1. December 15: I Set Out Again
In that third year I stayed put at Silver Beach for a solid two hundred and eighty-two days and didn’t go out once. Not going out didn’t seem to cost me anything — before those two hundred and eighty-two days I’d already been round Yunnan, Hainan, Guangdong and Tibet, and having looked at them all, there didn’t seem to be anywhere out there especially suited to me. So I stayed, and got through the whole year.
And yet by mid-December I packed my bag after all.
One reason was that winter at Silver Beach is cold. I’d spent two winters here, the one in 2022 and the one in 2023, and I’d had that cold twice over; no need to be taught it a third time. The other was that I had a friend in Dali — the same friend I’d looked up the last time I went to Yunnan — and he said he was going back to his hometown for the winter; so while he was still there I could go and stay at his place, no need to find anywhere of my own.
A little after two in the afternoon on December 15 a minibus came into the compound and carried me to the airport terminal in Rushan town. I hadn’t ridden in a vehicle for over nine months, walking or cycling every day, and sitting in a long-distance bus gave me no pleasure at all. I hadn’t waited long at the terminal before another bus took me on toward Qingdao, reaching the airport around five. I hung about the airport for hours; the flight was at half past nine. A small plane, two hours in the air, and at half past eleven I was in Quzhou.
Flying is genuinely miserable. Curled up in a small closed box, arms and legs unable to stretch out, back aching, neck aching, like a fat pig waiting to be slaughtered; leaning back in the seat I couldn’t even sleep properly — I’d have been better off lying at home. The heating in Qingdao airport was going full blast, and I was sleepy and dried out at once. In airports and on city streets there are always so many handsome men and pretty women, the kind of thing you never see at Silver Beach — Silver Beach has only the dark grey of old people, the emptiness of nature, and one middle-aged man who has aged before his time.
Quzhou is a combined military and civil airport; before landing you have to pull the window shade down, no photographs. Outside it was only three degrees. Winter in Zhejiang isn’t warm either, but plenty of the trees were still green, their leaves not all fallen, very different from the north; the trees at Rushan had gone bare long since. That night I shared a room with a man from Shouguang I’d never met. He had an eight o’clock flight the next morning to Haikou, on his way across the strait to Xuwen in Guangdong. We talked a little, and I learned that the people of Shouguang grow vegetables all over the country, and even all over the world, migrating with the seasons. First time I’d ever heard of such a thing. Tired and sleepy, I didn’t wash, just took my clothes off and got into bed, and didn’t feel cold.
2. The Sun in Kunming
I woke the next morning and went straight out; the hotel was close to Quzhou’s old town, three kilometers, and I walked over to have a look on the way. The old quarter was very quiet, full of motorbikes; the people on foot were all elderly. The street trees were mostly green — camphor — with an occasional yellow ginkgo or a brown plane tree. In the south you don’t see the sun in winter; it’s overcast, the air damper than by the sea, cool but not cold. For me the south’s greatest fault is that it has no sun — put me to live long-term somewhere the sun barely shows and my mood goes bad. Luckily this was only a trip. I’d slept well, and in the morning there was hot water for a shower; my strength and my spirits were both fine.
The further into the old town I went, the more the pedicabs carried the slogan “Home of the southern branch of Confucius — Quzhou has good manners.” The city wall and the drum tower were both rebuilt later on, turned into a food street to pull in tourists. At noon I ate a Quzhou baked bun at the gate of the scenic area, pork, and spicy. The owner asked whether I wanted it cut open, and I didn’t understand one word of his dialect. On one wall was painted “Quzhou’s old town, dangerously good,” which I took at first for a fire-safety notice; then I saw another, “Quzhou, dangerously comfortable,” and began to suspect I had it wrong. I looked it up: in the Quzhou dialect “dangerous” means “extremely.” What a dialect. In the afternoon the sun actually came out and the blue sky showed itself, and tourists, shopkeepers and locals all came out to sit in it. I sat in it a while, then took the bus to the airport and flew to Kunming.
The plane flew west and west, and that stretched the afterglow out. Under the fuselage lay a thin sheet of white cloud like a white blanket, and at the horizon it was first white, then yellow, and at last orange, like a ribbon of silk, laid out for me for a long time before I watched the dark eat the orange-yellow away, a little at a time.
I reached Kunming late; my friend came to the subway exit to meet me and I freeloaded at his place for two days. He and his wife have no children either; neither of them works, and they live the way they like, without much of the world’s pressure. He showed me my own photographs from the seaside — the beach after snow, the sunset, the lonely Blueways, run aground out by Weihai — and I told them to come and see the coast some time. Though I also knew they probably couldn’t bear the loneliness of that kind of emptiness.
