw I had come alone, he messaged my friend to ask whether she was coming. Once my friend told me, I fled somewhere else to do my homework, and he still followed me. After I left, he randomly asked to add me on WeChat again, and flatly denied all of it." },
    { "id": 10, "place": "Xuhui Riverside", "feel": "Relaxed, at ease, calm, curious, joyful", "text": "One winter night I was walking along the Xuhui riverside with a friend. It hadn't rained or snowed, yet the ground was covered in ice, so I picked up a small piece and held it in my hand. Ever since, I often miss the riverside, the place that makes you forget time." },
    { "id": 11, "place": "hood", "feel": "Complicated", "text": "My American boyfriend and I have been long-distance for eight years. I miss him so much. We first met at hood, and I really want to go back there." },
    { "id": 12, "place": "ITC, Xuhui", "feel": "Angry", "text": "We were eating at Coucou Hotpot, a big group of us in a private room, and then someone outside the room started yelling at us." },
    { "id": 13, "place": "Hongqiao Central Garden, Changning", "feel": "Helpless, grieving", "text": "My first love and I had our first date in Hongqiao Central Garden. I felt stifled and uneasy. A low tide of feeling washed over the green, then sank beneath a surge of emotion, but the faint unease and discomfort would not leave, until this huge corpse and I were bound back to back, falling through the world. We broke up almost half a year ago. It really isn't a good memory. I will go back one day to see the spring there, with my own eyes." },
    { "id": 14, "place": "Cat café, 7th floor, Huijia Building, 41 North Caoxi Road", "feel": "Happy", "text": "On Valentine's Day I was catching up on homework with an old classmate in the cat café in the Huijia Building. It smelled strong and the wifi was bad, but it seems that as long as someone close is beside you, you feel happy." },
    { "id": 15, "place": "WFLA (Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy)", "feel": "Happy", "text": "At WFLA I met some of the most important friends of my life. They give me strength when I'm down, and I really like them." },
    { "id": 16, "place": "Zhuguangyu Hotpot, Fuzhou Road", "feel": "Helpless", "text": "A big family was eating at the next table, and a typical Shanghai mother was scolding her child, humiliating him in front of all the aunts and uncles. It was suffocating. The kid wasn't small either; he looked about middle-school age." },
    { "id": 17, "place": "Hongcao South Road", "feel": "Moved, though strangely still mixed with a bit of hurt", "text": "This one stayed with me: the warmth of a stranger, around March 2023. I was rushing for a bus and bumped into an old man. His bag of eggs fell and a few broke. I was already feeling low, and then he scolded me, and I felt awful and helpless. Because it was next to a wet market, the egg seller was right there. He came over, gave the old man some eggs for free, and cleaned up the broken ones. I remember he had a cigarette in his mouth and looked pretty fierce. When he walked over I thought I was done for, but what he said and did was so warm, and he didn't ask me to pay. I was so moved, haha. I cried the whole bus ride." },
    { "id": 18, "place": "WFLA North Campus", "feel": "Traces of a goose's foot on the snow (a line from Su Shi: the fleeting marks a life leaves behind)", "text": "2021.12.14" },
    { "id": 19, "place": "Oriental Land, Qingpu", "feel": "Grateful and moved", "text": "At Oriental Land my chair broke, so a boy from my class gave me his chair, and then he squatted for an hour." },
    { "id": 20, "place": "400 Baihua Street, Xuhui", "feel": "Complicated", "text": "Friends can't be three people, because someone always ends up left out. Friends can't be two people either, because then you're more than friends but not quite lovers." },
    { "id": 21, "place": "A demolished building next to Metro City", "feel": "Jaw-dropped.", "text": "My ex-boyfriend and I were wandering around an abandoned, unfinished building. We were so bored we decided to go all the way, and then two security guards suddenly walked into a place no one had entered in over ten years." },
    { "id": 22, "place": "Sun Moon Light, Xuhui", "feel": "Happy", "text": "I hadn't seen my primary-school classmate for years. When we met again after the pandemic, we watched a film, went to a bookshop, and even found a pool table in the cinema and rented it for half an hour." },
    { "id": 23, "place": "High-school campus", "feel": "From misery to delight", "text": "Got made the English class rep and was worked to the bone. At my lowest point, the English teacher made it up to me with a bubble tea." },
    { "id": 24, "place": "A Western restaurant in Xintiandi", "feel": "Happy, moved", "text": "My best friend of more than twenty years and I celebrated her promotion and my new job in Xintiandi. She lives in Suzhou and works in Shanghai, commuting between cities every day to balance family and career. But friendship means being willing to travel to another city just to see your friend." },
    { "id": 25, "place": "Outside No. 1 Department Store", "feel": "Disappointed", "text": "Once, outside No. 1 Department Store, I ran into my high-school homeroom teacher. She didn't recognise me at all." },
    { "id": 26, "place": "Metro City", "feel": "Happy", "text": "At a TOEFL prep school, I saw a classmate I hadn't seen in a long time." },
    { "id": 27, "place": "Boshan Road and Gushan Road", "feel": "Calm and content", "text": "My husband and I often go for a walk late at night. It's late because we're both busy all day, until late. But even in the quiet of the night, walking slowly down the street, I can still feel warmth, because we hold each other's arm and chat about whatever comes to mind. I instantly feel relaxed." },
    { "id": 28, "place": "Anfu Road", "feel": "A mix of everything", "text": "One Saturday in March 2023, I came back to Anfu Road for the first time in three years. The plane trees still swayed, and the bakery on the corner still smelled the same. In that unusually quiet moment, I suddenly heard a burst of noise behind me. I turned around to such a familiar scene: a group of young people who looked like university students, boys and girls, none of them wearing masks, their faces full of youth and joy. The everyday traces I thought time had washed away, that long-missed liveliness, had been kept safe by this city all along. As the spring breeze brushed my hair, I realised the three-year winter was really over." },
    { "id": 29, "place": "Häagen-Dazs, Riverside", "feel": "Happy", "text": "On an ordinary Friday after work, I crossed the footbridge to the Huangpu River and sat on a bench eating ice cream, watching the boats pass. In the river wind and sunlight I let my mind go blank, and enjoyed a lovely stretch of time alone." },
    { "id": 30, "place": "Shenwang Hotel, Yishan Road", "feel": "Happy", "text": "It was probably the winter of 2017. I had just come to Shanghai for work. After a snowfall, I walked past the 'Wangzai' statue at the hotel entrance, and someone had written in the snow at its feet: 'my first. boyfriend'." }
  ],
  "categories": { "事业": "Career", "爱情": "Love", "友情": "Friendship", "亲情": "Family", "随机（事件或观察）": "Something I saw", "其他": "Other" },
  "genders": { "女": "Woman", "男": "Man", "多元性别": "Gender-diverse", "不愿透露": "Prefer not to say" },
  "emotions": { "喜悦": "Joy", "感动": "Moved", "平静": "Calm", "惊讶": "Surprise", "复杂": "Mixed", "悲伤": "Sadness", "愤怒": "Anger" }
}