Weihai has wind twice a year, and each time it lasts six months. — Reader 1
Weihai is famous as a “snow nest”: once winter comes, the snow comes banging down. — Reader 2
I’m from the Northeast, but it was the first time I’d ever seen wind and snow spiral into your face and slap it. — Reader 3
2023.12.14 — Weihai, the Snow Nest
The forecast said that from the 15th Weihai would turn much colder, with snow; that on the 16th there would be a blizzard, and that the snow would keep falling for a week. I decided to go to Weihai to see the snow. “A city with both a sea and snow must be so romantic!” Of course it is. “All the romance in the world comes to one measure: the sea takes half, the snow takes half, and there’s none left for you or me.” The most romantic thing of all, of course, is nature; human beings are all false feeling and affectation.
As a matter of fact it had already snowed several times in Weihai, but the temperature was too high for snow to settle — it melted as soon as it fell. From the 15th, though, the high would be below zero almost every day, so there would certainly be settled snow. The winter of 2019, the winter of 2020, the winter of 2021, the winter of 2022 — through all four of them we could not travel normally. Four whole winters we wasted; four whole winters we ruined. In the winter of 2023 we were finally free — free to breathe free air.
I haven’t lived in Weihai year-round, but I can imagine that, just like Rushan Silver Beach, Weihai has an off season from just after the National Day holiday until the May Day holiday the following year; only June, July, and August are the high season, when there are the most people. I left Beijing on October 23 last year and came to Weihai, and stayed three days; the scene then showed that Weihai already had very few tourists. A few people were on the seafront in the daytime, but by six or seven in the evening it was pitch dark, and the wind was very strong, so you needed a thick coat, and it was cold. Almost all the restaurants along the coast had shut up shop; the people of Weihai seemed to have no nightlife. But this winter, in the snowy days that followed, Weihai was unusually lively: every tourist sight was full of out-of-town visitors coming to pose for photos, especially at two spots — Huoju 8th Street and the Blueways. Seeing so many tourists, you finally believed that the three years of the pandemic were over.
From Rushan Silver Beach to downtown Weihai is only 90 km. The coach takes an hour and a half and the fare is RMB 30. But it’s best to call the driver the day before — that is, if you’re leaving in the morning. Rushan Silver Beach is only a country place, with no fixed stop; the driver goes round to the gate of each village or compound to pick people up. I called the driver and asked whether there was a coach tomorrow. He said it depended. I was a little taken aback, and also glad I had asked. “The forecast says heavy snow tomorrow, doesn’t it?” he said. “If the roads are bad I can’t drive — call me again in the morning.” The forecast really did say sleet turning to heavy snow, but the temperature was still quite high even then, so snow couldn’t possibly settle, and I believed I would be able to set off next day. And so it turned out, just as I wished.
Since I went to Xinjiang once over the National Day holiday I hadn’t left the house at all — nearly two months — and I wanted to get out for some air. The nearest place was Weihai, and I might run into heavy snow there, which you could call a chance in four years (in my case, a chance in thirty-odd years). I’d once seen a line online that nearly killed me laughing: “Southerners long for heavy snow, northerners long for the sea, and Hubei people long for both.” Yes: for inland southerners, heavy snow and the sea are things they rarely see and long for. I had lived at Rushan Silver Beach for more than a year and had had my fill of the sea, but Rushan’s snow is thin — it often falls a little and then stops, and it’s hard for a thick layer to form on the beach. Weihai is different: Weihai is famous as a snow nest, of boundless power, and its snow is enormous.
2023.12.15 — Downtown Weihai, Into the Wind and Snow
At half past nine in the morning I got on the coach to Weihai. By then a few flakes had begun to drift down at Silver Beach, but very few, and the wind was very strong. Heading north, the flakes grew thicker and thicker. It was warm inside, so mist condensed on the windows; I kept wiping them to enjoy the view outside — the snow drifting down, the villages racing past, the fine white that lay on the roofs of the houses in some places. The road from Rushan to Weihai always goes through Wendeng, which reminded me of a line in Su Shi’s Letter to Ju Chizheng: “Wendeng is a little remote, but there is a joy.”
