“Why doth thy mind so occupy itself,” the Master said, “that thou thy pace dost slacken? What matters it to thee what here is whispered? Come after me, and let the people talk; stand like a steadfast tower, that never wags its top for all the blowing of the winds; for evermore the man in whom is springing thought upon thought, removes from him the mark, because the force of one the other weakens.” What could I say in answer but “I come”? I said it somewhat with that color tinged which makes a man of pardon sometimes worthy. — Dante, Purgatorio, Canto V
2022.7.19
“Any place you don’t like but can’t leave, any kind of life you don’t like but can’t escape — that is a prison.”
Today, Tuesday, July 19, 2022, scorching hot outside, I have finally made up my mind to quit — after seven years in Beijing.
Last night my boss posted a notice in the department group chat — about recommending outstanding employees for the Dongcheng District cultural-industry talent pool, asking anyone interested to sign up as soon as possible; it closed this Friday, after which the personnel bureau would pick the best from the list and grant them a Beijing hukou.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Coming at the very moment I was about to leave, wasn’t this naked temptation? To be honest, I hesitated for a moment — whether to sign up, whether to stay — but I gave it up very quickly. I will not go on grinding away just for a Beijing hukou.
I was just a little worried that if I didn’t sign up, my boss might sense I was not wholehearted. Because in our office almost everyone has a hukou except me. If I didn’t sign up, that surely meant something was wrong with me. Who doesn’t want a Beijing hukou? (Later this proved false: no one cared whether you signed up or not, and no one cared whether you quit or left Beijing — you were overthinking it.)
I didn’t want it. First, the application meant filling in piles of forms and handing over piles of documents, and I had already decided to quit — I was unwilling to spend any more effort on paperwork, and anyway the paperwork couldn’t be finished in a short while, and I couldn’t endure another single day; I had not the slightest attachment to Beijing. If I were willing to keep grinding, I had already been in Beijing a full seven years, and next April I could also apply for residency by points. Second, even with a hukou I couldn’t afford a flat, and even if I could afford one, I didn’t want to be a mortgage slave paying off a loan, never able to turn my life around.
I didn’t know whom to tell my decision to. Certainly not my colleagues — that would have to wait until I handed in my resignation. Nor my parents or strangers: my parents would worry and try to talk me out of it, and strangers couldn’t understand how I felt. And yet I was desperate to confide it; if I didn’t speak of it I would suffocate, I had to have some outlet. I could tell only a few close friends.
Some urged me to finish out the year and leave after the year-end bonus; some urged me to wait until I had the hukou. I argued against them all. Because if I quit after the New Year next year, I would have to keep renting this flat; the lease expired at the end of October, and if I renewed I would be tied in for another year. I didn’t want to rent again; the rent was dear as death. I didn’t want to drag it out another year either. The year-end bonus was large, but I no longer cared. My patience with the job had reached its limit, and if I endured any longer I was afraid I would break down. The hukou was of no use to me anyway — I don’t go looking for a girlfriend, I’m not marrying, not having children. I must not be tempted by the year-end bonus and the hukou; I must be a resolute man and leave Beijing!
August was the month when our office took its holidays all at once; I had seven days of annual leave left, which I could split into three stretches over three weeks. If I handed in my resignation in August, many colleagues would be away and it wouldn’t be especially convenient to process the paperwork. So I decided to resign in September; the office rule was that you had to give a month’s notice. That way I would lay it on the line with my boss on September 1 and start the process, and it could be done by the end of September. My flat’s lease expired on October 23; I would clear things out, pack up, call a moving company to move everything to my brother’s place, and then I could go off to Rushan without a care. Before that, I still had to find somewhere to live in Rushan.
Off work, back home, it came to me that my PCR test was already two days old and tomorrow would be the third, and afraid I would forget, I hurried out again to take one; it would do until Friday, and I’d take another after work on Friday, and then I could go out at the weekend without worry. Testing again and again, over and over, had worn my patience down to nothing. Other places surely don’t test as often as Beijing.
2022.7.20
People are full of flaws: fragile, hesitant, anxious, fickle, and so on. At night, because I liked a girl, I tossed and turned in bed unable to sleep, and decided that tomorrow I would confess to her and pour out my feelings; but by the next morning I had come back to my senses, thinking love unrealistic, that she would never like me, that a confession would only be refused — better forget it, don’t go looking for humiliation. After deciding to quit, I often couldn’t sleep either — maybe also because the weather was simply too hot and stuffy, and I was excited and nervous at once, since it would be more than a month before I formally told the office I was quitting, and I didn’t know what to do with that month — hiding my thoughts, keeping everyone in the dark, unable to proclaim it to the world, with no one to talk to, treading carefully; that feeling was hard to bear too. Like a virgin with no outlet for his energy. And yet the next morning I would wake by myself before the alarm, and start worrying about life after quitting: how to make a living, what if the money ran out, what if no one would hire me if I looked for work again, how to face my parents once they knew, and so on. I stayed half-awake, half-asleep, until the alarm jolted me awake. On the way to work I too let my thoughts run wild, tangled in knots. But once in the office, once I began work, facing endless emails to deal with, an unending cycle of procedure, reviewing over and over, mechanically numb, dry and tasteless — especially the things you don’t want to do but the rules require you to — swallowing your anger, nursing a grudge, like a slave, no freedom, face dull, eyes lightless, worn to exhaustion — then a fighting spirit would surge up inside me: “I quit! To hell with this job!” I’m going to quit, I definitely will quit, and leave this hellhole and these idiots.
