Writing / Photographs / On the road
The stories are still being rewritten.
From northern Thailand's monsoon to the lights of the Gulf.
Title from an essay on Dammam's corniche · 2025.11.21
Nan · Bangkok · Anyang · Dammam · Cairo · Tbilisi
Notes from a personal journey01 / Journey
Fourteen entries from WeChat Moments. The places change; so does the storyteller.
Stories not yet written
Reading excerpt
No story has yet been woven. All stories are waiting to be rewritten, all storytellers are waiting for their chance, and God's dice are still being shaken—the prophet is not yet dead; the prophet is not yet born.
Reading noteA stupa's spire and a modern aircraft enter the same field of vision. At the beginning of this journey, history, myth and the immediate world are already intertwined.
Leaving the city for the sea
Reading excerpt
Fleeing Bangkok is like Oedipus frantically fleeing his destiny. People in a state of panic come here seeking peace, unaware that no deus ex machina can release them from their frenzy—only they themselves can.
Reading noteThe island offers a way out of the city. The writing turns the gaze inward: arriving somewhere does not necessarily mean arriving at peace.
Forests, homecoming and Bangkok at night
Reading excerpt
In a moment's reverie, I saw elephants at home upon the earth, hornbills as messengers of a green faith, and the monsoon's tears falling over Siam. And so, at the heart of the forest, Macondo came alive again.
Reading noteThe forest brings worlds from books and games into contact with real mountains. Nature is both the landscape before the eyes and a passage into earlier memories.
Reading excerpt
Lying down beneath a ceiling unchanged for years made the feeling stronger: my life in Thailand seemed like a fantastical daydream from a boyhood summer.
Reading noteAfter returning home from Guangzhou, a familiar ceiling makes the years abroad seem briefly distant. Coming home can bring a new kind of estrangement.
Reading excerpt
Human voices mixing until they lost their meaning, fragments of melody from unknown sources slipping past the ear, flashing signals and vehicle exhaust—all of it spread across the night streets like ink dripping endlessly from the sky.
Reading noteK is the viewpoint character in this piece. Bangkok's sounds, smells and lights become a question about reality and memory.
“Hornbills as messengers of a green faith.”
Words from the forest · early spring 2024
Photographs from China in summer 2026 meet those earlier words about the forest.
After departure, life begins to answer
Reading excerpt
In that brief moment of closure, I caught the prophet's agarwood, a link to your familiar yet alien world, answering an echo from three years ago. Siam's three-year furnace had tempered it and driven away fear. (All set. Waiting to leave.)
Reading noteBefore leaving for Saudi Arabia, Tianjin becomes the coordinate of another departure. The echo from three years ago reaches back toward the prophet at the beginning of this timeline.
Reading excerpt
You walk the corniche; yesterday's cold still clings to the concrete, like a plan that refused to become a future. Once you thought a life could be drafted like a building permit. Now it feels more like the lights on the water—brief, trembling arrangements of electricity pretending to be stars. —[Volition] You keep walking.
Reading noteIn Dammam, the city is written as a question that withholds its answer. The multiple voices of Disco Elysium turn a walk into a conversation with oneself.
Reading excerpt
And then, suddenly, the script misbehaves. I have not become the protagonist of some grand Dostoevskian catastrophe, nor have I dissolved into the quiet, functional oblivion I once imagined for my older self.
Reading noteOn a twenty-fifth birthday, a cake ordered from far away interrupts a monologue about tragedy. Sugar, cream and logistics give care something tangible to arrive in.
Reading excerpt
“Look, if they wrap beef and onion in dough and steam it, that's a dumpling. What's a name got to do with eating? If it looks like a dumpling and tastes like a dumpling, it's a dumpling.”
Reading noteA classroom distinction meets a winter-solstice appetite. This little play about Mento reveals the everyday humor of a Chinese teacher abroad.
A sign, a meal, a road leading back.
Travel and everyday photographs from 2026, alongside the earlier corniche, birthday and winter solstice.
Returning is another kind of arrival
Reading excerpt
The silence of the Caucasus is like the snowy mountains themselves. After Soviet power dissolved, the silent Orthodox elements fell into the waters of the Kura and flowed slowly toward the Caspian Sea.
Reading noteLooking back at Georgia while changing planes in Doha. Objects at the market become fragments of history; a wordless exchange prompts the writing to find a shape for their silence.
Reading excerpt
After living here for three years and being away for twelve months, looking at Nan again as a traveler brings me a sincere, easy happiness.
Reading noteA place of work and everyday life becomes a travel destination again. The same Nan becomes newly visible because the role of the person returning has changed.
Reading excerpt
Around these same days last year, Chang and I were in Chiang Mai too. Since then, the city's image has entered my thoughts and feelings; together with the sound of speeding motorcycles, it has become a lasting part of my emotional life.
Reading noteRepeated visits leave more than sights. Sounds, traveling companions and earlier days give Chiang Mai its depth in memory.
Reading excerpt
Back to work!
Reading noteA short sentence returns to ordinary life after all the long writing. Moving, traveling and working continue to alternate within the same person's days.
Reading excerpt
🌳，📖，BH，🐷，✝️，🕊️，🏰
Reading noteThe final entry compresses trees, books, religious spaces and a fort into symbols. Beyond the essays, photographs can carry the journey on their own.
2026 / Summer
The crossing is still lit.
Only half of a cloud catches the light.
02 / Photographs
2026 · Travel and everyday life
Open a photograph. Take your time.
03 / The storyteller
HOUYUAN YU
A Chinese language teacher, now based in Saudi Arabia.
I lived in Thailand for three years, and have become a traveler again in cities I once knew well. I write together the books I have read, the games I have played and the places I have been. Sometimes at length; sometimes only, “Back to work!”
Here are a few texts from those years, and the moments that made me pause and press the shutter.
yuhouyuan@qq.com