At eleven I reached Weihai Railway Station. The snow there was a little heavier, but still only sleet, and the ground was very wet. I walked from the station to Hanlefang. There were few people in Hanlefang and most of the shops were shut — perhaps it gets livelier at night. But there were plenty of delivery riders picking up food, in blue and yellow, hurrying about. Weihai counts as a big city; even in the off season, with few tourists, it is far more bustling than Rushan Silver Beach. At Silver Beach there is no takeout at all, and I cook for myself every day. Weihai’s roads are wider than Silver Beach’s too, and there are pedestrian overpasses — a real novelty. A little snow had settled on the overpass, and a young mother was leading her small child across it through the snow.
I heard there were swans in Jiulong Bay Park — and Jiulong Bay Park is inside Weihai city, not out at Rongcheng; there are plenty of swans at Rongcheng, but in the city proper they are rarely seen. I decided to go and look. After a good deal of going round and round I finally got into the park. I walked southeast; there were very few people — I saw only one man, two girls, and a woman livestreaming — and no swans. The wind and waves were high, beating on the shore with a great roar. In the distance was a container port with rows of gantry cranes, and a few big ships lying at anchor; it would have made a fine photograph, except that with the sleet the image came out a little blurry. I turned back, cursing those people online: who says there are swans here? Why haven’t I seen any? You liars. Then I saw a black-and-green water duck bobbing up and down in the wind and waves, and got ready to photograph it; by the time I had my phone out it had vanished without a trace. I suspected I had been seeing things. At the northwest end of the park I made out, faintly, some white waterfowl on the water. Well — there really were swans! Some twenty of them, in a line, riding up and down on the waves at their ease; some had their heads tucked into their bodies, asleep — as if they were dead. On the beach stood a sign telling visitors not to feed them, because there were keepers to do the feeding. There weren’t many swans, but I stood by the water a while; to see swans right in the city is a kind of happiness too.
I walked on northward and came to Yuehai Park. Yuehai Park has only a lighthouse worth seeing, and no other view. The lighthouse is rather handsome; a pity no one was there to photograph me, and I was unwilling to take out my tripod. On a windy day you can’t keep your hands out to take pictures (with gloves on you can’t wake the screen), and your hands quickly go numb and stiff with cold. But wherever there were friends together, or couples, they were all happily posing for photos. The wind on the seafront was enormous, and the waves broke on the shore in high splashes — quite a spectacle. But it was also so cold it was unbearable; I didn’t dare walk on the waterfront path and kept to the inner road. Then I came to the big picture frame in Weihai Park, where there were even more people — not only tourists but stalls selling grilled sausages and roast sweet potatoes, and plenty of peddlers with red balloons they lend to tourists to be photographed with, RMB 10 a time. In such cold, they were still posing for photos, still standing there for the sake of RMB 10; it moved me, and made me happy.
The next stop was Haiyuan Park, which is a bit far; I called a car on a ride-hailing app and it was only RMB 10 to get there. I’d been to Haiyuan Park before: many fishing boats lie on the water there, for it is a little fishing harbor, and standing on the shore watching the boats is a pleasure in itself. Snow was beginning to settle on the ground, a layer of white lay on the little boats, and the big rocks by the water looked as if they had grown white hair. Plenty of girls were taking photographs. Beside Haiyuan Park is a memorial hall, the Chinese Labour Corps Memorial Hall, which I had never visited before. It is built underground, and from ground level it appears as a cross-shaped cutout. If the ground were covered with white snow the cross would stand out sharply, and look very holy. Anyone who likes architecture could probably read something into it. Down inside it is handsome too: fine flakes drift down through the openings, scattering over people’s hair and clothes. The foot of the cross is the entrance; the top points toward the sea, where there is a wild beach, with rows of small fishing boats moored on the water. The things inside the memorial hall didn’t interest me especially; I just took a turn around it.