When did work begin to grow more and more unbearable? It began when rules and regulations of every kind multiplied. When I first came to work here, though I wasn’t familiar with the business, there weren’t so many constraints, and I was relatively free in how I did things, with my own decision-making power; but now, no one knows at what point it changed, the rules multiply and the individual has less and less initiative; everything must be done by the rule and lawfully, without stepping out of line (the rules are rigid, while actual practice is full of special, individual cases; to save trouble and dodge responsibility, those above tend to take a one-size-fits-all approach, and the people at the bottom carrying it out — me — are worked half to death: this won’t do, that won’t do, cut this, change that, more of a eunuch than a eunuch); new regulatory documents, detailed and dazzling, come thick and fast, like so many bands tightening around my head; and the boss keeps stressing “be an honest man, do things by the book” (a Beijing catchphrase), binding a person tighter and tighter, so that he can’t breathe. Working in such an oppressive environment, a person only grows more and more nervous, forever afraid that some slip or error will appear and the boss will scold him for “bringing me trouble and making me wipe your arse”, or that at year’s end he will be rated an unqualified employee and have a big chunk docked from his year-end bonus. A freedom-loving person knows that such an environment doesn’t suit him, that it violates his free will; if he can’t bear it, he can only leave, refusing to collude with the others and trample on freedom; he is unwilling to be a beast of burden, he wants to be a free man. Speaking of freedom — whether there is any freedom in life at all is a question that has to be weighed. For the moment, my work has no freedom; only not working has freedom.
I also ask myself whether it’s that the company doesn’t pay enough, doesn’t satisfy me, and that’s why I’m leaving. True, the wages I got were certainly not enough for me to spend. Rent, water, electricity and gas came to RMB 7,000 a month, half my salary. Yes, half (why live somewhere so expensive? One, Beijing rents are simply dear. Two, if you want to live a bit more comfortably, with a bit more privacy, you have to pay real money). Out of what’s left I still had to eat, travel, go out and enjoy myself, buy the odd thing — not much was left. And I had to put some money aside; without savings, where would a sense of security come from? In the foreseeable future, wages weren’t going to rise much either. Though a state enterprise is fairly idle, the work is getting harder and harder to do (as set out above), and relations with colleagues harder and harder to maintain (I don’t even want to keep up the surface courtesies and the mutual pretending); plain and guileless as I am, someone with my feelings written all over my face, I feel out of tune with everything here. If you want more money, you have to take on more responsibility and pressure, and keep all kinds of relationships in good order — which I’m no good at and can’t manage, and am all the more ashamed to do the things that curry favor with the boss and utter those sickening lies and boasts. My skin is too thin, my self-respect too strong; I won’t throw in my lot with them — I’ll hand in my resignation and leave of my own accord.
Why not change jobs? I’d like to change to an easy job too, one without so many damn things and idiots. But does an easy job exist in this world? I can’t be sure — after all, I haven’t done many jobs. But the few I have done all had their faults, or I wouldn’t have left. To find a better job, a looser environment, a higher salary, you need more talents and skills. I don’t seem to have them. My education isn’t up to much, my abilities aren’t up to much, and I have no background or connections — just a small, ordinary, insignificant person. Unless I could quickly improve my various abilities (especially English), I could soon find a satisfactory next job (and run). But I want to rest. I want to rest properly for a while, to cast off everything and everyone to do with work, to go to the seaside, feel the wind, take walks, watch the sunset and the clouds, and lie down at night without anxiety or insomnia. I just want to relax body and mind — not so tired, not so bitter, not so impatient; to slow down, feel the changes of time, and listen to people seriously.
Right now the epidemic is so severe (on July 20, Gansu had 300-odd cases, Guangxi 200-odd), and the controls so strict, and it won’t improve in the second half of the year — in winter it may even get worse. Aren’t you afraid of being infected, aren’t you afraid of lockdown, quitting and going somewhere else? To be honest, I’m a little afraid too; to say I’m not afraid would be a lie. I even thought of going home for half a year after quitting, since at home at least it’s safer, and if anything happens there are people to look after each other. But I’m unwilling to go home; I don’t want to live together with my parents, and I hate being lectured. A Hubei man is fated to drift about outside, to wander till he dies. So I looked up the epidemic in Rushan (Weihai): no confirmed or asymptomatic cases for a long time, which set my mind at ease a good deal. I looked up Tibet too — more than 900 days without a confirmed or suspected case. Tibet is safer. Where there are few people it is safe, with no route for the virus to spread. “The cocks crow and the dogs bark within each other’s hearing, yet the people, to old age and death, never go to and fro.” So if people try to frighten me with the epidemic, I’m not afraid. And one must be prepared in all things, learn about local conditions in advance. (In August Tibet had an outbreak too, and our Tibetan compatriots also began testing endlessly, controlled by some invisible hand.)
2022.7.22
Although on July 19 I had already made up my mind to quit, for the next couple of days I still wavered now and then. But the moment I went to the office, sat in my cubicle, felt the chilling air conditioning, watched the colleagues walking to and fro, happy and docile, and faced the trivial, repetitive work I never wanted to do again, I felt utterly wretched and irritable; I would stand up to look out of the window, then hide in the break room to play on my phone — I simply couldn’t sit still, and only wanted to leave this hellhole as soon as possible. And the office issued two more documents regulating your work, putting two more sets of shackles on you and piling on a great deal more work — regulations which, in my view, were a case of making trouble for yourself, pure fuss. It added more disgust, more anger. So leaving is absolutely settled; there is no changing it.
