My doctrines make no way. I will get upon a raft, and float about on the sea. — the Analects, “Gong Ye Chang”
2022.11.11
On Double Eleven I bought nothing — not because I had no money, but because I’d already bought most of what I needed. I wanted a cool pair of shoes, but the branded ones were all too expensive; I wasn’t about to spend RMB 499 on a pair of shoes — RMB 49.9 and I’d take them. Life can go on without luxuries. Some people spend RMB 1,000 on a meal; some spend only RMB 10 on a meal; I’m the latter. Besides, I went to bed at ten last night. In a place like Rushan Silver Beach the nights are so quiet you get sleepy without meaning to.
I got up early to go for a PCR test. We were supposed to test three days running — yesterday, today, and tomorrow — but yesterday I didn’t get up, so I skipped it; today I had to make it up. There weren’t many people, and the line cleared in a moment. So there really aren’t many people in my compound. Some compounds have a lot of people and very long lines.
After the test I didn’t feel like going back for a second sleep, so I went out for a wander. I walked a stretch of Huaihe Road and photographed the compounds on either side. I’m learning video editing, so going out is about gathering material. Stay home, hole up, and nothing gets done. You have to get out often. My videos aren’t much — I can only add simple subtitles and voiceover — but using video to record your life is not a meaningless thing. I walked as far as Bihai Huating, ate a plate of dumplings there, and then walked home along the shore.
In the evening I called home on my own initiative. I still haven’t told my family I quit; they don’t know — they think I’m in Beijing. Calling first is attack as defense: it keeps them from calling me, asking this and that, and catching me out. I used to rarely call them, because every call ended in an argument — nagging me about marriage, what else. But they’ve stopped nagging now; they can’t budge me, they’ve given up on us. Besides, when I call them, I hold the initiative; it’s my turn to ask and not theirs. And they’re happy to tell you about their own doings — old people are all like that.
In the evening someone in the group messaged that tomorrow’s PCR test was canceled — something to do with a newly issued document, it seemed. At last, a good deed.
2022.11.12
The fog has gone on for days — dark, gray, murky. Without sun it’s easy to feel low, and I don’t much want to go out. Today was worse: not just fog but rain, a thin drizzle. I went to the north bedroom to look at the rain to the north, then to the living-room balcony on the south side to look at the rain to the south. This rain is no different from rain anywhere else, but the scene outside the window is different, and so the mood is different too.
Still I can’t stay in the house; I have to go out and see the sea. If I don’t go out I get restless, cooped up and stifled. Seeing the rain had stopped, I hurried out, no umbrella. There was a little rain along the way, but turning up my hood kept it off — no matter. At the shore I could hardly see a soul; only the muddy waves beating on the bank, one after another, carrying some of the sea’s trash up onto the beach. The wind was moaning, but it wasn’t cold. An older man who looked like a cleaner, in an orange windbreaker, was picking up red buoys washed ashore and gathering them into a big net bag. A large iron drum had floated in too — a gasoline drum, probably, used up by a fishing boat — and the man pushed that up onto the bank as well.
I watched the waves a while, felt the sea wind a while, and then the rain started coming down harder and harder, soaking my jacket and jeans through — very uncomfortable — so I had to go home. It reminded me of childhood: whenever it rained and blew, we’d rush outside and run wild in the wind and rain, happy beyond measure. Getting caught in the rain once in a while isn’t such a bad thing; it’s just that growing up takes the child’s spirit out of you, and you start minding your body and minding your clothes. Still, whenever I see children in rubber boots stomping and playing in puddles, I envy them. A joy adults will never have again.
Toward evening a strong wind got up, blowing fallen leaves everywhere, stripping away the last few withered leaves on the branches. The old people who usually play cards in the pavilion didn’t come out; the stray cats and dogs had gone into hiding; even the birds weren’t chirping. The forecast said a big drop in temperature was coming. A bitter wind and cold rain, no heating, alone in a strange place — all you can do is climb into bed early, burrow under the covers, play on your phone, read some essays, and drift off to sleep, by the sea, in the faint sound of the waves. Maybe this winter will turn out to be the happiest winter of my life.