The next day I wandered around Kunming. Green Lake Park was full of red-billed gulls, to my surprise — and this was right in the middle of the city. There were plenty of tourists too; outside the vegetable market, everyone seemed to be somebody who didn’t work. It struck me as funny that I had come all this way from the seashore at Weihai especially to look at gulls. Next to the park is Huanggong East Street, an internet-famous street where arty young people and out-of-town aunties of a certain age all pose for photographs outside the cafés. The ground was wet and slippery, a little rain drifting down now and then, no sun to be seen, and rather cold.
What surprised me most about Kunming was the dryness. My lips were tight all day and I had to drink water constantly; the ultraviolet was stronger than by the sea, scorching the moment the sun came out, and when it didn’t come out it was cold, and plenty of people were still wearing thin down jackets. So for escaping the cold and passing a winter, Kunming doesn’t really suit. In the afternoon my friend drove me up into the hills, to a temple called Miaogao and then to Shipen Temple, and we climbed a bit and looked at the clouds. When we got onto what kind of place we liked, he said he liked the mountains and I said I liked the sea — I don’t like anything blocking my line of sight. Confucius said the wise find pleasure in water and the virtuous in hills; each to his own taste, and you can’t force it. But mountains, after all, are no match for the sea. My friend saw me to the subway; two hours on the high-speed train and I was at the next stop. Outside the window the clouds thinned and thinned, a broad blue sky, broad sunlight, green hills, green trees, like a scene out of a Miyazaki film.
3. Dali: A Friend’s Courtyard, and a Water Bottle
In Dali my friend came in on the bus from his village to meet me, and we rode it all the way to the township — Fengyi, in Benchang village. He’d lived before in that urban village, Manjiang, and later moved out to a village and rented a small courtyard: an old house nobody wanted, which he took for RMB 100 a month, very cheap. He doesn’t work either, and to save money he lives in a place like this. His philosophy of life is: as long as you’re alive, that’s enough.
So his place is extremely simple — a bed and nothing else, not even a table; no toilet and no squat pan, only the country outhouse; no water heater, and if he wants to wash he has to go to somebody else’s house. And what about me? I could hardly go to a villager’s house to wash when they didn’t know me. There was only one bed to squeeze into: he slept in a sleeping bag and I had the quilt. He’d even got a water bottle ready for me, the top cut off — a chamber pot. Luckily I don’t usually get up in the night; I could manage with the outhouse and sleep right through to daylight.
In the evening there was no hot water, and I washed my feet in cold tap water, and washed my socks while I was at it. In the morning I brushed my teeth and washed my face in cold water too. Luckily Dali isn’t as cold as Rushan, and cold water didn’t feel especially cold. My friend has to have breakfast, and thinks breakfast is the most important meal of the day; I’ve never eaten breakfast, and I’m lactose intolerant and can’t drink milk, so I just had an egg. At night with the light off we talked at random, about the things that puzzled us in our lives and how to solve them, and talked until late. His conclusion was: compared with people who are truly wretched, we are extremely lucky, and we should be content. Mine was: I don’t know what I’m alive for.
Only after I’d moved in did I understand why, at Silver Beach, I hadn’t wanted to go out for nine months — only there am I free, only there can I do as I please. Living in the same house as a friend, I couldn’t even write my diary in peace. On the road, however hard you’re saving, you should live on your own.
A couple of days later I cut my own hair. Long hair is a good thing by the sea, it keeps you warm; but in my friend’s farmyard I couldn’t bathe or wash it, so I had it cut short. He happened to have clippers, and poor boys like us never go to a barbershop, we do it ourselves. Fit the guard, cut it to six millimeters. Only there’s too much white in it, and it does look old, which is a worry. Afterwards I boiled water in the kettle, cooled it with a little cold, and rinsed my head clean. Then I went out to market — the Fengyi market runs on the fifth and the tenth of the solar month, not like the Third Month Fair over at Dali’s old town, which goes by the lunar calendar. The market was crowded, stalls everywhere, and the older women wore Bai headscarves in bright colors that stood out.
December 21 was the second day of the lunar month and the Third Month Fair was on, so I took the bus into town to look. The fair isn’t like the village markets out in the countryside; it’s more like a busy pedestrian street in a city. What drew me most was the free tasting all along the way of pickles made from all kinds of mushrooms — the small traders saying, “Go on, eat till you’re full” — along with free tea and cakes. Most of the crowd were young people up in Dali for the holiday, dressed up and snapping away with phones and cameras. At the head of the street stands the tall bulk of Cangshan, with only a little snow on it. This was the third time in my life I’d been into Dali’s old town, and honestly it isn’t especially handsome — not as handsome as Lijiang’s; it just happens to sit against Cangshan and Erhai, and the buildings inside are ordinary, shops the whole way along both sides, like most scenic spots in China. And yet it came to me suddenly that with leisure, one place is the same as another — the rarest thing of all is leisure.