Last night a relative posted a message in the family group chat saying that a relative’s child had been admitted to Fudan University, and hoping that my nephews would take this child as a model, study hard, and try to get into a good university too. Seeing it made me anxious again. Though the college entrance exam no longer has anything to do with me, examples of excellence, striving, ambition and success bring pressure to bear on an ordinary person like me — and pressure is no good thing (nor is hardship). In this country, only success makes people respect you. To be unsuccessful is to be like a cripple, a good-for-nothing. For the sake of success, a person must give up joy, give up a healthy body, give up sympathy and respect for others, give up any deep feeling for the natural world — is that right? Of course not. Manufacturing anxiety is wrong too.
There was still a month and a week until I handed in my resignation; apart from the August holidays, a week remained, and I could hardly wait. But I had to keep the secret from my colleagues, betray nothing, pretend everything was normal, knowing all the while that they would be astonished when they found out — this “sneaking about” felt thrilling. Just as right now I am slacking off to write these words, glancing around from time to time, afraid that someone will come up to me and see the feelings I am typing out. I don’t know whether they monitor my computer screen. But I still have to record these feelings. Luckily I use Wubi input, so even if they saved my keystrokes, they wouldn’t know what I was writing.
Every July Beijing adjusts the base for housing-fund contributions; just now I updated the figure and found it had risen a good deal — a full RMB 660. If the work didn’t have so many constraints, so much pointless churn and torment, I’d be willing to go on working here. After all, the wages were enough for a single man like me, and there was a decent year-end bonus; once I quit, there would be none of it — no housing fund, no pension, and the health-insurance card would be useless too; I could only avoid illness and fend for myself, relying on no one but me. “Why can other people put up with it and you can’t?” To questions like that I usually turn up my nose. People are not the same; people have their own natures; some like to be abused, some like to abuse; each to his own taste — “do not do to others what you would or would not have done to yourself” — everyone’s principles and bottom lines differ; don’t compare others with me: others are others, and I am I.
Because I was leaving, I didn’t plan to wander anywhere at the weekend. I had been to many of Beijing’s sights, parks and famous places, some of them many times a year; now suddenly I didn’t dare go — a kind of timidity, afraid that going would only make me sad. And after work I still had to go for a PCR test.
Meanwhile I was gathering material on Rushan — lodging, transport, food and so on; in this a certain video site did very well, because there were vloggers who had long lived there, with detailed video walkthroughs to serve as reference. Since Silver Beach is a tourist resort, the visitors are seasonal, there only in summer; by winter it becomes a “ghost town”, where you might be the only person in a whole building — all of which I could only find out by going there myself. Quiet, cold, bleak suited me better; since childhood I have disliked noise, feared crowds, and kept as far from people as I could.
2022.7.25
The July salary came in, but because my bank card had been flagged by the bank’s risk controls, the money couldn’t be transferred — I had to go to the counter to unlock it, for no apparent reason. Two more paydays and I’d be gone for good, with not a cent of income afterwards, living off my savings. If I spent only RMB 10,000 or 20,000 a year, I could hold out three or five years. For a bland bachelor like me, there really isn’t much I need to spend on.
I tried hard not to think about work outside working hours. Since I had decided to quit, I shouldn’t fret over work. Life mustn’t be taken over by work. After quitting, all the more I must enjoy life, keep away from the noise, observe the world, exercise, and be happy and at ease.
After quitting I must cancel all the bank cards I don’t use. Over these years, every time I moved somewhere new I had to open a few cards locally, then leave in a hurry without clearing them in time, so that to this day I don’t even know how many cards are in my name. It’s as if a person were kidnapped by these bank cards.
Today I was getting familiar with Rushan’s transport, looking up some train and bus routes. In fact I wasn’t too worried about food and getting around; what worried me most was lodging — the housing problem, because I couldn’t go and view flats on the spot, and was afraid of being cheated by online agents. Some said housing there was very cheap, RMB 3,000 for a year’s rent — less than half a month’s rent for me in Beijing.
What will I do after quitting? I don’t think about it. Non-action — like Laozi, like Zhuangzi. It is precisely because people think too much about what to do next that they become weary, anxious, exhausted, off balance. Don’t think; let nature take its course, take it easy. Empty the mind, forget all worries.
2022.7.28
Before this, I had resigned three times in all. Compared with the post-90s and post-00s the number is negligible, but each resignation was a major change in my life, with far-reaching effects — at the very least, each resignation meant moving to a new city.
The first resignation was because I couldn’t stand the military training the company arranged. Already graduated and working, and still I had to take part in this pointless activity; on the first day they bused us to a military-training base, and after listening to the tedious lectures I took off my uniform and pulled another colleague along to resign with me. Looking back now, how precious such youthful impulse, reckless of consequences — though also rather childish and absurd.
The second resignation was someone “driving me out”. An older colleague who sat facing me said, you’re not suited to working here; let me recommend you somewhere else. I said, I’ve only just arrived and I’d quit already — that doesn’t seem right. He said, what’s wrong with it, that place suits you better; I know the person in charge there, go and have a look. I went to have a look, and was taken on very smoothly.
The third resignation — the one that brought me to Beijing — I told in detail in “Seven Years Drifting in Beijing”. Call it a refusal to be left out in the cold.
The first job lasted only four months, the second only six, the third rather longer — two years and two months — and I lived in three cities; though there are no memory-engraved experiences, looking back it still seems rather interesting.
