A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. — Thoreau, Walden
2022.12.1
Winter arrived all at once — as if it were 18°C only yesterday, or last month, and today it’s already below zero. Indoors it’s noticeably colder too, only 11°C. I close all the doors and windows, put on thick clothes and trousers, boil water to wash my face and soak my feet. The wind off the sea is still fierce, strong enough to wear you down; I pull up the hood of my coat to cover my frozen ears. I really must buy gloves, earmuffs, and a hat. The weather itself is lovely — blue sky, fresh air, wide-open views — and because the tide is out there are no big waves. A few people are fishing at the shore; to come out fishing in cold like this, they must truly love it, or truly have nothing else to do — like me. I walk to the mouth of Chaoxi Lake, where a great many gulls are feeding in the lake; they wheel overhead and suddenly plunge into the water, and you can’t tell whether they’ve caught anything. Then I walk back — about 14 km in all — and somehow I don’t feel tired. I don’t stay for the sunset; I just want to get home and warm up.
2022.12.2
This morning I woke up frozen — in fact I’d woken several times in the night too, all of it from the cold. Why cold? Because the moment I turn over, wind seeps in at the edges, and my feet feel it, and my back feels it. Unless I don’t turn over at all — tuck the corners of the quilt in tight, roll myself up, wrap tight, leave no gaps. But how can you not move once you’re asleep? So I think: I need two quilts, or some clothes piled on top of the quilt, just the way I got through winter in the south as a child. When I got up to use the toilet I glanced at the thermometer: 10°C indoors. It isn’t desperately cold yet, but you can clearly feel waves of chill working their way into your body. Seven years in Beijing, and this is my first winter without central heating, the first time I’ve felt cold while sleeping at night. The difference between the cold in the north and the cold in the south is that the north’s isn’t damp. The damp cold of the south is actually colder; damp plus cold is misery beyond words. The dry cold of the north is mostly outdoors — the wind is so strong it stings your face — while indoors it’s a bit better: turn on the electric blanket, curl up under the quilt, and the quilt is still warm and dry. Not like the south, where it rains and stays overcast so much that the damp gets into everything — the quilt is damp, the mattress pad is damp, the pillow is damp, all of it cold and clammy, and getting into bed takes a great deal of courage; even with an electric blanket you feel the damp steaming off it, like a sauna.
2022.12.3
I woke in the morning and lay in bed playing with my phone, and heard voices out on the compound road — and only then did it dawn on me that today was the tenth, and they were going to market. There was nothing I needed to buy. For someone as poor as me, one napa cabbage is enough to last a week; besides, there’s still plenty of food in the fridge, and I alone can’t possibly get through it in any short time. And as a young man who dislikes socializing, I prefer to do my shopping online without having to talk to anyone. Going to market is just for the fun of joining the crowd. In the end I bought only two sticks of youtiao (RMB 10, enormous, sold by weight) and a bag of roasted sunflower seeds (to crack in the evening while watching the match).
From my observation, the indoor temperature sits between 10 and 13°C. If I sit still the whole time, the backs of my hands slowly go cold and start to go numb; my feet go cold too, of course, though at least socks and shoes protect them. Getting up and moving helps a lot; if there’s sun, I sit on the balcony for a while and warm up quickly. Or I boil water and soak my feet, or go cook and eat something, and that cuts down the freezing. But on the whole it’s far harder than a flat with central heating. Freezing is no good thing; you must choose a place without heating very carefully.
Cooking isn’t much trouble, but washing the dishes freezes your hands. Only after I began doing these things myself did I appreciate how hard it was for my mother, who did all the cooking. Never mind the idea that only by bearing and raising a child can you understand how hard it is to be a parent — these small daily chores are enough to teach you.
2022.12.4
I have to describe the cold again this morning. I woke with a stomachache, couldn’t hold it, had to get to the toilet — and found I’d taken off all my clothes. Probably I’d had the electric blanket on before sleep and got too hot and dry. I felt for my thermal top; it was cold, so I stuffed it under the quilt to warm for a while, then put it on, then the long johns — the long johns are fleece-lined, so those weren’t so bad. Dressed in top and long johns, in a room at 10°C, I went to the toilet. There’s no bathroom heater in there, but luckily I’d bought a toilet-seat cover, so my backside didn’t feel icy when I sat down; it was just that my whole body was exposed to the air and a bit cold, which set me shivering. I finished as fast as I could, went back to the bedroom, turned on the electric blanket, and burrowed under the quilt.