2022.11.13
I woke to a very bright room and thought I’d slept till past ten; then I looked at my phone — only half past seven. It had cleared up, and the sun was slanting onto the window. I opened the curtains: outside, a boundless clear sky, blue as washed, with only a few thin clouds here and there, and the sun just right. Last night it was still blowing and pouring; now the rain has stopped, but the wind is still up, and the people in the compound heading to market have all put on heavy clothes.
It’s the twentieth of the lunar month, my market day again. One thing needs explaining: Silver Beach has many markets — seven or eight, probably — spread out in different places, and they open on staggered days. Some fall on the first of the lunar month (then the sixth, eleventh, sixteenth...), some on the second (seventh, twelfth, seventeenth...), and the one on my side falls on the fifth (the tenth, fifteenth, twentieth...). So there’s a market or two every day — it’s not, as some outsiders imagine, that the whole of Silver Beach has just one market that opens once every five days. Yesterday I worried the rain would shut the market down or keep vendors away, but the weather today is so fine that the market opened as usual — though there were indeed far fewer people, both sellers and buyers, especially the seafood sellers. The old farmers selling vegetables were there as always.
The weather turned cold, so I put on thick long johns; and since my jacket and jeans got soaked yesterday, I had to change clothes. I tried two pairs of trousers and both were tight, like skinny pants — so I really have gotten a lot fatter without noticing. In the end I squeezed into a slightly looser pair. For a jacket I switched to a thin down jacket. My shoes pinched too; I had to change into summer socks before I could get them on.
I saw all kinds of meat for sale — pork, mutton, chicken, beef, and live chickens, ducks, and geese, and cooked foods. I wondered whether to buy some and try cooking a meat dish, but in the end I didn’t. For one thing, I’m in no hurry about most things; for another, I don’t do things until it’s necessary. Take eating meat: a person can live without it — maybe even live better; a vegetarian diet is healthier. Of course, not knowing how to cook meat is one reason too — but anything’s easy once you’re willing to learn. Whether or not to eat meat isn’t the point. If eating meat makes you happy, eat meat; if eating vegetarian makes you happy, eat vegetarian. As for me, I could take it or leave it — I think thinking is the greatest happiness. Yan Hui “with a single bamboo dish of rice, a single gourd dish of drink, and living in his mean narrow lane, did not allow his joy to be affected by it”; Thoreau, living alone at Walden Pond and farming, was happy too.
What is it to love life? It certainly can’t be defined by whether you eat meat. Monks and nuns, Daoist priests and Catholic priests and friars can love life too; never dating, never marrying, never having children can be loving life too; reclusion and lying flat and giving up and cynicism can be loving life too. Me, doing nothing by the sea, watching the sea and listening to the sea and sunbathing and spacing out and breathing and resting my eyes every day — that can be loving life too. Who says that working and making money, getting rich, winning fame and success, living in a big house, marrying a pretty wife, having a chubby son, going into politics to change the world, and shouting a pile of lofty slogans — who says that’s what loving life is? Beyond doubt, only the dead and the lifeless don’t love life. Even those who cry all day that they want to die but haven’t the nerve to die — they love life too. People should not be defined; once you fall into some definition, you’re like a man locked in a cramped cell with no daylight.
Walking the road to the sea, I tend to let my thoughts wander — or, you could say, to ponder life. I saw a bus parked at the roadside. Silver Beach’s buses run very few times and are hard to wait for; I don’t know why it was parked there, not running. But it set me thinking: if I fell ill one day, how would I get to the hospital? Take the bus? Hail a taxi? (Taxis are even scarcer here — I haven’t ridden in one, I don’t think I’ve even seen one.) Or just call an ambulance? I really don’t know what I’d do. Then I read a passage of Thoreau’s: “The old, infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them life seemed full of danger — what danger is there if you don’t think of any?” I decided to stop thinking about it. The wind at the shore was howling, very cold; after a while I left.
2022.11.14
Looking at Rushan Silver Beach on the phone map, there are two modes, a standard map and a satellite map. On the standard map, the white areas are open ground, the pale blue is housing, the yellow is main roads, the green is beach park, and the azure is the sea. But when you switch to the satellite map, you find those white areas are actually complicated — some are farmland, some wasteland, some ponds, some hills — none of which shows up on the standard map. You have to be very careful. When I picked my apartment, for instance, I looked only at the standard map; only after I arrived did I find that around my compound it’s all wasteland, and at night I don’t dare go out at all.