Walking further north you can get to the Maotou Mountain lookout. I had meant to walk all the way to the No. 2 lookout on Maotou Mountain (now renamed the No. 3 lookout on Huanhai Road — don’t be confused, if you’re going). But I passed Half-Moon Bay, and stopped again to look at it. I had been to Half-Moon Bay before to watch the sunrise, which is a romantic and magnificent thing to do, though it needs clear weather. The wind and waves at Half-Moon Bay were bigger still — the wind howling, the waves crashing, so that you could hardly stand. And yet a thin layer of snow lay on the beach, white snow and yellow sand interleaved, giving a feeling of desolation, of bleakness, of sorrow. Even so, plenty of people were taking photographs, all of them girls. Tomorrow, when the heavy snow came, it would be more magnificent still. But the wind here was really too strong: when my hand went stiff with cold I put a glove on to warm it a while.
The wind at Half-Moon Bay was strong, but the wind at the Maotou Mountain lookout was stronger. I climbed on up the hill along Huanhai Road; the wind on the hill almost pushed me backward, so that I could only walk with my back to it. It was a long way before I reached the No. 2 lookout on Maotou Mountain — be sure not to go wrong. A few cars were parked at the entrance to the lookout, all people who had driven over to see the sea. Along the little path to the lookout I passed about a dozen tourists. You have to be very careful walking there: fall into the sea and you’re finished, and even if it’s only your phone that falls in, that’s no small loss. Below you it really was raging seas and towering waves, huge waves beating on the rocks and covering them with white foam, which made you a little dizzy. From there Maotou Mountain and the nearby Black Island could be seen quite clearly — an excellent vantage point. To take photographs my hands went stiff with cold and lost all feeling, as if they were about to die on me. It was terrifying: the wind on Maotou Mountain was the strongest I have ever felt in my life, bar none.
Coming down from the hill it was already growing dark. There was no chance of hailing a taxi on the hill, so I walked back to Half-Moon Bay, where I couldn’t get one either. I had to wait at a bus stop, but no bus came either; luckily an empty taxi went by and I flagged it down. I took it to the hotel. Hotels in Weihai in winter are super cheap: at the Jinjiang Inn a night cost only RMB 78. It was the Friday rush hour, with a strong wind and heavy snow, and the traffic was badly jammed. The driver chatted with me for ages about taking his child to Beijing one summer; Beijing in summer is too hot, Universal Studios is too expensive, so he didn’t go in — his wife took the child — and so on. When I got to the hotel, the front desk said they could upgrade my windowless business king room to a standard twin room with a window. I agreed without thinking much about it, and that one change taught me a lesson the hard way. In a Weihai winter you must not casually stay in a room with a window, especially one of those big floor-to-ceiling windows. Move in and you’ll find out what cold means — the next morning it froze me awake.
2023.12.16 — the Blueways
Having lived a long time in the ghost town of Silver Beach, I was used to quiet and emptiness, so I never turn on the air conditioning when I sleep. Even though I felt cold the moment I came into the room — wind was clearly coming in through the gaps around the window and the glass was ice-cold — I kept the air conditioning at 30°C until I turned off the light, and then I turned the air conditioning off too; I can’t stand the whoosh of hot air. At first I meant to change rooms, but I thought I could tough it out, so I put up with it for the time being — at worst I could turn the heating back on. But at two in the morning the cold woke me once, and I slept on; at six in the morning the cold woke me again. When I got up and opened the curtains it wasn’t light yet, but by the streetlights I could see that a blizzard had fallen outside and a thick layer of white had settled on the ground. I went down to the front desk and asked to change to a room without a window, one that wasn’t cold. Luckily there was a spare room. The new room really was much warmer. But since I was already up, I might as well go out!
The hotel staff were outside shovelling snow. As soon as I pulled the door open the wind pushed me back, and I hurried to put my hat on. Snow flew at my face from all directions and in a moment blurred my glasses so that I couldn’t see the road ahead. I took the glasses off and found that my badly shortsighted eyes could see better without them than with. Of course I wiped them and put them back on. But the wind really was far too strong. In front of some buildings it whipped up into little tornadoes, swirling the snow into the air — not tornadoes, snow-devils. The early cars all had their lights on, and the flakes danced wildly in the beams. Thick snow lay on the pavement and the planting strips along the road; walking into the wind was hard going, a pit with every step, crunching as you went. I trudged all the way from the hotel to the International Bathing Beach.