I went to the shore and watched the sunset for a while. There were clouds at the horizon, and the sun was a blur with no clear outline, just a big tangerine-orange smear; a band of orange light lay across the sea, near at hand writhing snake-like with the waves, far out perfectly calm. The wind was cold and numbed the backs of my hands — time to buy gloves. There was almost no one on the beach, bleak and deserted, only the low murmur of the waves. The sun sank slowly in the west while the moon rose in the east, already high. A pity it was too cold; I had to go back.
At ten at night I heard the earth-shaking news: Shandong province would no longer check health codes or PCR certificates. Such a sudden turn — for a moment I didn’t know what to say, as if a whole age had passed. “Three years. Three whole years — do you have any idea how we got through these three years?”
2022.12.5
At noon I went out and took a bus “in person,” to test whether last night’s notice was actually being carried out. At the door of the bus I asked the driver whether I needed to scan a health code. He said offhandedly that I didn’t. So I just scanned the fare code, which was of course much more convenient.
With a great many things, if you don’t experience them yourself but learn about them only through other people’s words or images, at second hand, then all you get is an illusion, a picture in your own head, your own presumption. Only when you go to the place yourself, live through it yourself, can you understand a phenomenon better and more deeply and truly, and discover some truth — instead of just talking big and repeating what everyone else says. I hope I can feel more things for myself, go to more places, see more scenery, and not spend my life stuck in hesitation, second-guessing, and regret.
Take cold. No matter how others describe the cold of the northeast or the cold of Hubei, unless you’ve lived in those places you can never grasp what the cold is actually like there. I’m in Rushan Silver Beach now, and before I came plenty of people told me about the winter cold here — no central heating, “northerners can’t take it, southerners can.” As a southerner who’s lived a long time in the north, I thought I’d surely be fine. But after I arrived I discovered this is yet another kind of cold, another new experience. In the evening, sitting in the living room, the skin left bare — the backs of my hands, my cheeks — feels the cold, and sitting still so long the rest of me slowly goes cold too. I don’t want to just tough it out; by six I’m in bed. There’s an electric blanket on the bed, and I lean back against the headboard, a pillow behind me, and only then does my backside feel the heat of the blanket, and my thighs and calves and soles are wrapped in warmth. The bedroom is small and well sealed, so it’s far more comfortable than the living room.
Everyone feels the cold differently: differently by sex, by height and build, by whether the compound you’re in faces the wind or is sheltered from it, by whether your room faces south or north — many factors shape each individual’s experience, and that experience is his own, unique, unmatched anywhere in the world.
Sometimes I ask myself: am I happy now? By the world’s reckoning, you’re happy only if you eat well, drink well, dress well, live well, play well; if you have family, friends, a lover; if your career prospers and your home life is happy. But I have none of that. By that reckoning I’m not a happy man. I can only count as a calm man, my heart like still water. Do I not want worldly happiness? It seems I truly don’t need it. I like to be alone, to quietly waste my own life, and I don’t want to enter the clamorous, seething world. I’m afraid of crowds, unwilling to deal with people, unwilling to get caught up in love and hate and passion. But if pursuing inner calm, non-action, plain living, and reclusion is also a kind of happiness — then I am happy.
2022.12.6
It’s been clear for days on end — what wonderful sunshine! At night it’s only 10°C indoors, but by day it rises to 13°C. I carry a chair out, sit in the sun, close my eyes, tilt my head back, and feel the light shine and bake on me, warm through and through — truly comfortable, truly content. One of life’s pleasures! For a moment I thought: why not buy a flat here and live here forever.
The sun sets earlier every day; if I’m late I miss the loveliest red disc and the gentlest afterglow. By the time I reached the shore there were only ten minutes left, and I could only watch the sun go quickly from a full circle to a half to a quarter and then vanish. The first twenty and first thirty minutes actually matter just as much; halfway there I’d already seen the gorgeous colors at the horizon, though the sun itself was hidden by the buildings nearby. I hurried toward the sea, annoyed at having missed the most beautiful moment. Those last ten minutes aren’t unbeautiful either, but to see the whole thing — the last thirty minutes before it sets — would leave a person with no regret at all.
2022.12.7
Every day this week the policy changes — the reopening is nearly total, and at least travel between provinces is no longer blocked. There is a limit to people’s patience, and after a long stretch of struggle, dawn has finally come, and light with it. Three years, like a dream. A nightmare, of course; some people will never wake from it. The play is about to end, and I need to think hard about where I go next.