Out the south gate of my compound and straight down the main road southward for about twenty minutes, and you reach the shore. I want to buy a bicycle — that would cut the time of my daily trip to the sea, and let me explore farther afield. But it isn’t all that pressing or necessary; I’m in no hurry. Strolling at leisure is fine too; walking after a meal can lower your blood sugar, and the scenery along the way is relaxing and pleasant. There’s almost nobody on the main road and very few cars — you can cross wherever you like without worrying about traffic lights, and I’ve never so much as glimpsed a traffic cop. Most of the street trees are plane trees, but there are pines and ginkgos too. The ginkgos have been stripped bare by the wind; earlier, some ladies who liked to dress up had their photos taken in the grove with red silk scarves around them. I don’t know who sweeps up the plane-tree leaves once they’ve fallen all over the ground, or whether the wind carries them off — but pines spare you the worry of fallen leaves, and the inner side of the seawall by the shore is planted all with pines, as a windbreak.
There are quite a few billboards along the road — some set into the bus shelters or stop signs, some fixed above the trash bins. Most are real-estate ads, posted with information on homes for sale: location, size, price, the agent’s name and contact. There are also ads for shops, like a furniture factory and a “lifestyle store” (what a lifestyle store is for, I have no idea). And last, some slogans, from five years ago — how do I know? Because they say “the Nineteenth,” not “the Twentieth.” The ads are bleached by wind and sun, all faded.
There’s an amusement park by the shore with a fanciful name, Menghuan Wangguo, with a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, a huge rubber-duck sculpture, and a towering gray fake rock shaped like an oyster (easy to tell from the ridges on its surface). The park’s entrance is shaped like a castle, with many spires painted the color of the sea, and the PCR tests were done there at the entrance. I don’t know who runs this park; I just worry about his revenue — inside, it’s utterly empty and desolate, with no business for ten months of the year. I went and got my test done, then circled around to the seafront, climbed down the embankment, walked onto the sand, walked to the water’s edge, and walked into freedom.
2022.11.15
At eight in the morning the sun reached the head of my bed. At first it fell on the wall; as time passed it moved onto my pillow. I turned back the top half of the quilt and let the sun fall on the blanket, to disinfect the pillow and the blanket; in the afternoon the sun reached the quilt again, and just right for disinfecting the inside of the quilt’s top half; and so the sunlight kept shifting, until in the evening it fell on the wall at the foot of the bed. The living-room balcony was flooded with sun too — and of course I couldn’t waste this fine gift of nature; I spread a rug on the balcony and can nap there. I lowered the drying rack so the newly washed clothes could get more sun. The shoes were propped against the railing to bake too. Clear days are wonderful; the moment it’s clear I’m full of energy. Clear days belong to the north, overcast days to the south — I love the north.
In the morning I didn’t go to the sea; I headed the other way, north, and wandered clockwise around the wasteland near the compound, getting to know some plants. White clover (also called white-flowered alfalfa, or “three-leaf clover” — three leaflets, each bearing a white mark, arranged in a circle); Altai aster (also called Altai heteropappus); silvergrass (so the reeds were silvergrass — “in maple leaves and rushes autumn seemed to sigh”); the gray-leaved smoke tree (its leaves are red). I also saw a green grasshopper; I put it on my palm and studied it a while. The ground was littered with pretty, dry, split-open pinecones. Two black-and-white magpies were foraging in the dry grass; the moment I aimed my phone at them, they flew off. I also passed a few abandoned farmhouses — red-tiled roofs caved in, doors and windows gone, weeds all across the front, stray trees growing wild inside the rooms. Those farmers must have moved into bright, roomy apartment buildings. At the market, usually deserted, a small white dog lay on the ground sunning itself; as I came close to photograph it, it lifted its head and looked at me, as if to say: What are you shooting? Never seen such a happy, easygoing little dog?
