I left the coast on the fifteenth of December.
Three hours by bus to Qingdao, half a night in the airport, then a small plane southwest, and at half past eleven at night I was in Quzhou, in Zhejiang. The airport put me up in a hotel for nothing.
In the morning the old town was quiet, the street trees still green, a few ginkgos yellow. No sun. Damp and cool. Then another small plane to Kunming.
In all I was away a little over fifty days and went through more than a dozen cities. It was not a box-ticking trip. I went there to kill a winter.
I started in Dali, staying with a friend I had met at the beach.
His courtyard had nothing. No hot water, no flush toilet — a squat latrine in a shed — no sheets, no stove. For four nights we shared one bed. I washed my face in cold water in the morning and my feet in cold water at night, and did my socks while I was at it.
I also found I could not keep my diary there. A diary needs one person. Two men in one room, and I did not even have a surface to open the laptop on.
On the fourth day I moved into a hostel in the old town. Eight bunks to a room, a curtain on each. When I came back from walking I turned the tap and there was hot water, and I stood there grinning like an idiot.
Hostels have their own problems. Some make you strip your own bedding, and I have got quick at it. On the top bunk you climb a ladder twice a day. Some rooms are so tight you can hardly breathe. And there is always someone snoring, and then two of them, and then four. What hostels are good for is information: the owner and the people in the room tell you where to go and what it costs. Mainly, though, they are cheap.
I walked down to the little jetty at Cai Cun. Since I was in Dali I went to look at Erhai.
Erhai is a small lake. Small lakes have their own charm: cold clean wind off the water — properly cool, not the knife of wind we get at home — cypress turning red, grass, gulls, ducks. I walked a lap of the shore and looked at the people.
In Dali I also went up Cangshan, from Gantong temple, as far as the Qingbi stream. The water there is so clear you can drink it, and I did, twice, because I had brought none. The climb was hard. I nearly turned back twice. The people ahead of me kept going, so I kept going.
Every evening from eight to nine there is a bonfire in the old town. The bonfire is electric. A ring of Bai women in costume lead it, and the tourists go round behind them. I stood in the outer ring with my phone up.
The market at Sanyue Street was on while I was there. A bowl of noodles in the town costs eight; in the old town the cheapest is ten and there are fifteen-yuan ones. In the town you hardly see anyone young and almost no one from outside. In the old town there is nobody but the young and the ones from outside. Some winter cherry came out while I was there. The mass of it was somewhere else.
Lijiang is higher and further north. Three hours and fifty yuan by intercity bus.
I spent four days there, and three of them waiting for one thing: the sun on the mountain.
The first two mornings were solid cloud. On the third the sky was empty. I stood on the hostel roof and watched Jade Dragon Snow Mountain light up — faint at first, then red going yellow, which is the best minute of it, and then white. The whole thing took under fifteen minutes. There is not much snow on the summit any more.
Every night in the main square they dance. Real fire there, seven to half past eight, with a break in the middle. The older women lead and the young ones follow. I watched the whole thing and did not join in once. I never join in. I stand at the edge.
On the morning of the twenty-eighth of December I got on a bus to Mangshi. There is no railway. Seven hours, 180 yuan.
From Lijiang to Mangshi is from winter into spring.
I got off the bus and had to take off clothes in the street — not one layer, three. People were in T-shirts, bare-legged, in flip-flops. The buildings had gold spires and peacock ornaments, and the roadsides were lined with palms.
I stayed in Mangshi a long time. It is small, quiet, clean, comfortable, and the food is good. Beef rice noodles, ten yuan. Twenty thousand steps a day and I did not feel it.
Money was tight the whole way. I had not planned on being away this long, so I spent more than I meant to, and by the end I was counting every item: a bed for a few tens of yuan, noodles for a few, a bus ticket for a few tens. Short of money makes you tired. After fifty-odd days I came home early.
I saw in the New Year at a hostel barbecue. The owner had just opened, he was young, and he asked me to join them. I do not usually do people. It was New Year’s Eve, though, and a few more at the table is warmer than one.
Before that I took a day trip to Ruili, on the border. Sixteen of us in a bus with a guide. The seat beside me stayed empty and I was glad of it. I could not tell you what I saw there. What I remember is the bus and the empty seat.
Then Tengchong. Colder than Mangshi, about like Dali. Four days: two old towns, a morning market, a temple, and an afternoon in a hot spring. The slogan for the district is “mild Baoshan, fine jade, holy water” — the jade is the old emerald trade, the water is the springs.
On the last day I did nothing at all but sit on the hostel roof in the sun. Everyone who arrived before me had left; everyone who arrived after me had gone out. I was the only one there with nothing to do.
I was not in a hurry. Being in no hurry was the point.
Then the long way round: Mangshi to Chengdu, Chengdu out to Sanxingdui, then on to Xishuangbanna.
Chengdu was cold, the damp kind that gets into your clothes. I saw the bronze masks at Sanxingdui and walked Chunxi Road in the evening, and then spent the night at the airport. They hand out blankets and charging cables; the good sleeping spots were long gone. I found a children’s play area with foam on the floor, spread the blanket out and slept with my knees drawn up.
Three hours later the plane put me down in Xishuangbanna, and the moment the door opened it was early summer.
Xishuangbanna is the place I liked best, and it explains itself in one line: I got off the plane and had to undress in the street.
The river runs past the edge of the city — the same water under five different names in five countries. Along it there is a night market, a hundred stalls, the smell of grilled fish. Every night I walked it end to end.