Today I reached the shore at four, twenty minutes earlier than yesterday, and so I saw a lovelier sunset and a lovelier sea. The setting sun laid a clear orange-yellow path of light across the water, from my feet all the way to the far horizon; the red disc hung just above the horizon, sinking slowly. The brilliant gold of the sea and the soft pink of the sky brought a deep calm; it was beauty beyond compare. The waves roared like an accompaniment to the scene. And in the east there was a lady-like full moon; at first, while the sky was still light, the moon was faint, but as the sky darkened it grew more and more prominent, until it looked like a yolk — a yellow moon. The moon is beautiful too, a cool beauty, unlike the burning beauty of the sun; both are beautiful. The moon at my left hand, the sun at my right, the sea between them, and sea wind and sea waves — all the fairest sights in nature before my eyes. I cannot call it anything but happiness.
Then I thought of the lockdown lifting; on the way home, under that jade-plate of a moon, I hopped across the zebra crossing like a happy little rabbit. The world has finally gone back to normal, and people can move about freely again, the way they did in 2018. I hope we can all move forward.
2022.12.8
Going to market no longer holds the ignorance and novelty it did when I first arrived; I now know the layout and the workings of the market very well, and I no longer go like Granny Liu, not knowing what to buy and afraid to speak up. I buy whatever I’m short of, or lay in some food in advance. I’ve seen plenty of seafood by now. When I’ve got what I want I go home — I can’t eat much on my own, and one market every five days is more than enough.
The sunset over the sea is as beautiful as ever; I’ve seen a lot of them, but a walk by the sea always lifts your mood. And the full moon of the fifteenth — round as can be, red and yellow, hanging above the bare branches. It really is getting cold, though: bare branches, a lone sparrow. Time to hurry home.
2022.12.9
After the full reopening, at first I thought people testing positive were far away from me — there are so few people here, after all. But soon someone who’d come here said he’d tested positive and was quarantining at home. I won’t even go into the situation in Beijing; my sister back home has caught it too. So the virus is right on my doorstep. Since I agreed with the reopening to begin with, I have to bear its risks and consequences. Accept it calmly, that’s all.
The cheap upright cylindrical space heater I’d bought online — the kind that blows warm air — has arrived. I put it in the bedroom and turn it on before bed, let it blow hot air for a while, and the bedroom warms up a little. Tomorrow the temperature drops again, and January will be colder still; I hope these things (electric blanket, hot-water bottle, space heater) will let me get through the winter a bit more comfortably. When I sit in the living room I have to wear a lot of clothes, soak my feet, drink hot water, and hold the hot-water bottle — it’s like winter in Hubei. Same as with the reopening: since it was my own choice, I have to bear it. Hold on one more month and it’s New Year’s; hold on another and it’s the Spring Festival; hold on another and spring has come and the flowers are blooming.
2022.12.10
Too cold, the wind too strong; the dark clouds raced across the sky like black horses, like beacon smoke. “The horses of the fields, of the dust which quivers in the sunbeams, and of living things as they are blown against one another by the air” — Zhuangzi. Another cold snap is coming, so I didn’t go out all day. Standing on the balcony looking at the compound, I felt it was even bleaker; I don’t know how many people are still here, or how they’re getting through the winter, or where the stray dogs and cats have gone to hide.
I’ve discovered an even simpler way to eat. Boil a packet of instant noodles — Shin Ramyun, with a very punchy seasoning packet — tear in a few leaves of napa cabbage, crack in two eggs: like a hotpot, tasty and nutritious, steaming hot, enough to make you sweat as you eat. The key thing is that you don’t have to wash a rice cooker, a bowl, or a pot. Someone will surely say, your life is too miserable. Yes — this is only my life. I don’t dress it up, and I don’t recommend it to anyone.
2022.12.11
I’ve invented yet another, even simpler way to eat: bake three potatoes in the air fryer (30 minutes) and eat them with pickles for lunch. The potatoes come out soft and mealy, tasty enough, with plenty of sugar and starch; the skins peel off easily, and when you break one open the yellow inside is so inviting, fragrant and hot, better than rice, and so simple and easy to make. With the pickles you get your salt too — really, it suits a lazybones like me perfectly. I’ve baked sweet potatoes before, but they’re too thick and the heat doesn’t reach the middle. From now on I’ll eat more potatoes.
The sun came out, and sunbathing is so pleasant. The moment the sun comes out this place is paradise. What could be happier than sitting in the sun? I needn’t go into the health benefits of sunlight. I hope everyone has enough time and space to get some sun and stay healthy.