At noon I came home and ate: didn’t want to cook a dish, didn’t want to wash the dishes or the pot, so it was plain rice with pickles. I hadn’t meant to go out again, but there was nothing to do, sitting idle was driving me crazy, and I was short on exercise — so I went to the shore. Loafing around by the sea, pacing west and back, pacing east and back, waiting for the sun to go down — from a white sun to a red sun, the red sun fading little by little to gray, the same as the color of the low sky, and at last sinking from sight. Standing by the sea so long, my back ached a little. The wind wasn’t strong, but over that much time it began to feel cold; I wrapped my jacket tight and hurried back up the bank and home. In the evening, noodles with an egg.
Beijing turned on its heating on November 13, two days earlier than usual. Rushan has heating too — but only for the Rushan county seat; Rushan’s heating comes on November 20. Silver Beach, far from the county seat, is a tourist resort area, where “there are a hundred compounds, but only three with heating: Weiliya, Shanshui Renjia, and the north side of Bihai Huating” (as someone online put it). My compound, of course, has no heating, but for now the nights don’t feel cold; inside it’s at least 15°C, and soaking my feet before bed and sleeping under a good quilt is enough to keep the cold off. Some say the coldest days haven’t come yet. As a southerner, I’m waiting to see just how cold it gets — whether it can be colder than my hometown in Hubei.
2022.11.16
Last night my sister told me that our father had had a slight stroke — his left side can’t move. It was very mild at first and no one thought much of it; only a day later did he go to the hospital, and by then it was somewhat serious. He’s in the hospital now. The news froze me. I think the reason I can run wild out here, stay away from home so long, and not have to look after my parents is, first, that my parents have always been in good health, and second, that I have two sisters at home looking after them. Now my parents are older, and their son is not by their side — which makes me feel all the more ashamed. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. Maybe I should quit and go home to look after them, instead of idling away my time here in Rushan.
In the morning I walked by the shore. The sun was warm, the sky clear, the seawater as limpid as ever, shimmering silver in the sun, beating on the bank in its regular, unhurried way — it has no worries and no joys; from a distance it’s so vast and so calm. On the sand I saw a kind of grass, and marveled that it could live in such a harsh environment; I photographed it and looked it up on my phone — it’s called shayincao. I sat cross-legged on the embankment with my back to the wind, looking at the sea, at the pine woods, at Menghuan Wangguo, at the very few people passing on the road.
2022.11.17
Another perfectly clear, windless day, so I went out for a hike. I love hiking — feet are made for walking, and measuring the earth with your feet is a simple, primal thing that helps you think; you sense distance more precisely and observe the world. From noon to three in the afternoon I walked along Yinjin Avenue, looking at the compounds on either side — Silver Beach’s third-row compounds, like Shanshui Renjia and Weiliya, which do have heating. Buses are more frequent there and getting around is easy; though it’s a bit far from the sea, it’s very livable, especially for old people and young women who feel the cold. I walked all the way to Bihai Huating, where there were very few people and the shops were all shuttered. Then I went down to the shore, followed the water’s edge to Menghuan Wangguo, then turned straight north and walked home. Not tired, but I badly needed to pee.
At the shore I saw a small translucent crab. I picked it up — it had spikes on its sides, so I could only hold it from above and below — and it pinched my index finger with its claw. It was still so small the pinch didn’t hurt, and bubbles came from its mouth. It reminded me that I kept crabs as a child — but those were field-ditch crabs, grown in mud burrows and easy to catch: press down on one from above with your hand, pin both its claws with thumb and forefinger, and it can’t move. I’d take them home and keep them in a water vat. The vat could hold only shallow clear water, plus some river pebbles, and feeding them scraps of steamed bun and earthworms was enough. I kept them from summer into winter, and then set them free.
Today is the twenty-fourth of the lunar month; the tide is out from nine to four, but it isn’t especially low, so not many people are out foraging. A pretty girl and a handsome boy were walking their dog by the shore — the dog a white Samoyed. The two of them were playing on their phones, while the dog was the happiest of all; it even ran into the sea, splashing and leaping about. A middle-aged couple had a black-and-white dog too, breed unknown. They’d come to forage; the man held some kind of sand-sucking gadget, drawing up sand and whatever was in it and then pushing it back out — and look, nothing at all. Under blue sky, emerald sea, and warm sun, the backs of those two and their dog were very sweet. I picked up a few pretty little seashells at the shore and turned them over in my hand, but I didn’t know whom to give these lovely treasures to.