The beach at the bathing beach was a ghastly white; the sky was heavy and gloomy, not bright at all, and the flakes came down in clumps. The wind was still enormous, howling, driving the flakes onto the shore until they seemed to form a curtain. I walked on through the wind and snow. It was still early, only about seven, and there was almost nobody on the beach; I saw just one dark shape ahead of me, walking as solitary as myself and leaving a long trail of footprints behind. Snow quickly covered my hat, my hair, my eyebrows, and I turned into the White-Browed Hero, the snow-white knight of an old kung fu serial, the snow lying on me without melting and piling up thicker and thicker. The wind made walking on the beach so difficult that I went up into the pine woods to shelter from it, and followed the path there westward, toward the western end of the beach, where Weihai’s most famous photo spot is.
Early though it was, Huoju 8th Street was crowded with people. Looking down from the street you face straight out to sea; this narrow sloping road is Weihai’s most famous sight. The visitors were all wrapped up thick as clumsy bears — hats, gloves, scarves were essential. The ground was stark white and the roofs were stark white, and snowballs fell like beads off a broken string. People said that apart from the local travel vloggers, everyone who comes to Huoju 8th Street is from out of town; the locals all stay indoors. The visitors were all taking photographs; they posed at the sign that reads “The wind that misses you has blown to Weihai”, striking every kind of attitude, having their friends photograph them or taking selfies. And the local travel vloggers were all livestreaming on a video site: “Hey brothers, look at this — Weihai’s had a huge snowfall! Bottom left is our day tour, only RMB 68, only RMB 68, come on, hurry!” I signed up for a day tour today too — to Rongcheng to see the stranded ship.
This RMB 68 tour takes you to a lot of places: it starts at Huoju 8th Street and goes first to the Naxianghai resort, then to the seaweed-thatch houses, then to the stranded ship, the Blueways, then to Swan Lake Park, and then back — passing Yuehai Park and the big picture frame in Weihai Park. It was also supposed to go to Haiyuan Park and the Maotou Mountain lookout, but those two were cut off by heavy snow, so we couldn’t go, and in the end we went back to Huoju 8th Street. What I wanted most was the Blueways; as for the other sights, I had been to some and had little interest in others.
But the wind at the Naxianghai resort really was strong — stronger than in Weihai, I felt, and enough to kill you. I had never seen such wind. The blizzard fell all the way; it never stopped. Sitting in the bus, looking out of the window, there was half sea and half blizzard. Beside the Naxianghai resort stand many big wind turbines — clean energy; the turbines turned in the gale with a rumbling roar, as if an aircraft were passing overhead. I hadn’t expected the turning of the blades to be so loud; clean energy though it is, the noise is a serious pollution. Still, a row of big turbines along the coast is a fine sight. If the weather were good — blue sky, white clouds, a light breeze — this coastline would surely be very photogenic.
The seaweed-thatch houses had little to see, to my mind — all show and no substance. The swans at Swan Lake were handsome indeed, and very numerous, far more than the twenty-odd at Jiulong Bay Park. Swans are loud and noisy, honking away. But photographing swans takes patience and skill; you need to lie in wait a long time to get a perfect shot. I only stopped there twenty minutes, which was far too short — a mere passing glance.
The Blueways was the main purpose of my trip. There is a great deal about the ship online, and all sorts of people come here to pose for photographs. Summer has summer’s beauty, winter has winter’s, and I think the winter scene, with snow, is the most beautiful of all. Such wind, such snow, such a ship; such solitude, such cold, such loneliness! Sometimes I do want to die — having seen so many beautiful sights, I have lived long enough. The stranded ship just stands there, leaning a little, unable ever to sail again, with no one to tow it away, abandoned — like the many derelict village houses I see at Silver Beach, falling into ruin day by day, rusted all over by time. The wind howls, the snow swirls, the waves surge; the people come to pose for photos wave after wave, carrying away beautiful memories, and remembering it again when the snow falls next year.