After four days in the courtyard I really couldn’t stand it any longer, so I moved into a youth hostel in the old town for two days. An eight-bunk room, upper and lower, with curtains, decent privacy; I could use my laptop and write in there, and there was hot water for a shower — come back tired from walking, turn the tap, hot water, and it felt wonderful. There was an electric blanket on the bed too. The moment I was settled in I went and had a shower, and lying on the bed I felt like a man dropped back into the modern world.
4. Lijiang: Three Days of Waiting for the Golden Mountain
On the twenty-fourth I took the intercity bus to Lijiang, three hours, RMB 50. Headed north the whole way, the sky clearing as I went, and nearing Lijiang I could see Jade Dragon Snow Mountain far off. Off season, the hostel had few guests, and the owner simply upgraded my six-bed room to a four-bed, with only me in it. I put my bags down, took off my clothes, had a hot shower, washed everything dirty, and hung it on the roof terrace. From the terrace you could see the snow mountain clear and whole, magnificent; and getting up the next morning, you could watch the sun strike the summit gold.
As it turned out, the next day was heavily overcast. Great masses of cloud, the snow mountain hidden behind them completely; I never saw the peak turn gold, and my good mood for the day was gone. It wasn’t my first regret, and I had to make it a reason to come again.
I wandered around Lijiang’s old town. Plenty of the shops are pitifully small — three or four square meters, some only one or two — and the rents, I hear, are frightening. The shopkeeper keeps guard over his bit of a shop, and the shop is his prison; the white-collar worker in a big city has his cubicle, and that’s a prison too. Nobody is free; every man has his own prison. At noon I ate a bowl of rice noodles for RMB 15, a few RMB more than Dali, and noodles don’t fill you up at all; rice is what does the job.
The next day I went to Baisha, an old town that’s really a small village, close to the snow mountain; in good weather the mountain sits there plain as anything. But the sky wasn’t cooperating these days and the cloud never left. Some people climbed up and found the hill solid fog; luckily I hadn’t gone — climbing Jade Dragon Snow Mountain costs several hundred, the cable car, the scenic-area ticket, and I couldn’t afford it. Xu Xiake traveled the whole country in his day; if he’d had to buy a ticket everywhere he went, he’d probably have given up early. In the village there were Naxi flatbreads, grilled yak skewers, and a plain steamed bun at RMB 3 and a scallion pork bun at RMB 6 — highway robbery. I bought nothing, just looked around. After these days in Yunnan I was tanned like an African, darker than a summer by the sea.
On the third day, after three days of waiting, the golden mountain finally came out. Not a scrap of cloud; there wasn’t much snow on the summit, but the shape of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is magnificent, like one great rock. The top was lit a little at a time, the color neither red nor yellow, and at the halfway point it was at its best, after which it began to turn white. I stood alone on the hostel’s roof terrace and watched, perfectly calm. I don’t care whether there’s anyone with me; a great many things in the end have to be done alone, and I’m used to being alone and free, with all the quiet in the world to myself.
5. Mangshi: As If a Spring Wind Blew Up Overnight
On the twenty-eighth I left Lijiang for Mangshi. In western Yunnan the railway only reaches Baoshan; beyond that the only way is by road — Lijiang to Mangshi, seven hours, RMB 180, in an eight-seat minivan with only two passengers, the other one a man from Inner Mongolia on his way to Ruili. The van carried freight too, and at Heqing they loaded on over half a ton of cured ham, jammed in behind the back seat, so I smelled ham the whole way. From Dali toward Baoshan and on to Mangshi we flew along almost entirely on elevated roadway, the altitude dropping fast, driven like something out of Fast & Furious; we crossed the Lancang River, then the Nu; my ears were stopped up and I couldn’t hear anything clearly.
The moment I stepped down it felt different: a little warm, though not especially so. Lijiang was still winter; here, Mangshi, the seat of Dehong prefecture, it was spring. People on the street were lightly dressed, some in short sleeves, some with bare legs, some in flip-flops; motorbikes everywhere; and all around, buildings in the Dai style, gold spires, peacock ornaments, palm trees so tall you had to crane your neck to see the top. As if a spring wind had blown up overnight — half a day on the road out of Lijiang and I’d tumbled out of winter into spring, as if I’d changed countries.
Mangshi’s hostel wasn’t like the ones in Dali and Lijiang either. Those felt more like hotels; this felt like somebody’s home — it was a local house they’d rented and converted, so it held only a few travelers. The owner said that from May Day on, Mangshi goes into the off season. It’s an out-of-the-way small town, with fewer tourists than Lijiang or Dali, and it hasn’t been filled up by outsiders; quiet. I like towns like that. Later, when I’d made a long loop around Yunnan and passed through a dozen or more places, my favorite city was still only one: Mangshi — small, clean, Dai in its looks, with a climate that is exactly spring.