The weather was superb, and the night was perfectly clear too — a sky full of brilliant stars, a patch in the south, a patch in the north, a patch in the east, a patch in the west, many of them especially bright, glittering as if they were very close, near enough to pick with a hand. And as the hours turned and the stars wheeled, I kept opening the window to look up, then opening it again to look — I could never see enough. Trying to photograph them with my phone was futile. This matchless seaside starscape I could only enjoy alone — I couldn’t share it with you, and couldn’t put it into words; what a pity that is. Probably a lot of things in life are like that. What is there by the sea? Stars and freedom — “it can only please me, myself; I cannot take it up and offer it to you.”
2022.11.18
Today is the twenty-fifth of the lunar month, another market day. I bought cucumbers and sweet potatoes — cucumbers to eat raw, sweet potatoes to roast. At the seafood stalls I didn’t plan to buy anything, since I don’t know how to cook most seafood and it’s much pricier than vegetables; I just browsed at a passing glance, and didn’t want to ask the vendors the names and prices of the seafood (I don’t much like socializing, or maybe I’m just too thin-skinned). I only took a lot of photos, and when I got home I used an image-recognition app to look up what they were called. There were abalone; tongue sole (its eyes really do droop); a kind of gudgeon; mullet; sea bass; small sardines; yellow croaker (its belly a little yellow); the sea-devil fish (very ugly, also called the anglerfish); squid (big, red); razor clams (that is, big clams); red-mouthed snails (the lip of the shell a little red); ribbonfish (some flat-strip, some round — I may be wrong); cuttlefish (big head, not cylindrical the way squid are); flounder (flat); swimming crab; eagle-claw shrimp (named for its curved abdomen, shaped like an eagle’s claw; it likes the sandy-mud seabed near shore, hides by day and comes out by night, and is found mainly in the Weihai and Yantai waters — Weihai is a high-yield area); white shrimp; mantis shrimp; turbot; cod; pomfret.
I wanted to buy a bicycle, so I asked friends in the group where bicycles were sold. A friend said a certain compound seemed to have a shop, so I walked over and searched and found nothing; I ended up ordering a new one online — a mountain bike for RMB 300, which I hope will last at least a year. In the evening I used the air fryer a friend had given me to roast a sweet potato for the first time; it came out underdone — I don’t know whether the potato was too hard or the time too short. Outside it was warm during the day, and in the evening the indoor temperature was high too, 18 or 19°C. I’d say November in Rushan is the equivalent of October in Beijing.
2022.11.19
Today was overcast and rainy, the air a little damp. The dampness is heavier than in Beijing, but certainly much lighter than in the south; for a southerner like me it isn’t much of a discomfort — it’s just that a leaden sky can’t help making your mood a little gloomy too. The wind and waves were strong; before I’d even reached the bank I could hear the boom of waves striking the shore, again and again. At the bank, I could see the waves break and leave lines of white foam, like the bubbles when you shake up a beer, gone in a moment as if eaten by the sand. Wave after wave surged up the shore, the roar of the surf entering my ears wave after wave, never pausing for an instant, over and over — the sea truly has inexhaustible energy.
2022.11.20
My cheap mountain bike arrived — at last I have transport. I spent two or three hours in the morning putting it together at home, standing up and crouching down until my back ached. I finally got all the necessary parts on, and in the afternoon I rode out — not bad, at least it could be ridden. Then, at the shore, where the light was brighter, I checked it over carefully and discovered the handlebars were on backwards — left on the right, right on the left. And it could still be ridden! It infuriated me. I rode back in a hurry, and then noticed the chain was hitting the small guard plate, making an irritating scraping sound. I asked a friend and learned the derailleur hadn’t been adjusted right — but the friend didn’t know how to adjust it either and couldn’t explain it clearly, and looking it up online I couldn’t understand it either. I think the Chinese way of thinking has a real problem: they like to leave everything vague. That’s why they’re not good at writing help files — foreigners’ help files are especially detailed and methodical; it’s a cultural difference. In the end I had to lift up the wheel myself and try through the gears one by one, and only then did I begin to figure out the trick. For instance, the dial on the left controls the front gears, the one on the right the rear; the higher the number on the left, the more teeth, and the right is the opposite — push forward and you get the big gears. A big front gear with a small rear gear gives speed and takes effort; a small front gear with a big rear gear gives slowness and saves effort. I’ll ride out again tomorrow and try.