I didn’t want to get off at any of the sights on the way back, and just waited until the bus set us down at Huoju 8th Street, then walked back to the hotel. It was nearly five by then and getting dark; the streetlights were on, snow was piled along the roadside, and a lot of snowplows were going back and forth clearing the street. But the pavement was quiet; few people were walking. Ahead was a stretch of white, and behind was a stretch of white; the low planting strips alongside were covered with a thick white quilt, and on the tall pines hung clusters of thick snow. I like walking on snow like this — you can hear your own footsteps, and the clean white world makes you very calm. “At sunset the green hills seem far; the day is cold, the thatched hut poor. I hear a dog bark at the wicker gate — a man comes home through wind and snow at night.”
2023.12.17 — Jinhai Bay Pier
Today I was free and had no plans, and could go wherever I liked, though I meant to just wander around nearby and not go anywhere else. Nearby is the bathing beach, and Huoju 8th Street isn’t far either. Getting up early, I saw that low tide was at a little past seven, and since I hadn’t been to the pier yesterday I decided to go and look at the beach at low tide and at Jinhai Bay Pier. The snow today was much lighter than yesterday, but it still went on falling without stopping. Snow had settled thick on the cars along the road and on the shop signs, a heavy layer, as if they had put on hats. The morning air was exceptionally fresh, and walking on the snowy road was bracing; I strolled toward the sea at a cheerful pace.
The sea had retreated a long, long way, and the snow lay on the tideland, a great expanse of white, unimaginably wide, vast beyond measure. Only near the water was there any yellow sand. And the water was almost black; only where it broke on the shore did it bring a little white foam. When the snow was heavy, everything ahead was a blur; when the snow was light, everything ahead was bright. Quite a few visitors were looking at the sea and the snow, like little dark dots. The small hills on either side of the bathing beach were white with snow too, like rows of little snow mountains. Standing on the snowy beach and looking around, this was like a fairyland, not a place where human beings live; and also like a lightly sketched ink painting, tranquil, elegant, plain.
The western end of the beach is Huoju 8th Street, and the eastern end is Jinhai Bay Pier. On my last visit to Weihai I had watched a sunset from the pier. But it was December now, and the sun had moved a long way south; there was no fine sunset to be seen. Walking toward the pier you climb up onto the slope, and looking down from above at the beach the view opens out even wider and the people on the beach look even smaller. Human beings are small to begin with. The land was a vast blur of sea and snow, and the sky was still more boundless and ethereal — what is a human being, after all?
When I got to the pier, something even more wonderful was waiting for me: the railings and the iron chains of the pier had frozen over, coated in a thick layer of murky ice. The ice hung down from the chains like stalactites, but it wasn’t especially hard — it came off at a twist — and then snow had fallen on the ice, so there was ice and snow both. It was simply magical, like a scene out of Ice Age. I had read online that this kind of sight appears at Putao Beach, but nobody had told me you could see it at Jinhai Bay Pier too. You see — beautiful sights you have to find for yourself. Snow had fallen on the little hills beside the pier and they were all white, snow had fallen on the bare rocks and they were all white, white everywhere.
Having seen the beautiful sight and taken my beautiful pictures, I headed back, not meaning to follow the coast to Huoju 8th Street again — I’d been there far too many times. I ate at a restaurant outside. Eating out is a great luxury for me; at Silver Beach I never eat out. But I was out for a good time anyway, so I might as well try a different life. In the evening, though, I didn’t want to go out again, and ordered takeout. Takeout tastes wonderful to me too, and is a luxury as well. Heh — it seems that every day I live is a luxury.
I slept a while at the hotel and got up after three. The snow was much lighter and the wind much weaker, and now and then the sun came out; I wanted to go and watch the sunset. I walked to the pier again. The tide was coming in, and a cordon had been put up across the area in front of the pier, keeping people out — because the waves broke on the rocks in high splashes, and if you went over you’d get soaked, which is no fun in deep winter. The visitors all stood outside the cordon taking photographs. A pity there was no sunset to be seen; the sky was overcast. I looked at the ice on the railings a while, then walked to Huoju 8th Street. The beach below Huoju 8th Street was as crowded as ever with people posing for photos; the wind was strong and the snow was heavy, but they were so young and so happy.