I walked along Paobo Road to Puti Temple. The temple stands on pillars with an open space beneath, and a good many locals were sitting in it eating, like a festival; it looked like a vegetarian meal, though there were eggs. I couldn’t understand a word they said. Further on I ate at a snack shop: the local specialty, tribute rice with braised pork, RMB 15 — and there was houttuynia in it, which I tried chewing a stalk or two of and still couldn’t stand the smell. By the time I reached Golden Peacock Avenue the sun was down and the edge of the sky was a pale orange; I took a few photographs. I like museums, and there’s time enough anyway, so I meant to go and see the Dehong prefectural museum the next day and learn something about the history of the place.
Mangshi really is small; a man who likes walking the way I do can feel he’ll wear it out on his own two feet. The next day I walked nearly thirty thousand steps. The Dai are very fond of gold, and the spires of their buildings are all gold; and any street with “han” in the name — han means gold in the Dai language. In Dai, Mangshi is called Menghuan, the City of Dawn. At noon I ate hand-grabbed rice, except I hadn’t expected them actually to eat it with their hands; it isn’t like the “hand-grabbed rice” of Xinjiang, which is only a name and is eaten with chopsticks and a spoon. I didn’t know how, so I used chopsticks; the girl beside me didn’t laugh at me, and even showed me how, saying that with chopsticks you lose a lot of the flavor. The streets had a lot of flower shops, massage and hair-washing places, and no small number of convenience stores; on the wall of one shop hung the schedule for a funeral in a Dai village, listing the names of nearly the whole village, and looking at those names I realized for the first time how different Dai and Jingpo surnames are from ours, the Han.
The virtuous find pleasure in hills, the wise in water; I’m fond of water. Coming all the way down from Lijiang, crossing the Lancang, then the Nu, it came to me suddenly: I don’t like mountains because mountains block the view; only where there’s water, where it’s flat, can I settle. Standing at the mouth of a street in Mangshi, watching the sky darken a little at a time, motorbikes flowing past like a production line, the streetlights coming on in a wash of dim yellow, I thought: here I stand in the middle of the crowd, thinking about this life that repeats itself day after day. If a day comes when neither age nor youth can raise a ripple in me, when flowers and cake can’t move me; when a person begins to be untouched by small things, then it seems there’s no meaning left in being alive.
6. Ruili, and One Village, Two Countries
December 31, the last day of 2025: I didn’t want to sit alone and stew, so I joined a day tour to Ruili. Sixteen tourists, plus a guide and a driver. The guide talked the whole way, and the further he went the more personal feeling crept in; if those words had gone out over a loudspeaker it would have been a stretch. I listened with one ear and looked at the scenery with the other. In the morning there was thick fog in the jungle, the trees grew taller and taller, the border drew nearer and nearer, the countryside grew rougher, the roadside lined with repair shops and little restaurants, and border wall and wire fencing in stretch after stretch, as if danger were hidden everywhere.
First a wharf that had been an important point on the Burma Road; then the Wanding crossing, with Myanmar straight across; then a little park called “One Tree, a Forest,” a single great banyan, RMB 12, not worth it; and then “One Village, Two Countries,” which was worth seeing — one village, one fence dividing two countries, and the Burmese sitting behind the railing selling cigarettes across to the Chinese side, while on the railing hung a sign telling us not to buy their things. Their Chinese was very good, I don’t know who taught them, and they looked much like us, only darker. One village, two countries, and a fence splitting people into you and me. Last came the Jiegao crossing, with many Burmese going out through customs, and the whole town showing no sign of life, dead and flat, with plenty of unfinished buildings. Compared with clean Mangshi, this place was dirty, and disorderly.
Back in Mangshi I changed to a more out-of-the-way hostel, a ten-bed room, worse conditions but cheap. The owner was very young, not yet thirty, and warm-hearted; he asked me to come along with them for barbecue to see in the New Year. It only comes once a year, so I said yes. A few of us rode motorbikes to a village a long way off, ate barbecue and drank beer, then went around the Dai old town, which was crowded and lively.
Back at the village hostel, a pan of charcoal was lit in the courtyard to warm by, a few guests played cards, and the loser drank; in the small hours three Tibetan guests came back, two young women and a child. When it struck twelve, fireworks went up at the same time from Mangshi Square and over at the Dai old town; we ran up to the roof to look, but hills and buildings were in the way and you couldn’t really see, only hear. The stars were very bright, and one of the Tibetan women said, then let’s photograph the stars. And that’s how my New Year came.
The first day of the New Year, my fifth day in Mangshi. I walked and walked and still ended up around the Tree-Wrapped Pagoda and Puti Temple. There were more girls taking photographs on the street than usual, it being a holiday. I stood at the roadside looking at the blue sky, at the tall palms — I used to think that somewhere damp in the south the sky could never be very blue, but Yunnan is different; Mangshi’s winter sky is bluer than the seaside’s. At noon I went back to that snack shop, and there was houttuynia in the side dishes again; I was almost getting used to it.