2022.11.21
Gloomy weather, heavy fog, a wall of gray — but not smog. I could feel a touch of chill on my skin, though it wasn’t cold; there was a hint of late autumn, dead plane-tree leaves scattered on the ground, flecking the road. I took the bicycle out for a hard, long ride: first down to the shore, then along Changjiang Road all the way to the gate of the Foreign Affairs University, then from Xueyuan East Road onto Yinjin Avenue, and home along Yinjin Avenue. I measured it with a distance tool — about 21 km. Riding is much more tiring than walking, because when you ride you have to keep pedaling, whereas walking lets you set the pace freely and stop whenever you like. So when I got tired I’d get off and walk a while, and after a little walking I’d recover some strength and ride a little more. As I rode I deliberately ran over the fallen plane leaves on the road — a crisp, crackling sound, very pleasant to the ear. I couldn’t ride down to the water’s edge, only on the road, so I didn’t see much of the sea; I just observed the road — almost no pedestrians, eerily quiet, a few cars, but not many. The sweat made the cold worse, and with hunger and low blood sugar I really felt like lying flat and not moving; but there was nowhere nearby to eat, so I struggled home, quickly cooked rice, and with Lao Gan Ma wolfed down two big bowls — my strength came back, and so did my love of life.
At one point along the shore I could ride right down to the water, and there I saw a gorgeous Tyndall effect: sunlight piercing down through the thick clouds, each beam clearly visible, spilling onto the sea, and at the very center beneath the light lay Gongjia Island. Around the island the sea was all silver-white, and the island sat upon that silver-white as if held up by it; the sight made me blurt out a wow.
2022.11.22
I went to the shore once. Still overcast, a fine drizzle, a light breeze, and the temperature had dropped a little; I felt a slight chill, but tomorrow it’ll warm up again, with a high above 15°C. It won’t be till December that the high drops below 5°C, and the low won’t go below minus 5°C, and the insulation indoors is good. So Rushan isn’t especially cold. At least I’m not too worried about the temperature; I just hope for more clear days. Whether this winter turns out mild or colder than usual, I’ll wait and see.
A former colleague told me how things are in Beijing, and I didn’t know how to respond. I just felt it all had nothing to do with me. I’m an outsider now.
2022.11.23
Splendid weather. Almost no money. Early in the morning the room was bright and I knew it was a big clear day. And it was the thirtieth of the lunar month, a market day, so I hurried up — didn’t brush my teeth or wash my face, nobody’s looking at me anyway — and went out to the market. Happy to death.
The market on a clear day is busier and livelier than on a wet one; clear days just make people happy, energized, positive. I hadn’t decided what to buy, so I looked as I walked, browsing for fun — when I saw something good I made a note of it, and after a full circuit, if somewhere else had something better, I’d buy it there. First, breakfast — with some strength in me the browsing is more fun. The past two times that breakfast place was closed; today the owner was in. I’d learned my lesson about youtiao and didn’t ask for any; I just had a bowl of jellied tofu and a sweet sesame ball (I don’t know what it’s called — anyway it was delicious and cheap, only RMB 2, and the jellied tofu was RMB 2 as well). I bought a napa cabbage, a cauliflower, five bananas, and a bag of caramel sunflower seeds (to crack while watching the World Cup in the evening, to pass the time). I’ve been here nearly a month, and apart from a few oysters once and dumplings twice, I haven’t eaten any meat — I feel as if body and soul have both been purified.
With weather this fine — bright sun, gentle breeze — not to go out and ride would be an insult to heaven. I went out the compound’s east gate, rode north, then turned left and wound around to Yinqiao Street, kept west to Jinyin Avenue, then south past Haiyangsuo Township, then east, riding toward Silver Beach. At the entrance to Chaoxi Lake many people were fishing; the tide was coming in, and the rising water surged into the lake. Quite a few fishing boats were moored at the lake mouth, bobbing up and down — only at high tide can they come in so close. Beyond the lake mouth it was wide open, with Yaodao Island in the distance. Many fighter jets passed overhead, supersonic, roaring — often you hear the sound and the planes are already far past. They were on exercises, firing and dropping bombs, and the ordnance hit Yaodao Island with a bang, throwing up rolling clouds of smoke that drifted away on the wind. I rode east along the coastal walkway; the sea was close at hand, dark-green waves beating ceaselessly on the bank. Many people had set up fishing rods by the shore, so leisurely — “sitting and watching the anglers, with nothing but an idle wish for fish.” A woman sat on the slope looking at the sea, her pure-white Samoyed beside her, leaning against her, keeping her company, also looking at the sea.