In the evening I went to the shore for the sunset; walking back in the dark, the moon not yet risen, the sky was full of stars. In every direction there was one or two especially bright ones, with fainter ones scattered among them — but if you fix on the faint ones, look carefully, blink a few times, they come clear, and gradually you find more and more stars hidden in the canopy. I think looking up at the stars must be good for your eyesight, for your eyes, and indeed for your whole body and mind. A pity so few people look up at the stars; and with all the pollution in the big cities it’s so hard to see them, and people get more and more twisted.
I cleaned up the apps on my phone. I deleted the food-delivery app, because there’s no takeout here. I deleted the bike-sharing app, because there are no shared bikes here (and I remembered I still had RMB 299 in deposit on it, so I pulled that out fast). The ride-hailing app can go too, since there are no taxis here — but I might need to travel one day, so I’ll keep it for now. To leave the big city is to leave mainstream life. But must the big city hold your life hostage? You’re a small-town kid; didn’t you always long to go back to the countryside and live a pastoral, reclusive life? You won’t forget that.
2022.12.12
Another clear day, and again I sat on the balcony in the sun for a long time. Everyone in the big cities is talking about testing positive, but it’s very calm here, and I believe that as long as I don’t leave Silver Beach I won’t test positive. There was wind, and it was a bit cold, so I only watched the sunset at the shore for a short while. The forecast says Weihai will get heavy snow again tomorrow — Weihai only, not Rushan. Weihai had big, beautiful snow a few days ago, while here there was only the odd flake, as good as none. I can’t help envying Weihai a little. But the rent in Weihai is expensive too.
By evening, in every building (seven floors, three units per floor with six households each, so forty-two households planned) only two or three households had a light on. Looking from my window at the building opposite, I couldn’t help feeling a desolate bleakness; to say this is living in a ghost town is no exaggeration at all. I’m curious about the people who’ve stayed on for the winter — what stories they must have. Are they like me, fond of the silence here?
2022.12.13
Sun, sun, and more sun. Though the wind was roaring outside, on the balcony I was so bathed in light I couldn’t open my eyes; my face was warm and glowing, and my clothes took on a pleasant sun-warmed smell. I leaned back in the chair, put my feet up on the iron railing, tilted my head back and half-closed my eyes, and the sunlight poured over my face; my skin seemed able to absorb it and turn it into energy. Sunlight is my opium.
Because the wind was so strong and the temperature low I didn’t go to the shore, but standing on the balcony looking west I could make out a scrap of unobstructed pink afterglow. If only there were no buildings in front; if only I lived in the building closest to the sea. Still, every day is worth remembering. Like the cold here. Like today’s smog, the worst on the Jiaodong peninsula (someone said it was the Monday return to work, with a lot of heavy-industry plants starting up again). Like the market that comes every five days (I bought potatoes, eggs, preserved eggs, bananas, and pickles). Idle as it is, a person has to rest — you can’t work endlessly; you have to stop and be still and feel this world and this universe. The sun and the wind, the moon and the waves, the dawn glow and the evening glow aren’t set out there for nothing; their existence has meaning.
2022.12.14
I saw snow at the shore — from a distance I noticed some reflective lines along the beach, and up close I found they were snow and ice, like leftover drifts about to melt, but very little of it, only in a few places right at the water’s edge; nowhere else — not on the sand, not on the embankment, not in the grass. I strongly suspect this wasn’t snow that fell from the sky but just seawater frozen into ice. I can’t explain it, though. Taking photos and videos at the shore, my hands go numb with cold in no time — but if I wear gloves I can’t press or swipe the phone screen. (About this snow at the shore, I’ve had a new idea: it’s the foam that waves leave on the beach at high tide, frozen.)
Getting up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, you feel the cold in the room. In Beijing there was central heating and the flat was warm; getting up and sitting on the toilet you never felt cold. But now there’s no heating, the room is only around 10°C, you can plainly feel the cold on your body, and your bare backside on the seat knows the cold too — you just want to finish as fast as you can and go burrow back under the quilt. People used to central heating will surely find a place without it hard going — though if they come from the south they may not feel the cold.
Why did I come to this place to freeze? I’m freezing, eating poorly, drinking poorly, with no place to play — but I don’t have to go to work, don’t have to listen to some bullshit boss spout bullshit and push me around with his blind orders and pointless upheavals, and I have no work anxiety. This is the price, I suppose. If you want freedom you pay the price, live a hard and simple life, and sometimes even refuse to fear death. Freedom belongs to the few.