It seems interesting now, but at the time I must have struggled and fought a great deal inside; yet it seems I often filter out the painful memories, so that now I can’t even recall how I felt then. After those resignations I must have suffered a great deal too, and I don’t remember much of it either. That is why, with this resignation, I want to record it fully and in detail — causes and consequences, changes of heart, the actions of every day.
2022.7.29
I saw a topic saying “I got emo after my closest colleague left” — filed under variety shows. I could only sneer. A colleague isn’t a business partner; if he leaves, he leaves — what is there to grieve over? He isn’t someone who went through hardship with you to start a business and conquer the world. Even people who start a business together are linked by nothing but their interests. And what interest do ordinary colleagues share? Two wage slaves commiserating with each other? Variety shows are entertainment; workplace dramas are written by people who have never worked in an office. Such creations are far removed from real life.
A colleague is a colleague: at work you are linked by the job, and once off work you are strangers, each living his own life. If a colleague leaves to pursue his own happiness, you should wish him well and be glad for him. If he was forced out, you should wonder what difficulty he has run into and whether there is anything you can do to help. What is there to be emo about when a colleague leaves? In the workplace people come and go all the time; one day you too will leave — do you think they’ll be emo about your going?
I had some colleagues I got on well with — after work we’d eat, drink and sing together, grumble about the others at the company, curse this society — but that was all; it never reached into our private lives, and the intimacy was less even than with a primary-school classmate. One colleague sat the civil-service exam several times and finally passed; I was glad for him — that’s an iron rice bowl, and he liked it too. Another colleague stayed here a year, said it didn’t suit him and he was going to Shenzhen to find work; I was glad for him too — the south is freer, more open, and far more developed economically than the north. And one colleague was forced out without finding another job; I was glad for him too — free of this idiot job and these idiot bosses. I wasn’t emo in the least, because I want to leave as well, and I’m about to.
2022.7.30
In August my colleagues took their holidays — some this week, some that week — the office was nearly empty, and I could slack off without a care; the whole month was practically a holiday, a month of coasting, until on September 1 I would go and tell my boss “I quit!” I really couldn’t wait — it was making me restless — but I had to hold it in and not tell a soul, not let anyone know ahead of time.
Some of the colleagues on holiday went back to their home towns, some went traveling; they asked where I was going, and I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to go home, and didn’t know how I’d face my parents if I did. Even after quitting I couldn’t tell my family; leaving Beijing I couldn’t tell them; arriving in Rushan I couldn’t tell them — I had to hide it until I could hide it no longer; there was no need for them to know. And as for traveling, I had no mood for it now; after quitting I could go wherever I liked. But first I’d stay a while in Rushan and look at the sea properly.
Just thinking about leaving Beijing soon excited me — I could openly look down on those cowardly, timid people who dared not leave Beijing. To use a northeastern expression, it was swaggering, and swagger I could. Because there are too many people who want to leave and can’t (or so I think).
Seeing some people resign so bravely, and so bravely go after the life they want, and succeed and become free — while I was glad for them, I also felt a little lost, because I had not yet escaped, had not yet succeeded, and had wasted so long here — a full seven years — suppressing myself, ruining my health, wearing my hair white, driving my mind to the brink, not getting out any sooner, not liberating myself, not venting, not resisting, not roaring. I couldn’t help feeling sad and miserable, thinking myself useless, not brave, a good-for-nothing. Although everyone has his own rhythm in life, if you could wake up a little sooner and get out of the sea of suffering a little earlier, that would surely be best.
At noon I went to the 7-Eleven and bought a beef-rice bento, a bowl of Shaanxi cold noodles and a small dish of shredded kelp; the whole lot cost just RMB 36.1 — my two meals for the day, and plenty (I’ve skipped breakfast since university). After quitting I must be even more frugal and spend less. The Analects says: “With a single bamboo dish of rice, a single gourd dish of drink, and living in his mean narrow lane, while others could not have endured the distress, he did not allow his joy to be affected by it.” I must learn from Yan Hui. But in Rushan — such a small place — there surely isn’t a 7-Eleven or a FamilyMart; no convenient life there even if you wanted one.
2022.8.5
In the first week of August the colleagues began taking their holidays one after another, even the bosses were away; my own holiday came later, only seven days in all, split two, two and three days across three weeks. With so few people in the office I had even less heart for work and slacked off all day.
When I had nothing to do I looked up material on Rushan online. One vlogger said that Rushan’s winter isn’t cold for a southerner, and there’s no need for heating. Note: relative to southerners. And am I a southerner? I went to university in the northeast and then spent seven years in Beijing; going without heating is a terrifying prospect for me. Every time I recall the cold and damp of the south I shiver all over. But many of the flats at Rushan Silver Beach have no heating, and those that do are either very old or expensive.
Should I go somewhere else instead — a warm island city, Wenchang, say? I’d read online that rents in Wenchang, Hainan, were cheap too, the cost of living low, and it’s by the sea as well. I took out my phone and looked up Wenchang’s rents: low enough, true (relative to Beijing), but compared with Rushan still much dearer. I had no job, so better be frugal. More to the point, I reckoned Wenchang would surely be more crowded than Rushan; I don’t like noise, and I want a quiet place to rest properly.
Besides, I also had to start moving things home, carrying my personal belongings back from the office, most of them books. Why did I buy so many books? A person with no home of his own shouldn’t buy books, read books, hoard books. Books are truly heavy, and many I had never read, some still unopened (among them the complete Jin Yong, thirty-six volumes); and I have no car, so I could only carry some back each day — the two months of August and September would surely be enough; but once carried back there was nowhere to put them, and when the flat’s lease ended in October they’d have to be moved again. Exasperating beyond words!