In the afternoon I couldn’t be bothered to walk, so I lay down in the shade of a clump of trees in the little park beside the Tree-Wrapped Pagoda and slept; the ground was a bit cold and I slept badly, but it took the drowsiness off. Toward evening I went to the bus station to check fares: RMB 88 online, only RMB 57 at the window, so I bought a ticket for Tengchong the next day. In the evening I watched the sunset; houses and trees were in the way, but the purple at the edge of the sky was still beautiful. I stood at the roadside photographing the sky, the palms, the people riding past on motorbikes, and thinking about this life of ours, which must end, and doesn’t mean much.
7. Tengchong: A Han Chinese at the Border
On January 2 I reached Tengchong, an hour and a half by road, very close. The first thing I noticed on entering the city was: why is the architecture all Han Chinese, and not minority at all? I couldn’t put my finger on what was off, and only after asking did I learn — Tengchong is more than ninety percent Han, the highest proportion of any county on Yunnan’s border, a case apart. No wonder. And if I hadn’t gone out into the world I’d never have known it. Everyone sees the world differently: some people know only that Tengchong has hot springs, some know only that Tengchong won’t let Japanese in, some know only that Tengchong has coffee and grilled-pork rice noodles; they’d never notice the architecture, and so they’d never wonder why there are so many Han here.
The hostel I stayed in was lovely: a courtyard belonging to a local couple, kept spotless, sunlight all over it, no smells at all; one look and I wanted to stay a few more days. At a snack shop nearby, dried beef and cured goose hung at the door, and when I asked I learned it was run by Hui, the beef and the geese raised by the family themselves. Walking into the residential lanes, several doorways carried the words “Halal, generations deep.” But Tengchong, in the end, is overwhelmingly Han, which sets it apart from Yunnan’s other border towns.
Heshun old town charges RMB 55 to get in, and once inside you realize it isn’t worth it; there are a few ancestral halls and a library worth a look, that’s all. The neighboring old town of Qiluo, not yet commercialized, was more interesting: some houses from the last century or so, mirrors and bagua and paper charms hung on the walls above the wooden doors, old people gathered under the big trees talking. At the far end of the old town is Shuiying Temple, with a square pond outside it, and beyond, range after range of hills, the edge of the sky gone pink, the moon coming up — it was the fourteenth of the lunar month and the moon was nearly full, its reflection lying on the water. I felt as if I were seeing this kind of thing for the first time, and found it hard to believe.
The next day it rained, cold and raw. Tengchong is far colder than Mangshi, down to one degree at its lowest. Two places so close together, and the climate so far apart, and nobody had told me; you have to come and feel it yourself. Raw weather like that is exactly right for going to the national cemetery for the war dead. I was dressed too lightly and shivered with cold. What struck me hardest in the cemetery was row after row of headstones, small stone slabs carved with the names of countless soldiers; nobody knows their individual stories, only that they died for their country. If I hadn’t come to western Yunnan I would most likely never in my life have learned about any of this. My heart was heavy; at moments I wanted to cry. No wonder the people of Tengchong hate the Japanese the way they do — the hatred runs very deep.
That day I also went to soak in a hot spring, a carbonate spring, RMB 30, an hour and a half, a small private room with a pool to myself. The water was genuinely hot; I had to add cold water before I dared get in; the room was stuffy, so I opened the window a crack. I’d meant to go with a guy from Shandong in my room, but he lasted twenty-five minutes and had to get out — people’s constitutions differ that much. I liked soaking; I thought, if I get the chance later, I’ll come and soak on my own.
I stayed four days in Tengchong. On the last day I went nowhere; I just sat on the hostel roof terrace in the sun, wearing a hat, playing with my phone, alone. The people who’d come before me had left; the people who’d come after me had gone out to see things; only I had nothing to do. Four or five days in one place is enough for me, and it was time to move on.
8. A Loop Through Chengdu, Then Back to Xishuangbanna
Getting from Tengchong to Xishuangbanna overland is too hard. I worked it out: back to Mangshi first, then fly from Mangshi to Chengdu — RMB 290, very cheap — then Chengdu to Xishuangbanna, also cheap. And I could take in Sanxingdui on the way. Mangshi’s airport is very close to town, and planes often pass right over the golden pagoda. The day before I left, I rode an electric scooter in Mangshi for the first time — scanned one, rode from the south of town to Puti Street, took only fifteen minutes; that tells you how small the place is.
In Chengdu the sky was grey. I took the bus from the airport to the East Station, then a train to Guanghan — before this I’d known only Sanxingdui and not Guanghan. At night I walked through a night market, all snacks: bobo chicken, rabbit head, shredded rabbit, dishes from everywhere. The driver asked where I was from, and I hesitated, then said I was a northerner, up from Shandong. I was born in Hubei, spent my boyhood in Hubei, went to university in the northeast, then spent seven years in Beijing after graduating, and three more in Shandong after that. And yet I can’t say where I’m from: no Beijing hukou, no Beijing dialect, and my Mandarin isn’t standard either. It’s as if this world were only a place I’m staying for a while, here one moment, there the next, belonging neither here nor there.