2022.12.15
The simplest thing is still to boil noodles — dried noodles especially, cheaper even than instant noodles. Same as with instant noodles: tear in two or three leaves of napa cabbage, crack in two eggs, add a little salt and MSG (no need to add anything if it’s instant noodles, they come with seasoning), boil it a while, and dinner is done. Lunch is simple too: when I don’t want to cook a dish I steam two eggs — beat them, add salt, light soy sauce, and oyster sauce, and put them in the rice cooker to cook along with the rice; when the rice is done the eggs are done. I can safely say eggs are what I eat most: fried, steamed, boiled, scrambled. Monks and nuns apparently don’t even eat eggs, but I count them as vegetarian too. I’ve stayed away from meat all along — not that I dislike it, I just want to keep my life as simple as possible. There’s also a bit of competitiveness in me, a wish to seem different from everyone else.
Washing the pot really is cold; after washing the pot and chopsticks (I eat the noodles straight from the pot, no bowl) I have to soak my hands in hot water for a while. In Beijing I never cooked, and never knew how hard cooking and washing up were. Now at last I know. But I also can’t go blaming others — “Why don’t you cook?”, “Why do you order takeout every day?”, “Why don’t you eat a bit healthier?” — that’s the same as asking why the starving don’t just eat meat. If I hadn’t quit, hadn’t left Beijing, hadn’t come here to lie flat, I might never have learned these plain truths.
My mother called to ask whether I’d tested positive; they still don’t know I’ve left Beijing, so I could only say I hadn’t. Back home almost all of them have been infected, and there’s nothing I can do to help; I can only comfort them, tell them not to worry so much and not to be too afraid — say a lot of things that don’t matter. I have to keep up the act, not give away where I am. I only hope everyone gets safely through this cold winter.
Some people say I ought to go back and look after my parents. To my mind that’s as rude as “you ought to get married,” “you ought to have children,” “you shouldn’t quit your job with nothing lined up.” I don’t care whether your intentions are good (your idea of good); no one — parents included — has the right to tell other people how to live or to hand out advice. And especially, don’t try to tell us nine-headed birds what to do — we’re the most contrary of all. Maybe for my face-conscious parents (like most Chinese parents) my leaving Beijing and going back to the countryside damages their dignity — do you understand? Of course, you could also say it’s I who care about face. Either way, this is my business, not yours.
2022.12.16
I happened to see a news item about Sayram Lake in Xinjiang, which has entered its ice-flood season and is showing the “ice shove” phenomenon: layer upon layer of translucent thin ice pushed up onto the shore, giving off a clear, pleasing sound as the sheets knock and scrape against one another. It suddenly came back to me — the snow I’d seen at the shore the day before yesterday. I realized that what I’d seen wasn’t snow at all but sheets of ice, the sea’s own ice flood. That cleared up my puzzlement: why would there be snow at the shore? So in the afternoon I went back to the shore. The “snow” was still there in the same place (maybe not the same snow as the day before yesterday — maybe it had formed again since), and there was quite a lot of it elsewhere too. I crouched down to look closely, picked up a handful and rubbed it between my fingers, and confirmed it was ice. Very thin ice, transparent, no bigger than a fingernail — but packed and piled together and spreading out, it forms a white, foam-like sheet of ice, and from a distance you take it for snow. Only up close can you see it’s ice. Stepping on it doesn’t give the crunch you get from snow but a clinking, rasping sound of broken ice — much crisper, and pleasanter to hear.
So the broken ice on the beach can be explained this way: at high tide the advancing edge of the seawater freezes, just like the ice floods on Sayram Lake and along the Yellow River. Ice-flood blocks are fairly large and thick, but seawater freezes differently from lake or river water; the ice it forms is smaller and thinner, and it piles up on the shore like snow; at low tide, because the beach is uneven, some of the ice is left behind, usually in the hollows, while on the smoother stretches the ice goes back out to sea with the ebbing tide, and the next high tide brings more ice in.
The water in the fish ponds and the fountain pool had frozen over. I pressed the ice in the fountain pool with my thumb — quite thick, two or three centimeters. In the evening the living room dropped to 9°C, the lowest since I came here, and clearly much colder than yesterday. The forecast says Weihai will get a blizzard tomorrow and Rushan light snow. I hope it really comes down — Rushan missed out the last two times. Rushan lies south of Weihai with mountains in between, and Rushan’s sea faces south while Weihai’s faces north, so the climates of the two places differ a good deal. They all say Weihai is a “snow nest”; if you want romance, if you want to see more snow scenes, I suggest you go to Weihai, not here to Rushan.