I had grown weary of life in the big city. Apart from Beijing you know nowhere else — Shenzhen, Shanghai, the northeast, the northwest, even your own home town has become wholly strange, and the stories of the people there you don’t know either; in the big city you are like an outsider, like duckweed, like a tumbleweed, unsettled in body and mind alike, and the ideal of your youth — “I want to go to many cities and villages and experience life” — was long ago shattered by reality. A person should not be confined to one place; a person should be free and brave; if you’re timid and hesitant now, you’ll surely regret it later.
This week was probably Beijing’s hottest; unlike the dry heat of other years, this year was extremely muggy — a stroll out after supper and you’d break into a sticky sweat, clammy all over, and need another shower when you got back. I woke earlier than usual in the mornings too, my body likewise sticky, and lying against the blanket was thoroughly uncomfortable (I don’t like sleeping with the air conditioning on; I loathe cold, heartless, unnatural wind). It counted as the first time in seven years that I’d met such extreme weather in Beijing; last year’s rain was extreme too — global warming is probably a scientific fact. In that case, I hope Rushan in winter isn’t too cold, so that I needn’t rent a flat with heating and can save some money.
Waking in the morning and lying in bed, letting my thoughts wander: if I had someone I liked, would I still leave Beijing? I like her, she likes me, we’re together (not necessarily living together) — would I leave her for the unfreedom of my job, or for my longing for life by the sea? If we lived together, then someone would share half my rent (would that be all right?), the pressure wouldn’t be so great, and there’d be someone to make love with, to satisfy my physical needs, so I wouldn’t be so miserable — would I then still be unable to bear this shitty life? I don’t know; these are all hypotheticals. I have no one I like, and no one likes me. Love is not a necessity of life; money is.
My mother phoned me and asked why I was always sighing; if I wasn’t happy in Beijing, then come home. I said, what work could I do if I went back? She didn’t know either. No solution. So I could only go on drifting outside. My mother simply hadn’t seen me for three years and missed me, that’s all.
I think I truly had grown tired of going to work, especially of being a machine-like white-collar worker with no freedom in a big-city tower. More and more I didn’t want to sit at my desk in the office; restless, ill at ease, I’d go downstairs and walk about outside when I had nothing to do; more and more I didn’t want to see the faces of colleagues and bosses or hear their voices, finding every one of them hateful, finding the things they talked about so vulgar and dull; I only wanted to knock off early, to slip away from work ahead of time and go home and lie down, to be quietly alone.
It reminded me of how I felt after three months at a big company in my first job — the same. What was it that disgusted me? It suddenly dawned on me: it was collective living, life far from nature. To me, raised free-range and undisciplined in the countryside, the big city is oppressive, cramped and monotonous, lacking natural landscape — especially a city like Beijing, walled in by its planning and obsessed with obedience, where everyone looks equal but in fact the powerful and wealthy hold the central, advantageous ground, while latecomers, ordinary people and the poor can only pick over the leftovers on the periphery. If striving is only for material success, for being a cut above others, then there is no need for me to stay on here.
What if I end up destitute later, what if I can’t find work and have to come back to Beijing, what if… how many “later”s are there? “The years of a lifetime do not reach a hundred. / Yet they contain a thousand years’ sorrow. / When days are short and the dull nights long, / Why not take a lamp and wander forth? / If you want to be happy you must do it now, / There is no waiting till an after-time.” Carpe diem — young, middle-aged, old: you can’t end up having made no money and being unhappy too; how little that would be worth!
2022.8.8
In all my years in Beijing I had been to many famous places and taken many photographs, but hardly any selfies — like a man who has never been given flowers. So before leaving Beijing this time I decided to do one thing: to go round those places again and leave myself some traces. I had already been to the Dashuifa, the Garden of Harmonious Interests, Desheng Gate and the Bell and Drum Towers; this week I’d go to more, to see how many of Beijing’s famous sights I could photograph — a summing-up, as it were, of my life in Beijing, since there would be no chance later.
Last week I had already started carrying books home, a few each day in my backpack; I could go back at noon too, then take a few more back in the afternoon. I reckoned August would just about finish clearing the books out of the office, and most of them would be sold to a secondhand-book app.
On a video site I followed two vloggers living the lying-flat life at Rushan Silver Beach — both from elsewhere; I listened to them talk about conditions there, about renting and daily life. They were very good people, and though the video editing wasn’t up to much, the content was useful and solid. I interacted with them a little online, and we added each other as contacts — they pulled me into a few local mutual-aid chat groups. Everything is ready but the east wind — resignation.
“When you’re about to leave your job, you’ll find that everything goes inexplicably smoothly.” It was a line I’d seen online, and it matched my mood exactly. My colleagues were all on holiday, the office was empty, the weather had suddenly turned cool as autumn came on; even Beijing’s broad roads looked pleasing to me, traffic jams no longer irked me, and I waited patiently at red lights; no one was after me about work, and I wasn’t afraid to arrive late or leave early. Once I formally resigned, and through that month of processing the paperwork, the company’s business would have nothing more to do with me, and it would surely be easier still.
2022.8.11
Yesterday afternoon I went to the Bird’s Nest to take a selfie with it, and saw a rather nice bit of sunset glow. That set me thinking: should I photograph some of Beijing’s modern buildings? Before, I had always posed with ancient buildings or ruins, and had never thought about Beijing’s modern architecture — the Big Pants, the China Zun, Sanlitun, Wangjing SOHO, Chaoyangmen SOHO. Beijing’s first impression is probably still classical beauty — solemn, majestic, conservative — unlike Shanghai; mention Shanghai and everyone knows it’s chic and foreign.