In the evening Huoju 8th Street fills with even more people, even livelier, as if it were New Year’s Eve. Tourists taking photographs, vloggers livestreaming, a dense crowd of heads, a hubbub, drones flying overhead with a whirr. I don’t think I’m a person who likes crowds, but I’ve had my fill of quiet at Rushan Silver Beach, and it does no harm to come out and join the crowd now and then; Zhuangzi, surely, wouldn’t scold me for it. The snow still fell from time to time, and under the streetlights it looked more romantic. Girls must love this sort of scene — and indeed most of the people who come here to pose for photos are girls. One vlogger was shouting again: “Hey brothers, it’s snowing again, look — isn’t it beautiful!” I don’t know how his fans were answering him online, but just then the girls in the street admiring the snow did answer him, shouting, “Beautiful! So beautiful!”
There are also young people who come here at two or three in the morning on purpose, when Huoju 8th Street is no longer crowded and the seafront is quieter still; they can sled down the street to their hearts’ content and run wild on the beach, and if they’re bold enough they can set off fireworks (but don’t get caught — it’s a fine of RMB 500 if you do). What does the seafront look like in the small hours? I still don’t know. I do envy those young people; they are so happy. What is it, after all, that we are meant to leave behind in this world? Nothing more than a few beautiful memories. Wind, snow, and sea make them.
2023.12.18 — Held Up by the Snowstorm
I decided to go back to Silver Beach in the afternoon. The snow was much lighter and the temperature was rising; it wasn’t as cold as the past two days, but the snow hadn’t quite stopped. On Wednesday there would be another blizzard, lasting until Friday, and only after that would it turn overcast and then clear. Since the snow was so much lighter today, I thought the coach ought to be running, so I didn’t call the driver to check. But when I got to the coach station and told the ticket clerk, “Silver Beach,” she said there were no coaches to Silver Beach. No more coaches? What about tomorrow? Tomorrow’s uncertain — you’d have to see how it goes. What about one to Rushan? No coach to Rushan either; there’s one to Rongcheng. Am I out of my mind — Rongcheng? (That last bit I said to myself.) I walked over to the high-speed rail station next door and tried to buy a ticket from Weihai to Rongcheng, changing there for Rushan South. I got the ticket and went through the gate, only to find that every train into Weihai was delayed, so I’d miss the connection from Rongcheng to Rushan South; I had to refund the ticket. As for the ordinary train from Weihai to Rushan, it either leaves in the morning or arrives at night, and arriving at night makes it awkward to get back to Silver Beach. Damn it — I couldn’t get home at all. I hadn’t expected Weihai’s snow to be so fierce, to last a whole week. The snow nest, true to its name, had me trapped.
December 18, 2023, Weihai, Shandong — a hotel near Weihai Railway Station.
(The coaches were suspended, so I stayed another day in Weihai and went back to Rushan the next day, December 19.)
Postscript: December 22, 2023, Weihai, Shandong, the winter solstice on the lunar calendar. The blizzard in Weihai, Shandong, the “snow nest”, kept intensifying; from the night of the 19th it had gone on for three days and three nights, and the snow lay more than 70 centimeters deep, breaking Shandong’s record of 54 centimeters. The prolonged low temperature left the roads covered in snow and ice, badly disrupting travel.
What is cold-air-outbreak snow?
According to the Yantai meteorological bureau in Shandong, Yantai and Weihai, being typical seaside cities, get a good deal of snow in winter, which gives them a distinctive seaside snow-city character, and they are known as “China’s snow nest”. What is more, the snow in the two cities is mostly cold-air-outbreak snow, accounting for more than 80 percent of all snow days. Meteorological records from Yantai Laishan Airport show that cold-air-outbreak snow there averages about 39 days a year.
Cold-air-outbreak snow is also called cold-advection snowfall. In winter the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea are warmer and more humid than the inland; when a strong cold air mass passes over the warm sea it is heated and moistened, and when it reaches the north of the Shandong peninsula it is blocked by the hilly terrain in the middle of the peninsula, so the air becomes saturated and piles up north of the mountains, producing long spells of snow. This kind of snowfall is therefore also called sea-effect snowfall.