2022.12.17
Today was the coldest yet. The forecast showed -8 to -3; by day it was -5 outdoors with a wind chill of -15; at seven in the evening it was -8 outside, wind chill -17; and indoors the temperature had dropped a degree from yesterday, to 8°C. Why is the “feels like” temperature so much lower than the air temperature? Because the wind is so strong, of course. This must be a trait common to all seaside cities. Yet Rushan and Weihai are very different. As forecast, Weihai really did get a heavy blizzard, while here in Rushan the sky stayed clear for miles, and only in the evening did a little snow begin to fall.
I hadn’t planned to go out — I was afraid of the cold — but at half past three in the afternoon I mustered my courage, put on a lot of clothes, put on gloves and earmuffs, and walked down to the shore. On the empty streets you can cut across as you please and ignore the traffic rules; you can even stand in the middle of the road taking photos and no one cares. I love a city with so few people — quiet, free. The tide had gone out very, very far, exposing a wide stretch of beach. This was the first time I’d seen the tide recede so far; the sand further in was cleaner and smoother and firmer than the sand nearer the road, like virgin ground. I walked to the place closest to the water and followed the shore west, toward the setting sun. I was the only one on the beach, like a lord surveying his domain. Is there anything happier than this? Watching the sunset, the clouds, the waves; listening to the surf, the wind, my own footsteps; feeling the cold, and the odd snowflake drifting onto my face — I felt it would be worth dying here.
The sea is different every day. The sunset and the afterglow are different every day. You and I and he are different every day. As that bit of chicken soup goes: “Be brave — you’ll never be younger than you are today.” Cherish every day; go out even when it’s cold. Today’s cold isn’t tomorrow’s cold, and once missed it’s missed. What tomorrow’s cold will be like — well, that can wait till tomorrow.
2022.12.18
The weather today is much better than yesterday — no wind, so the wind chill isn’t so low. Rushan’s climate is very different from Weihai’s: a blizzard there, nothing here. Actually it did snow, just not near the compound where I live. In other words, even within Rushan the microclimates of different areas differ greatly. Rushan’s town center got fairly heavy snow, while out at Silver Beach the east end got a little and the west end got none. So the particular is often tedious to explain, and people don’t like hearing it; they like generalities and universals, and even reject the particular.
Today is the twenty-fifth of the lunar month. Getting up to use the toilet, I glanced at the thermometer on the air conditioner in the living room: 6°C, the lowest I’ve seen. It didn’t gradually climb to 10 until midday, and by evening it was falling again. I lazed in bed a long time, but in the end got up and went out to market. I bought apples, eggs, and cauliflower. There were far fewer people at the market, and the hawkers’ cries were few and scattered.
In the middle of the night, between watching the match, I went out to the living-room balcony to look up at the sky — and was stunned by the dazzling stars. The whole sky sparkled like diamonds, laid out clear before your eyes: what a perfect, clear, post-snow starscape! I got out my phone to photograph it, and then fetched my camera, and though I could capture some trace of it, it was nothing compared to what the eye saw. I cursed being nearsighted, and yet counted myself lucky not to be too old and farsighted — if I waited until I was old to come to the shore and look at these stars, what would be the point? Many things can’t wait — winning freedom, going out to discover beauty. Wait until we’re old and we truly won’t regret it.
2022.12.19
Today I saw a breathtaking afterglow. Before this it was either no cloud, only the sun setting, or cloud too thick to show any red; today there was cloud — not thick, just thinly spread, exactly right — and so there came a pink glow of extraordinary tenderness and dreaminess, refreshing to the heart. And at the shore the wind was light and it wasn’t cold; I stood there watching for a long, long time and took a great many photos and videos, until night fell. Is there anything happier or more romantic than watching the sunset and the afterglow by the sea? I can’t think of one. This happiness will stay with me all my life.