Today I went to the National Museum to see an exhibition, and on the way to take selfies elsewhere first went to the Southeast Corner Tower of the Ming City Wall Relics Park at Chongwenmen — a place I’ve always liked, where you can see Beijing’s classical and modern at once: here the Southeast Corner Tower, there the China Zun, and between them the railway tracks where trains pull into Beijing Railway Station — a beauty of contrast. Then I went back to Chongwenmen and on to Dongjiaomin Lane; Dongjiaomin Lane has many modern Western embassy buildings, and the street is perfect for photographs — it’s very close to Tiananmen. I came to the square and posed with Tiananmen and the Monument to the People’s Heroes, then went to the exhibition. The National Museum was far too crowded, and being the summer holidays there were many schoolchildren, noisy and jostling; and the artworks, once moved indoors and boxed behind glass, had terrible lighting and chaotic backgrounds — quite unsuited to photographs or quiet appreciation. I had lost interest in the big city; I had lost interest in exhibitions.
Coming out of the National Museum I was almost faint with heat, my face clammy with oil and sweat; but unwilling to make another trip later, I went on to Jingshan and took one with the Wanchun Pavilion; out of Jingshan, I took one with the Northwest Corner Tower of the Forbidden City; on to Beihai Park, I took one with the White Pagoda; in the end I really couldn’t walk any further, dead tired, and hurried out, cycled to Shichahai, and took the subway home to shower.
It was too hot; though the temperature was only 32°C, walking under the sun was scorching, and I walked a great deal and completed some selfie assignments. I don’t know what meaning there is in this checking-in kind of selfie; it was rather melancholy too, because I would never see these places again — and to capture these images and look at them later is like nostalgia, and only old people like nostalgia, which means you have grown old. Truly old: no passion left, no more loving, no more hating, bearing it all numbly, gelded and hammered.
Quitting is precisely to rebel against this dull, mediocre, numb life; though I don’t know where the road ahead or the future lies, one has to give it a try.
2022.8.13
Chekhov wrote in a story: “We spent our childhood in the countryside, free and easy. We were just like peasant children — day and night we stayed out in the fields and woods, watching the horses, peeling bark, fishing, and so on. You must understand: he is no longer a city dweller who has even once in his life caught a perch, or seen how, on clear and cool autumn days, flocks of migrating thrushes drift over a village. Until his death he will be drawn to freedom.”
Without a doubt, this year is the hottest in history. These days we’re forever witnessing history. And the city is hotter still — the so-called urban heat-island effect; and on top of that masks are compulsory, the mask chafing your ears sore, making it hard to breathe, so that your lips and chin are soaked in smelly sweat; the poor go out by bus, jammed in among crowds in a lurching bus, standing for a long time, while outside the window is a slow, congested stream of traffic. The rich need only experience it once to feel that such a life isn’t worth living — but what can the poor do?
Yesterday evening I went out to Wangjing SOHO and 798 and took some photographs; today I didn’t want to stay at home again (no creative inspiration), so I went to the White Pagoda Temple and took some photographs, then on the way to the Xishiku Church — but there was a notice on the door saying it was closed during the epidemic. I don’t know when this “during the epidemic” began or when it will end. Do religious people not go to services any more?
How I wish time could fast-forward, spin at speed, fast-forward to the day I resign, to the day I go to the seaside, to the day the epidemic ends. Life shouldn’t be an ordeal, each day like a year, but full of joy and ease.
2022.8.18
Bored after work, I cycled to the Olympic Park for a walk. Beijing really does have many hidden perks: broad roads, perfect for cycling, unmatched by other cities; and many parks, large and imposing, that make those who live here feel proud (I’m only a passer-by, a wage earner). Around the Olympic Park are many grand buildings — not only the Bird’s Nest, the Water Cube and the Nail Tower, but in recent years many new gymnasiums (like the Ice Ribbon), science museums, museums, exhibition halls, conference halls, and so on. Walking along the bustling central axis, you’d think what a great place this is; and yet I felt only forlorn, because none of it has anything to do with me — just as I do a job related to construction, yet can’t afford a flat here, with no sense of belonging or pride.
There was a sudden shower; the air turned damp and cool, the ground wet and puddled. Cycling in the rain, I got my clothes soaked, my scalp soaked (I had shaved my head), the cloth bag in the bike basket soaked, my glasses blurred; rainwater ran from my forehead down my face to my chin, and I deliberately didn’t stop, didn’t open an umbrella, didn’t wipe my glasses, holding my back straight, pretending I was still a boy, receiving the baptism of wind and rain. Beijing seldom rains, and what rain there is comes as a thunderstorm, never lasting; after so many years in Beijing I had completely forgotten the rain of the south.
I went to check in at the Big Pants (CCTV), standing at the roadside; with trees and utility poles in the way, and being too close to such an enormous thing, it was hard to get a perfect shot. Ancient buildings are majestic too, but beside modern ones they’re small fry. Below the China Zun (the CITIC Tower) it was likewise hard to get a good photograph — especially with today’s rain, the upper half of the building was lost in mist and couldn’t be seen. I cycled all the way to Chaoyang Park; I had once checked in at the Phoenix Center with a friend — the Phoenix Center is distinctive both outside and in — and along with the black work by Ma Yansong across the road, I took two photographs. Then I cycled on to Sanlitun. Sanlitun, to me, is a place for internet celebrities, not for a poor country boy like me; I just went in and took a look at the Apple store.
