Living in a Ghost Town
“He came to Beijing in 2015 because the capital looked like a place where things happened. Seven years later he owned nothing.”
The first two years of the lying-flat life, written from inside a seaside district that the Chinese internet had nicknamed a ghost town — and from inside the head of a man who had just handed in his resignation with no plan at all.
— About this volume —
In the summer of 2015 a young man from Hubei arrived in Beijing because the capital looked like a place where things happened. He stayed seven years. On paper the life was bright; in fact he owned nothing, could not imagine ever buying a flat, and was tired in a way that sleep did not fix. In the summer of 2022, in the middle of the pandemic, he resigned with no plan and began looking for the emptiest, cheapest place by the sea he could find.
He found it in Rushan, Shandong — a coastal resort district the internet had nicknamed “the ghost town” and “the Hegang of the sea”, after the famously hollowed-out coal city. Flats sold for two or three thousand yuan a square metre. A whole year's rent cost three or four thousand — roughly what a single month cost in Beijing. Entire blocks of new apartments stood empty. The beaches held more gulls than people.
This volume covers the first two years: the cold flat with no internet, the first bowl of rice eaten with a spoon for want of chopsticks, long walks along an empty shoreline, learning to cook, learning to be alone, learning that winter on the north coast is a test of resolve rather than a season. It also moves backwards — seven years in Beijing, the weeks before quitting, the act of quitting itself — before settling into the rhythm of the place.
It refuses to stay put. Between the coastal chapters he travels: Weihai, Lhasa, his hometown in Hubei, Qingdao, southern Fujian, Xinjiang, even Jiagedaqi in the far north. Each trip ends the same way, with the discovery that he is in a hurry to get back.
The book closes with two supplements (a Yintan winter, a Yintan summer), a final chapter on two years by the sea, an afterword on “the philosopher by the sea”, and a practical appendix answering the questions readers actually asked: how much does it cost, is it safe, what do you eat, and what on earth do you do all day.
— Table of contents —
41 chapters, as they appear in the book.
— Highlights —
— Quotations —
English first, original Chinese beneath.
“Life is a wilderness, not a railway track. A person should stay where there is no ceiling.”
人生是旷野，而不是轨道。人要待在没有天花板的地方。
Final Chapter · 终章
“Two years by the sea taught me one thing: a person can simply not go to work. You will not starve.”
在海边待了两年，我想明白了一件事情，就是原来人是可以不用上班的。即使不上班，你也饿不死。
Afterword · 再后记
“The big tide comes twice a month. Stay a year and you get twenty-four of them. Worth cherishing.”
每个月有两次大潮，初三和十八，如果我在这里待一年，那也只能看到24次大潮，要珍惜。
from the diary
“A swim, then a sit on the sand, the wind on me and the sun on me. Heaven has nothing on this.”
在海里玩了一会儿，上岸坐了一会儿，任海风吹拂，任阳光普照，天堂也没有这么美好。
from the diary
“Things happen, then unhappen, erased almost at once. Every day now feels like a Friday evening used to.”
发生了一件事情，又像没发生，迅速被抹灭了。我现在每天的状态都像过去每个周五晚上。
from the diary
“I have not forgotten myself, not yet. But I have come a long way. I understand time and space better than I used to.”
虽然我还没有做到忘我，但是我已经进了很大一步，我比以前的自己更理解时间和空间。
from the diary