Last night I stayed up watching the Argentina–France match. It was magnificent — twice a lead, twice pulled back level, then extra time, and at last a brutal penalty shootout; and in the end, with the goalkeeper Martínez’s miraculous help, Messi got what he wanted, leading Argentina to the title again after thirty-six years. Every Argentine and every Argentina supporter boiled over, wild with joy, eyes full of tears. It was an unforgettable night, a night destined to go down in history. I’m not a real football fan, but even I was stirred by the stadium and the commentary and couldn’t settle down for a long time. I realized I hadn’t been that excited in ages. I lack passion. I have no great sorrow and no great joy, and no great anger either; I’ve become a man whose heartbeat might as well be a flat line. Why I’ve become like this, I can’t work out. Why do foreigners get so excited and happy and worried and sad over football — not just a team, their whole country shakes with it. And us? What do we Chinese love, what do we pursue? And as for me personally, what am I living for? Why can’t I sob, why can’t I laugh out loud? Did I die at thirty? Who made all this — me, or the culture? History, or the present? Can I change it, and how? (The character officially chosen as 2022’s “character of the year” was wěn, “steady” — and that tells you what Chinese philosophy is and what Chinese people are after.)
2022.12.20
It’s been cold lately and I hadn’t been out on the bicycle at all; today it warmed up — 9°C at the day’s warmest — so I needed some exercise. From my compound to Hanghai Shengdu in Haiyangsuo (the compound with those high-rises that block the sunset whenever I photograph it), the distance measured 10 km, and 10 km back the same way — 20 km in all. Because I got up late I hadn’t eaten at midday, only a piece of bread, and on the way back I was so hungry I was nearly anemic and thought I couldn’t go on. Luckily there’s a small market on Weishanhu Road in front of Yinlong Bay (the Yinlong Bay night market people here talk about, which opens after three in the afternoon). I bought five red-date cakes (RMB 6.8) and ate two of them pushing the bike along, which restored some of my strength — otherwise I really feared I’d starve to death at the roadside. On the road I did see a little tabby cat that had been hit and killed. I’d meant to pick up its body and put it in the grass, but when I looked closer its tongue was hanging out and its eyeballs had burst — too horrible to look at. I hesitated over and over and in the end left it where it was.
A few small details of daily life: wash the pot and bowls and chopsticks and plates right after a meal, don’t leave them till the next day; I haven’t used shampoo on my hair for nearly two months; when I sleep I pile the clothes I’ve taken off on top of the quilt so it doesn’t leak wind; heating the water electrically for a bath takes an hour; I’ve been vegetarian for nearly two months, though I eat a lot of eggs; Shandong vegetables are ridiculously cheap; the apples are big and sweet and come in a great many varieties.
The forecast says Weihai will get heavy snow again tomorrow — a “snow nest” that truly lives up to its name. A pity Rushan can’t get any; all I can do is envy it. I console myself: I’ve been through four winters in the northeast — what kind of snow haven’t I seen, what kind of cold haven’t I seen.
2022.12.21
This morning a question came to me: why do Shandong people love steamed buns so much? So I looked it up, and found a very simple reason. Mantou are made from wheat ground into flour, and Shandong grows mostly wheat; wheat is a crop that needs long hours of sunlight, and Shandong’s geography and sunshine suit it. Wheat is a foreign species, brought in from West Asia. It struck me all at once that sunshine decides a great many things — no sun, no life on earth; the sun is the source of all cause and effect. Laozi said: The Dao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. The sun is the Dao. Getting plenty of sun does people a great deal of good. In Beijing people fret over housing, and in the end it’s all about sunlight too — better housing has better sunlight. What people compete for is sunlight.
The sunlight today was superb, the sky especially blue, the air crisp; the wind was a bit strong but not cold, and on your face it felt only cool. Standing at the shore, the tide was coming in, the sea glittering, the waves beating ceaselessly against the bank, the surf surging, leaving line after line of white foam. After the sea wind I went home and lay lazily in the chair in the corner of the balcony, yawning, letting the sunlight brush across my face.
2022.12.22
It snowed — it finally snowed. It had snowed before, but never settled on the ground, so it hardly counted. Today was a proper snow: the ground turned white and flakes were still falling. A little after seven in the morning I saw the white outside the window, threw on my clothes — never mind that I’d just woken and hadn’t even lain in — and went out to the shore. The moment I got downstairs I saw a thin layer of snow over the compound, with no footprints on it yet; I made the first. There were no pedestrians on the road either, only the tracks of vehicles. When I reached the shore the sky had cleared: blue overhead, white sand nearby, black sand further off. Because of the low tide there were — would you believe it — five, six, seven, eight people out foraging the shallows; to dare go into the water on a day this cold, they’re truly brave. I hurried onto the sand and walked west along the shore. On snow almost no one had trodden, I walked across the flat, broad sand, surrounded by snow and sea — sea on my left hand, snow on my right. My shadow was stretched long by the morning sun, striking against the white, and behind me a trail of footprints turned into a road.