As a country boy from the south, I still love fields and hills, rivers and lakes. The towers, the traffic, the crowds of the city center fill me with fear and weariness; steel, concrete and glass curtain walls, desks, chairs, fluorescent tubes and computers indoors — every building comes with the same standard fittings, and every city seems cast from the same mold; the people in the city, the office workers in the buildings, all seem to wear the same mask. I don’t believe I could be happy in such an environment; only far from here can I be happy.
Like ants moving house, little by little I carried all my personal belongings from the office back home. Not one colleague had yet noticed that I was leaving.
2022.8.21
In the ten days or so after deciding to quit, I had no appetite by day, couldn’t sleep well at night, and was full of worry, doubting whether my decision was mistaken, reckless, a whim; but after this past month I am now wholly unafraid, unshaken, unrepentant. Quitting is necessary, and great, bright and correct, beyond doubt, not to be regretted; I no longer lie awake at night, and my food tastes wonderful. In another ten days comes the day I tell my boss I’m quitting — I can start the countdown. The closer September 1 comes, the more excited I get.
Seven years in one place — I’m truly sick of it. If I don’t change places, don’t change my way of life, I’ll really go mad. I have no one to rely on; I can rely only on myself. It suddenly struck me that what people mean by “an adult’s life is not easy” is that an adult has nothing to fall back on, and so at some moment breaks down. I won’t break down just yet; at least I’ve saved some money and can escape. For me it’s simply that life is too dull, and I need fresh air, relaxation, and to go to the seaside and look at the sea. Perhaps after a long time by the sea I’ll tire of it too — but that’s for later. For now I only want to leave this Beijing where I can see no hope.
The climate is worsening, the heat has already breached the limits of human survival; the economy is going down, and however hard you work you still can’t afford a flat in Beijing. Why should I stay here any longer? There’s no reason. There used to be a bit of inspirational chicken soup: live each day as if it were the last of your life — and now seems the very moment to put it into practice. Don’t be so cautious; “the bold may go anywhere under heaven, the timid can’t take a single step.”
I planned to learn how to shoot and edit videos; all young people can do it, and some even make money at it on a video site — I can’t just eat into my savings doing nothing. Someone said that after two months at the seaside you’d be bored stiff and would need something to do. Making videos is good fun; like photography and writing, it’s a kind of creation, and if you do it well you’re an artist. A lying-flat artist.
At noon I still hadn’t got up, lying playing with my phone, when suddenly the wifi went — a power cut. In Beijing a power cut is a rare thing. But a friend in a Rushan chat group said that there they have power and water cuts from time to time. With nothing to do at home I went out to the Temple of Heaven to check in. I’d been to the Temple of Heaven many times; the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is my favorite building, arguably the one that best represents Beijing (the Great Wall represents China; I’ve never been to Badaling and must find a day to go). Worshipping heaven and earth is the Chinese faith, and the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is like a Tower of Babel that can carry people’s wishes up to heaven. Strolling and gazing on the square made me feel very peaceful — moved, even.
2022.8.24
This was my first visit to the Badaling Great Wall. Though I’d been in Beijing seven years, I’d never been before — partly because it was far, partly because there were too many tourists. Going this morning there were very few people; and with the weather turning cool and cloudy, there was a chill in the hills; it only cleared at noon, showing blue sky and white clouds, and the temperature rose — but by then I had already come down the mountain and gone back into the city. I couldn’t help exclaiming: the Great Wall is beautiful, so beautiful, how beautiful, wow! I exclaimed many times. From North Tower One I climbed all the way to North Tower Twelve, then came down from North Tower Eleven; the whole thing flowed like water, the winding ridge of the wall snaking over the green hills like a peerless painting, breathtaking. Never having been before, I’d wondered whether the praise in all the publicity was exaggerated; now it turned out to be no idle boast.
Going back from the hills into the city, looking at the towers outside the window, I felt like dying; city life is simply not fit for human beings — it’s like hell, like an iron cage! I want mountains, I want water, I want clear wind and bright moon, I want birdsong and cicadas. On the Great Wall I saw many butterflies, black ones and patterned ones; “All flowers in late spring have fallen far and wide, / But peach blossoms are full-blown on this mountainside” — the hills really are much colder than the city. In the hills I can have these beautiful things: “what the ear takes in becomes sound, what the eye meets becomes color.” Once back in the city I have none of them; even the sun and the moon I can’t see, blocked by the towers and by the unlucky aspect of my flat.
I posted a selfie with the Great Wall in a chat group, and a friend said in surprise: you’ve got so much gray hair — my father doesn’t have that much. His father is about fifty. My own father seems to have had no gray hair at forty or fifty either. And I’m only in my thirties, and my temples are almost entirely white. Not only white at the temples — my forehead is balding and my hairline has receded badly. This is the damage Beijing life has done me. On the street I often watch the takeout riders — their hair black and thick, their hairlines enviable. If I weren’t a mental worker (an urban white-collar, office-desk worker) but a manual worker, would I have gone gray and bald so early? Why did I put myself under such pressure, live in boundless anxiety, and torment myself into a man grown old before his time?
2022.8.28
I sold a batch of books on a secondhand-book app — seventy-seven in all, worth RMB 890. There were many more books at home: some couldn’t be sold (I’d probably just throw them out), some I couldn’t bear to sell (old books picked up at Panjiayuan, the ancient-text series from the Zhonghua Book Company, and the complete Jin Yong). As a poor man with no home of his own and no study of his own, the most troublesome part of moving is dealing with these books. But for the poor the cheapest thing to spend on is reading — and the most chicken-soupy line is “reading can change your fate” (open to question).