Though riding that far was tiring, I’d seen so much beautiful scenery, soaked up so much sun to build my calcium, and breathed so much fresh air that the trip was worth it. If every day could be spent like this, what a happy life it would be!
2022.11.24
No riding today; riding every day is tiring. I hiked to the river mouth at Dishui Bay. As yesterday, the tide was in, and a few people were casting and setting nets to fish. The way they threw the nets was graceful, falling in a pretty circle, but the catch looked tiny; I don’t know how many times they’d have to cast to get a decent haul. I was only a bystander, standing and gazing out for a long while.
It’s the eighth day without a PCR test; I want to see how many days I can hold out. This place really does feel like a ghost town now, and whether or not you test doesn’t matter. But I love this ghost-town atmosphere — so quiet, so empty, so suited to me; I don’t want to deal with other people at all. It’s like reclusion, like a hidden paradise, a retreat from the world — “they did not know there had been a Han dynasty, let alone Wei and Jin”; “the old and the young alike, content and happy.”
2022.11.25
Another big clear day, though with a hazy thin mist, like a silver age. And the wind was strong: I was riding my bicycle in a sun hat when, at a bend, the hat was whipped down onto the tidal flat below the embankment. I had to jump down and, treading on the reeds, pick it up. The gale left my hair a mess. The second of the lunar month — a big ebb tide again — and many people were out foraging. Backlit, I could only see them as swarms of black dots, hoisting or gripping spades, lingering at the water’s edge, gulls wheeling around them.
The electric blanket I’d bought on the discount app for only RMB 40 arrived. I hurried to spread it on the bed, first to take out the damp; after only a few minutes on, I put my hand under it and it felt wonderfully warm. It isn’t all that cold yet, and Shandong isn’t as cold as Beijing, but better safe than sorry — after all, this is the first winter in many years I’ll spend without heating. I can’t wait to find out what a seaside winter is like.
2022.11.26
Today was probably my happiest day since coming to Rushan. The third of the lunar month, a spring tide, a clear day, pleasant temperatures. I watched the sun set, and then the moon set. The sun went down first; as the sky darkened, the new moon came into view in the west too, slowly sinking. I hadn’t expected this — that while watching the sunset you could also watch the moonset. It was the first time in my life, and I think I’ll remember it always. What’s so fine about a sun? But it’s the sun by the sea. What’s so fine about a moon? But it’s the moon by the sea! Listening to the surging waves of the rising spring tide, watching the colors at the edge of the sky shift, feeling the temperature drop fast until my hands went numb with cold — until nightfall, when lights came on along the shore, and more and more stars appeared in the sky, bright and glittering, and a person walked free across the desolate land.
My friends in Beijing weren’t so lucky — these past few days they’ve been fighting for freedom. I don’t know what to say.
The tide was out at noon and in toward evening. At noon many people were foraging near Damuzhi Plaza, digging things up; I went and wandered there too, took some photos and video, but didn’t join in. That really is a regret. Many social activities are hard for a single person to take part in — love, marriage, children; foraging, which needs gear and transport, and where you also have to learn from others, swap tips, socialize. Same as I said before about swimming in the sea: there’s no one to watch your clothes, or to watch out for your safety. I don’t yet know how to solve it; maybe I need to make some friends here — but that’s hard for me.
Since I officially came to Rushan on October 26, it’s been a month. I’ve more or less gotten familiar with life here, and living on my own isn’t much of a problem. Though I have nothing to do each day and occasionally get bored, on the whole I like it very much. There’s plenty of time ahead; take it slow, no rush, no fretting, stay calm, find a rhythm that suits me, discover beauty, and try to create a little beauty too.