The next day I went to see Sanxingdui. Jade objects in quantity, bronze masks in quantity, some gold-foil ornaments, and tall bronze trees. Tickets RMB 72. One has to come and look, even if you’ve scrolled past countless videos online; the atmosphere on site is still different — proof that you came, proof that you existed.
Afterward I took the bus back to Chengdu and wandered around Chunxi Road, then made a circuit of People’s Park, where there were people playing cards, drinking tea, dancing, singing, writing on the pavement with a brush dipped in water — every kind of person there is. Chengdu has so many young people, so many pretty girls; after long enough at the seaside I hardly ever see young people. And yet, sitting in a KFC looking out the window, I felt a little dazed: city life is foreign to me. I hadn’t been to a big city in a long time, and Chengdu was the first; to me a city is high-rises and young men and women, an environment where you can’t see nature. It seems I can no longer adapt to the city, and can never go to a big city again.
That night I slept in the airport. People without checked bags can go through security first, so I got a blanket from the information desk, spread it on the foam floor of the children’s play area, curled up and slept. I woke several times in the small hours — passing travelers, and cold feet. More and more people lay down on the floor, plenty of them without even a blanket, just wrapping their coats tighter. These days, flying, many airports won’t let you through security to spend the night, and you just have to sit it out outside; being able to get in at all is already good. I’d been wandering for nearly a month, my shoes were dirty, my coat and jeans dirty, and no time to wash any of it — a man with a cleanliness fixation, and on the road you can’t be particular about hygiene. Home is better.
Further south is Xishuangbanna, and suddenly it was early summer again. I’d been here a year before, and this time I came to stay a few days. To get into the Starlight Night Market you have to scan a code and have your face captured; I didn’t remember that from last year. Inside it really wasn’t much different from last year, and my interest flagged. I couldn’t afford the things at the little stalls: a very small portion of pineapple rice was RMB 15, and the cheapest portion of pounded chicken feet was RMB 20.
By day I went out to Mandiu village to see the old Dai settlement; it’s a long way from town, an hour on the bus and then three kilometers on foot. The tiles of the thousand-year-old temple were mottled, the eaves tilted up at an angle as if they might come down at any moment; every household kept chickens, white with red combs, tethered by the leg on stands at the door. I bought a box of jackfruit for RMB 10 and a big cup of sugarcane juice for RMB 5. On the bus back it was packed with northern old people flashing their senior cards, crammed to the doors; I stood the whole way and nearly got heatstroke, and saw three local women get off early because of the heat. Xishuangbanna is only a small town, and it can’t carry that many outsiders.
The riverside was interesting too. The Lancang runs clear and fast, the color of jade, and downstream it becomes the Mekong. At the wharf on the south bank a crowd of old people from the north swim in the river every day, tanned dark, and the locals rather disapprove. The north bank is quieter; men lower iron hooks on long ropes and pull river moss up off the bottom like waterweed, wash it, dry it, and eat it dipped in chili or kneaded into hand-grabbed rice, at RMB 3 or 4 a piece. Live by the mountain and eat off the mountain; live by the river and eat off the river. That’s when I understood why the water was so green — the riverbed is paved with moss.
9. Northward: Pu’er, Yuxi, Jianshui, Hekou, Mengzi, Mile
From Xishuangbanna I went north, stop by stop: Pu’er, Yuxi, Jianshui, Hekou, then doubling back through Mengzi and Mile. Over that half month the towns grew more and more ordinary, the minority character less and less, and I grew more and more indifferent, and a little tired.
Pu’er’s Meizi Lake Park was very quiet, with a wooden boardwalk along the water; I walked half of it and turned back. In the park a small dog stood in the middle of the path and wouldn’t move, and a man off in the distance kept calling, “Pipi, Pipi.” I took it for his dog and tried to shoo it along, but it wouldn’t budge. Then a man beside us with his back turned suddenly looked around and said, do you know why it won’t move? This is my dog. And he burst out laughing, and I couldn’t help laughing with him. In that instant it came to me that happiness is very simple — it’s being able to laugh, especially at a bit of good-natured joking between people. I’ve never liked dealing with people, and the big reason is that I’m afraid of being hurt and afraid of being responsible for things; but if dealings between people are friendly and you don’t have to answer for anything, then I like them.