The office actually paid the thirteenth-month salary early (in past years it wasn’t paid until October); I’d thought that quitting in September would forfeit it, and now I had a bit more savings and could lie flat a while longer. After quitting there’d be no income, so I should save as much as I could!
Lately Rushan had gone viral online; several hot-topic reports focused on it — old people cheated into buying flats, house prices crashing, homes that won’t sell, a ghost town, the Hegang by the sea, a lying-flat haven for the young, and so on. But for a low-desire, even no-desire type like me, so long as I don’t buy a flat, don’t date, don’t marry, don’t have children, there’s no being taken in, and life is much easier. Only renting, never buying — whether prices fall or rise has little to do with me; I only hope rents will come down a bit too, and that fewer people will follow the trend and check in there.
I went to the Fragrant Hills. I still remember the heavy snow at the start of this year, admiring it by Jingcui Lake, goose-feather flakes swirling, heaven and earth one white, thick snow piled on the branches and the pavilion; in the ravine beside the pavilion an icy clear spring ran down from the hill, splashing and tinkling, crisp and pleasing, like celestial music, intoxicating. I climbed to Qingweiliao, looked at the mountain view a while, and came down. Climbing was not the point anyway. The Fragrant Hills are too far; having come here once with such effort, I probably won’t come again, so I’d take one more look at I. M. Pei’s great work, the Fragrant Hills Hotel — I like the rockery and the waterfall in the back courtyard, and a ginkgo tree, very beautiful in autumn. On the way back I stopped at the Summer Palace too — probably for the last time — posing with the Jade Belt Bridge and the Tower of Buddhist Incense; the lotuses on the lake were still in bloom, but alas the sky was overcast, no wind, no waves, a fine rain falling, which made my spirits gloomy too. The Seventeen-Arch Bridge is another famous sight of the Summer Palace, but I couldn’t walk any more and had to go home.
Beijing’s subway is very convenient; you can get almost anywhere. But the crush on the subway is neither comfortable nor pleasant. I often joke that everyone on the subway is a pauper — line 5 especially. But once I go to Rushan there isn’t even a subway; I hear the buses at Silver Beach are hard to wait for. There’s no heating, no cheap takeout, no nearby convenience stores, no big malls or supermarkets, no delivery to your door, no taxis on call, no broad roads, no grand parks, no crowds of cinemas, museums and galleries, no stylish girls on the street. I must begin to get used to a “poor and backward” life.
2022.8.29
Countdown, third day — and a Monday. Since I hadn’t yet handed in my resignation I still had to go to work, with plenty to handle. But the bosses were away on business, and I worked in a couldn’t-care-less frame of mind, just waiting for the boss to come back on Thursday to tell him I was quitting. I told a colleague: the rent’s gone up too much, I can’t afford it, I can’t go on — I’m thinking of going back to Chengdu. The colleague rolled his eyes and didn’t believe it.
Why did I find work so exhausting? Besides the unfreedom and the many duties and little pay I mentioned before, another very important reason is my own character: I take work too seriously, I set too much store by work. Since childhood my mother had brainwashed me, forever lecturing me with a line from someone’s quotations — “in this world the terrible thing is the word 'serious’” — and hearing it so often, I was bound to be affected. Add to that my quick temper and my obsessive-compulsive streak: everything has to be dealt with and done properly at the first moment, no one else may wait a second longer. Toward things and people alike I am too serious, wanting to be responsible to people and to things. I should learn to be less serious — grinning and joking, good enough is good enough, treat life as a game.
You treat the job as your own career, working your heart out, worrying by night and day, sparing no effort — but the company doesn’t need you indispensably; once you’re gone someone else can be found to replace you at any time. In a country of 1.4 billion people, the one thing there’s no shortage of is people.
2022.8.30
Countdown, second day — a Tuesday. In the night I dreamed of many people from the past. I overslept in the morning and woke with a faint panic; luckily the boss was away, so I could go in slowly. A life woken by an alarm clock isn’t worth living; I hope to sleep till I wake naturally every day.
A day of nothing; I didn’t want to do any work. Slacking off, I proofread this piece, and by now it’s near its end. The autumn wind is cool and pleasant.
2022.8.31
Countdown, the last day — a Wednesday. Some perceptive friends (not colleagues — colleagues aren’t friends) had already guessed I was leaving Beijing and came to ask me, and I told them readily. I had spoken plainly of quitting, of leaving Beijing, of going to live by the sea, to only a very few people; and the greetings of these friends who had sensed I was about to make a big move made me very happy. Relations between people grow more and more distant; if someone cares about you, someone thinks of you, then you are a very lucky and happy person.
As for colleagues, not one had yet noticed that I was about to leave, even though I had secretly carried all my personal belongings out of the office. So a colleague is a colleague: between colleagues there is no friendship or kinship; after you leave you are strangers, unlikely ever to meet again.
I nearly forgot the PCR test again. Last time I forgot, the guard downstairs absolutely refused to let me into the building, and I lost a day’s work. If I forgot again this time, I wouldn’t be able to come to the office to resign to the boss — a real disaster. PCR tests without end.
The last day: nothing special, no excited feeling — patiently waiting to knock off, going home to sleep, and coming in the next morning to tell the boss I quit. Just as in that passage of Dante at the beginning — “I come” — I too have come. Let the sunlight fall on me.