There are two spring tides a month, on the third and the eighteenth. If I stay here a year, that’s only twenty-four spring tides I’ll see. I should treasure them.
2022.11.27
Bad weather — strong wind, cloudy. I didn’t go out all day and felt stifled, so after dinner I went to the shore. It was my first time going out at night. The road was actually quite safe — almost no one about, but the streetlights were reasonably bright. While still far from the sea I could hear a rumbling; at first I took it for traffic on the road, the kind of noise you often hear in a big city — but there are hardly any cars here, the road was empty, and the rumbling never stopped; it could only be the sound of the waves. The closer I got to the shore, the more certain I was: it was the surf, which meant the wind and waves were strong just then. The louder it grew, the more excited I became — it was the music of nature, not of man. At the shore I climbed down the embankment onto the sand. The sea was pushing up to within a short distance of the bank, sheets of white foam spreading over it and smoothing the sand, then slowly vanishing, with the surging waves beyond. A pity the dark made it hard to see clearly; when I opened my phone to record, it was even blacker, so I could only open my eyes wide and peer for a while. The gentleness of the sea wind, the surging of the waves, the sweetness of the air — none of these can be conveyed in words or pictures; only being there lets you truly feel them. I feel glad for myself, that I have such a chance and such happiness.
2022.11.28
Rushan has the epidemic after all — on the day before the big temperature drop. But the market was open today, and at the market I heard that a certain compound had been sealed off. I bought some vegetables at random, as if to stock up, but I’m not too worried — this is a ghost town, after all, with hardly a soul around. The temperature was quite high today, 18°C, and the wind wasn’t strong; it even felt a little warm, like early spring. The tide was coming in by the shore, still magnificent. The wind is gentle, the wind is free, and you are free too. “Nothing can stand in the way of your longing for freedom.” The forecast says the temperature will plunge 13 degrees tomorrow, and that there’ll be snow — I don’t know how accurate that is. I hope I get to see the first snowfall by the sea.
2022.11.29
The gale howled. If you walk with it, it pushes you along; if you walk against it, it holds you back. The temperature plunged a dozen degrees at once, and in the afternoon a spell of very fine snowflakes drifted down for a while. Walking on the sand, when I took my hand out to take a photo, it quickly went numbingly cold — then, moments later, hot again. Like when you play with snow: your hands are cold at first, then burning. The wind blew away the haze, the view opened up immensely, the outlines of distant islands and hills were crisp and clear, and the air was clean as if filtered. Only, the wind sent the fine sand skittering low along the ground and out into the sea. Everyone here says Rushan only officially enters winter today. Yes — I’m in Rushan. The seasons here are not the same as Beijing’s; I’ve left Beijing far behind, and I shouldn’t be governed by Beijing anymore. We ought to have our own independent character and way of life, not Beijing’s — not to take Beijing as the only measure.
2022.11.30
The winter is coming. The snow fell very lightly, like dandruff, almost negligible; but the cold was utterly real — especially standing by the sea for half an hour watching the sunset, my face numb with cold, my hands stiff. And so November passed.
I haven’t eaten meat for a month. It’s no problem for me at all. I hate eating meat. I haven’t socialized for a month either; I never feel lonely — I can always find pleasure in other things. Drink? No. Smoke? No. Women? Don’t want them. And I haven’t used shampoo for a month — just washing my hair with clear water; I don’t have to meet anyone, so I don’t need to care about grooming. But if you have a need to socialize, I’m sure that wherever you are you can find people to befriend — there are plenty of young people even in a ghost town.
In Beijing I took a shower every night, like a Guangxi person — the gas gave you hot water the moment you turned it on. But out here the water is heated electrically, and it takes at least half an hour to heat up; and there’s no heating indoors, unlike Beijing, where after a shower you can walk around inside without clothes on. So I generally shower only once every two or three days; if it gets colder I’m afraid it’ll be once a week, like a northeasterner.
Someone asked me: if you don’t work, where does your money come from? I said: I’ve saved tens of thousands of RMB. Then: what will you do later on? I said: the future can wait till the future. My way of living is a bit like the Daoists’ going along with nature, and a bit like a random Brownian motion.
Thoreau wrote in Walden, in “Economy”: “I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.” I hope the road I’m on is the right one too.