One detail I kept: in that part of the country there are washbasins everywhere. On the pavement, at the market gate, every few steps. You can wash your hands whenever you want. For someone who likes being clean, that is a gift.
The people there are happy. In the hostel at night somebody is always singing; in the square somebody is always dancing. I learned at least that there is another way to live. You do not have to hold yourself that tight.
Going back north I went through Pu’er, Yuxi, Jianshui, Hekou, Mengzi, Mile, one after another.
In Pu’er the hostel owner drove seven of us out to a hill for the sunset. Sunset in Pu’er is at 18:53. In Rushan it is at 17:01 — nearly two hours apart. The Pu’er sunset was ordinary, nothing beside the sea. But every place gets the sunset it deserves.
Hekou is seventy-six metres above sea level, the lowest point in Yunnan. The train came down through tunnels from 1,300 metres. Hot and close at the bottom, and the border gate was crowded with people pushing enormous suitcases.
At the foot of the old tower in Jianshui they dance at eight every night. They carry something like a small drum and swing it so that it rattles. It took me several evenings to learn the name: the cigarette-box dance.
Noodles. I ate Yunnan’s noodles for fifty days. Every county has its own — pork, beef, chicken, wide, thin, curled, sour, chilli, clear broth. By the end I was desperate for plain rice. The Dai and Jingpo hand-rice I ate with chopsticks the whole time. I was too embarrassed to use my hands.
People on the road kept telling me they loved the mountains. I have no feeling for mountains. I worked out why, eventually: I was born on a plain and grew up looking at flat land, so what I love is water, and the sea. I like a stream in a mountain — there is one in Dali that is perfect. But to live, I want flat, and open, and a sight of water.
On the twenty-seventh of January I flew back to Mangshi. The ticket was 360 and, to save money, I spent the night before in the airport, asleep across three seats.
This time I did not want to do what I had done the first time and just look, eat and move on. I wanted to go slower. I rented a scooter from the hostel, thirty yuan a day, and rode out of town to Shangjingkan to see the great banyan. It is one tree pretending to be a wood: the aerial roots come down, take hold and turn into trunks, and from a distance you would swear it was a small forest.
That afternoon I went out to the big golden pagoda and did not go in, because it costs money, and stood outside instead. The light at the end of the day was very good. Then I rode back through the rice fields, and the wind was warm.
On the night of the thirty-first of January I went to the square in Mangshi.
The square was full. The Dai call the dance one thing and the Jingpo call theirs another; I did not need either name to understand it. A circle of people, hands joined, and when the drum starts they dance. One circle becomes two, two becomes three, the ring rolls outward, the drum at the middle, and on the outside the ones who will not join in, such as me.
When the music starts, women in long skirts, children in school uniform and tourists in waterproof jackets are all in the same ring. I would never see anything like it in the empty town by the sea.
I stood at the edge a long time. I stayed until it ended.
I thought: next winter I will come back here. If I can manage it, I will live in Mangshi for a year.
On the third of February I bought the ticket home. Mangshi to Hefei, Hefei to Qingdao, a night in Qingdao.
On the fourth of February — the first day of spring by the old calendar — I took the train from Qingdao back to Rushan. There was a cold snap on. Qingdao was in fog, no sun at all, the opposite of Yunnan. The window was grey the whole way.
Then the New Year.
This year I did not go home again, and once it was over I still did not want to. A few days before, I went to the market and bought two jin of pork, a fish, some greens. On New Year’s Eve I stewed the fish and cooked rice and looked out of the window twice. It was no different from any other day.
To go one step further, I have to be plain about something.
I do not stay away because I am busy, or because it is far.
Going home would only be awkward. In China this is not a private matter: the relatives sit around a table and ask about work, about marriage, about what you plan to do next, and everyone at that table believes they have the right to ask. I could not answer one of them. I cannot explain to them the life I am living — not working, not married, no children. They would not survive the sentence.
It is easier not to deal with them at all.
I am out here on my own, and I depend on nobody, and I expect nothing from anybody. Everyone in China says they miss home and miss their parents. I do not think I ever did. What I like is being on my own somewhere far away.
Sometimes I cannot work out whether that is what I was born like or what I became. At home there were a lot of us and it was always loud, and what I wanted most, as a child, was to leave. Then I left, and went a long way, and found that not wanting to go back was something I had grown myself.
I know how that sounds. I know it is cold.
But that is the shape of it. Someone like me can only rely on himself, and nobody can help, and after enough years it shows: cold towards family, cold towards the place I came from.
I do not blame anyone. I am only writing it down.
The trip left me with one new idea.
Stay at the coast most of the year; when the cold gets bad, go south for the winter.
Apart from the winter, Rushan is good in every season. Spring is slow, summer is busy, autumn is dry and clear. The rent is the lowest anywhere, and so is everything else. There is only one problem: no heating on the north coast, and the two coldest months are a real wall.
And I have now tried a Yunnan winter. Sun every day, blue sky every day, and I liked Mangshi best of all.
So put the two together: live by the sea, winter in the south.
And the accounts, properly.
In Rushan a year costs twelve thousand. That is a thousand a month.
The rent is 3,500 — for the year, not the month. I eat very little meat, mostly vegetables and eggs, cooked at home, and 300 a month covers it. Add the internet line and the phone, the occasional better meal, and one trip somewhere in the year, and the outside figure is fifteen thousand.
I have been through those numbers more times than I can count, and the conclusion is always the same: if I can earn twelve thousand in a year, I have nothing to worry about at all.
Twelve thousand. A thousand a month.
A thousand yuan a month. I know exactly what I am trading for it.