Yuxi already felt a little like a modern big city. Xiaomiao Street is a pedestrian quarter that grew up around the Confucian temple, all young people on weekends. Yuxi’s most famous figure is Nie Er, the composer, and the slogans along the roads all say “Hometown of Nie Er.” One bus stop was called Guijing, and out of curiosity I looked it up — it really is an ancestral hall of the Gui family. That day, passing a restaurant, I saw a notice: if you run into trouble in Yuxi and your pockets are empty, come in and tell the waiter, order the single diner’s meal, eat it, and walk out; no need to stand on ceremony — and when you’re able, help the people around you who need it. I’d seen that kind of thing online before, but seeing it with my own eyes moved me a little all the same.
Jianshui’s old town was the most comfortable place on the whole trip. It isn’t as commercialized as Dali or Lijiang; the shops are mostly run by locals, the stone-flagged street runs long, and the street trees on either side throw a broad shade. The liveliest thing is the grilled tofu: a brazier with a wire rack over it, little cubes of tofu on the rack, a few people gathered around grilling and eating as they go. Being on my own, I was embarrassed at first to push in; later I found a shop with nobody in it and ate a dozen or so by myself.
Outside the west gate there’s an old well called Pubo Spring, the name taken from the Doctrine of the Mean — “All-embracing is he and vast, deep and active as a fountain, sending forth in their due season his virtues.” The locals all call it the Big Slab Well; people queue up to draw water, and red carp are kept in the well. South of the old town are the Tuanshan houses, a village of the Zhang family. The ticket is RMB 35, but there’s a small path at the entrance to the village and you can simply walk in; nobody stops you. I wandered for an hour or two inside, and the old people of the village sat in the sun against the walls, talking, staring into space.
The evenings in Jianshui surprised me most. On the square outside Chaoyang Tower at the east gate, at eight o’clock, the locals form a big circle and dance. I’d grown used to the Bai, the Naxi, the Tibetan, the Dai — all dancing to music in their own languages; in Jianshui I heard them singing in Chinese. That was strange enough to fix the town in my memory at once. Besides the circle they have another formation, two facing rows, twisting and turning as they dance. The dance is called the cigarette-box dance; they hold something like a small drum and swing it, and it rattles like a toy rattle drum. That day I sat in a McDonald’s until dark, then came out and watched them dance for a long time.
Further south, at Hekou, the weather changed again. Hekou is the lowest place in Yunnan, only seventy-six meters, and the moment I got off the bus it was close and hot — the first time in Yunnan I’d found the climate uncomfortable. So Yunnan isn’t dry and fresh everywhere. Hekou is the border town facing Vietnam; the whole county has only ninety-odd thousand people, smaller than the county town I come from. Across the river is Lao Cai in Vietnam, where you can see a small French villa, yellow walls, a pointed roof. Duras’s The Lover was written out of that country — “I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young.” Wang Xiaobo admired that novel enormously.
At the crossing, Vietnamese pushed big cases in and out; empty going in, full coming out. There were Vietnamese selling cigarettes to Chinese along the river too, and when you bought they slipped you a black bag. Vietnamese men wear a green round-topped cap, easy to pick out. The weather stayed hazy all along; I still prefer a day with sun.
Doubling back brought me to Mengzi, the seat of Honghe prefecture. In Mengzi the sky finally cleared — blue sky, white clouds, strong sun, and my mood lifted at once. But the wind was strong, a level-five southeaster off the south — in the north, at this time of year, there’s nothing but a north wind, a south wind is impossible; and yet the south wind here was cool, cold enough to chill you. In the South Lake park is a bookstore, the Southwest Associated University Librairie Avant-Garde, because the wartime university’s school of letters moved here; Wen Yiduo, Zhu Ziqing, Chen Yinke and Feng Youlan all lived in Mengzi. A building of bare concrete, utterly plain, with a roof terrace looking out on the lake. And yet how many people read books and buy books these days — even I haven’t set foot in a bookstore in years.
The last stop was Mile, a city name in Yunnan. There’s a McDonald’s under the Qian Wang Gate at the Red River Water Town, and I sat in it. The lake has a lot of black swans, very close to people, unafraid. The city’s name has nothing whatever to do with the Maitreya Buddha; it’s pure coincidence. The museum’s ethnic-minority hall was quite interesting, mostly about the Yi. I’d been in Yunnan a month and a half and been through a dozen cities, and the more I went the more they resembled each other; there was nothing much left to see. I thought it was time to go back and look at the heavy snow of the north, and the northern sea.
10. Back at Silver Beach, with Two Ideas
On January 25 I went back from Mile to Kunming. First to the Dounan flower market, a big market selling flowers, nothing but flowers, a few RMB a bunch; most of the buyers were young women. Has anyone ever given me flowers? I don’t remember. The first bunch of flowers a man receives in his life is probably at his own funeral. I walked around a long time and in the end bought two sachets, bluebell and jasmine, RMB 15. Then I went to the Yunnan Provincial Museum, but I’d timed it badly and it was about to close, so I could only walk through quickly.
A day later I went back to Green Lake, Huanggong East Street, Yunnan University. There wasn’t a single gull at Green Lake — forty days earlier it had been all squawking, and today the lake was so quiet there was hardly a bird on it. Huanggong East Street was the same as ever; it’s said to commemorate Huang Yuying, a figure of the 1911 revolution. Yunnan University’s old campus is well worth walking: a few stone buildings from the Republican years and the early years of the People’s Republic, very quiet, giving off a bookish air; the squirrels on campus aren’t afraid of people, and when the children feed them sunflower seeds they take them without ceremony.
Then I went back to Mangshi. This time by air, one hour, the ticket RMB 360, but it meant a night in the airport. To save money you suffer for it: through security, find somewhere to sleep, and all you can do is lie on a chair, and chairs have armrests, so only half of you sleeps; from two to four I tossed about, then the lights overhead came on and there was no sleeping with them on, so I got up. Boarding at six, and the moment I sat down I was drowsy, though sleeping sitting up is thoroughly uncomfortable; all I remember is that my ears were ringing again. When the plane landed the sun wasn’t up over Mangshi yet. But Mangshi is still the City of Dawn.
This time back in Mangshi I didn’t want to glance at things and wander at random the way I had before; I wanted to look more carefully, enjoy more easily, drift more slowly. The hostel had electric scooters, RMB 30 a day; I borrowed one and rode along, stopping and starting, out to Shangjingkan village to see a banyan more than four hundred years old. A branch droops down, roots in the soil, and grows into another tree, and all those roots and branches joined together make a great spread you can walk in and out under. Coming back it was nearly dark, so I rode up the hill to a spot called the Cape of Good Hope to wait for the sunset. The sun went down over the ridge, very fast, gone in no time, leaving the whole sky pink.
The next day it was the Menghuan Grand Golden Pagoda, again for the sunset. After the sun went down I walked down the hill path, and the trees on either side roofed the sky into a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel was a patch of orange-red. I walked on, as if coming out of a cave mouth, and the orange widened and widened until the whole sky was orange. The sight made me cry. What is a person alive for, after all? If not to see beauty like this, and to feel how infinitely good nature is.
I stayed in Mangshi until nearly New Year. In the evenings I often went to Mangshi Square to watch the locals dance. There are several circles on the square: one is the Jingpo, dancing the Munao Zongge, the men carrying long swords, the women in red flowered skirts and silver ornaments, the music hard-driving, as if they were off to war; one is the Dai, dancing Ga Ban Guang, their clothes fresh and bright, the men with pink cloth wrapped round their heads, hands held in fluted gestures, the music soft and yielding, like peacocks, like people on their way to fall in love; and one circle is smaller, stamping left and right, probably the Achang dance, the Deng Wo Luo. When the Jingpo music stops they’ll walk into the Dai circle and dance along.
The last number, from the Dai, was that Thai-style hard-driving music so popular online, and the young women twisted at the waist, collapsing in laughter. I stood to one side watching, and it caught me too; there wasn’t a trace of gloom left. How can they be that happy? Walking back, nearly ten, I saw a wonton shop run by Han still lit, the owner keeping the shop open; the shops run by Dai families had closed at eight and gone home to rest. Why do they work so hard, live so desperately? Being alive — what is it for, if not to be happy.
Oh, and one more thing. In Mangshi I fell in love with avocado milkshakes — a tall glass, RMB 18, sweet and thick, so good. I never understood why people get addicted to milk tea or coffee until I met that.
On February 4, the first day of spring, I took a morning flight out of Mangshi, changed at Hefei, reached Qingdao in the afternoon, stayed two days in Qingdao, and on the sixth was back at Silver Beach. The moment I was back in the north it was cold — out with the padded coat again, and the wind off the sea is strong. But this cold I can more or less take: people are always saying Silver Beach has no heating and is cold, but I’ve lived in the northeast and I’ve lived in Beijing, and compared with those places this isn’t cold; the one great fault of the seaside is the wind, and when that winter wind blows — oh, it’s cold.
Inside, at night it was only seven or eight degrees, under ten; I slept under two thick quilts with the electric blanket on. In the daytime, when the sun was out, I sat on the balcony and soaked it up, and it was comfortable. Another winter by the sea coming, and another New Year on my own.
I’d been on the road more than fifty days, through a dozen or more places, and in the end I came back. Coming back to Silver Beach costs the least — though that isn’t the whole reason. I think a person has to have one place that doesn’t move; everywhere else is only somewhere you go and then leave. That place is Silver Beach. Over this winter I think I got it clear: from now on I’ll use Silver Beach as my base, go somewhere else when it’s hot, go somewhere else again when it’s cold — in the winter cold, go to Yunnan, go to Mangshi. And one idea has been hanging in my mind all along: why not go and live in Mangshi for a year and see? The Southeast Asian climate, the palms, and the food there. That idea has never settled. So I came back to Silver Beach after all, and went on using this place as my base, waiting for a cold spell to go out again.