The snow had stopped, but looking at the drifts on the sand I was content. This is snow by the sea — people in Sanya and in the Maldives will never see it. Perhaps because it’s the seaside, the wind is strong and the clouds can’t settle; they’re always being blown away and scattered. When the dark clouds come over, snow falls for a while, dancing wildly as it comes down; when the clouds pass and the sun comes out again, the snow stops.
Today is the Winter Solstice, and it snowed too — a truly lucky day. From now on the days will grow longer and the nights shorter. In other words, there’ll be more and more time to enjoy daylight. I walked to a fast-food place to buy dumplings, and the owner said they’d stopped making them. Ah well — no dumplings for me.
2022.12.23
Today is the first day of the twelfth lunar month, but there’s a market. Why? Because the eleventh lunar month has only twenty-nine days, not thirty, so the market was pushed back a day. Pathetically few people came to market, and many stalls didn’t even open. I only bought eggs (twelve for RMB 11.5), potatoes (six for RMB 4.4), and tomatoes (five for RMB 7). The man who sells the big sweet apples didn’t come, so I didn’t get any.
Getting up this morning I saw ice had formed on the north-facing windowpanes — it really is cold. Strong wind, and a spell of snow. But by midday and afternoon the sky had cleared, and I sat on the balcony in the sun for a long time, though the cold wind kept howling outside. The cold here is mostly caused by the wind; it freezes me into staying indoors, holed up at home. I didn’t go to the shore either, and the sun set alone, and night came down.
Reopening or not, it’s miserable either way — positive cases everywhere. I’m torn over whether to travel at the end of the year, but I’m too afraid, I’ve no courage. Life — you’re always worrying about this and worrying about that, and in the end you get nothing done and the years slip away.
2022.12.24
People in the ghost town have been infected too. Some say they tested positive after one trip to the supermarket; some say they tested positive after eating at a restaurant; some have no idea how they got it. The grocery app has started canceling orders and won’t deliver. Word is that a lot of couriers have tested positive. I remember I have a parcel that hasn’t arrived in ten days — it’s been stuck in Qingdao, and the official line is that 500,000 people a day are being infected there. At last Beijing has quieted down, and Shandong is starting; it’s getting closer and closer to me. My “phantom-Covid” anxiety is getting worse — my throat always feels a little itchy.
I took a bath in the afternoon. Bathing is lovely. The last one was on Monday, five days ago — but it’s cold, with no central heating and no bathroom heater, and heating the water takes an hour, so you can’t stay in long. So I’d advise friends thinking of renting here to decide carefully whether you want heating, and to check whether the bathroom has a heater and ventilation, and whether the water heater is safe and works well. After the bath my hair was fluffy and looked like a lot of hair — though my hair curls as soon as it grows long, and I have rather a lot of gray.
I hadn’t gone to the shore yesterday, so today I had to. The clouds were thick and there wasn’t much of a pretty afterglow, but the last light of the sun is calming all the same. Tonight is Christmas Eve, the foreigners’ grandest festival, yet here it’s utterly silent, far from all the noise and bustle. On the way home the streetlamps weren’t even on — broken, or just forgotten? — and in the pitch dark I faded into the darkness.
2022.12.25
Today is the third of the twelfth lunar month: a spring tide, and a new moon. Once the sun went down the new moon slowly appeared, curved like a hook, bright as snow — though the new moon sets in the west too. Standing at the shore as the spring tide rose, I watched the last light of the sun and then the new moon, and the day was worth it.
2022.12.26
Sitting indoors I heard a cat wailing downstairs, and hurried to poke my head out to look for it, but couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and the sound went on and on. Walking along the road I heard a dog screaming from the waste ground, as if dogs were fighting; the cries were so piercing and so innocent. Magpies had built a nest in a street tree by the road — the tree was so short that a person could jump up and reach the nest. The moon of the fourth rises later than the moon of the third, and it’s just as cold and clear; walking to the compound gate I saw the moon’s shadow cast on the glass windows of the ghost town’s empty flats. Standing below the building, I was caught by the scene, and couldn’t help thinking of Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, and of The Razor’s Edge, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale. All of these books tell me: “Freedom, freedom — freedom is the most precious thing in the world!”
2022.12.27
The weather today was especially good, no wind; a lot of people came to market, and I was in a good mood for it. I bought eggs (twenty-six, RMB 23 — RMB 8 a jin to start with, free-range, but these were the last of them and the owner said he’d let me have them at RMB 7.5), apples (six, RMB 6 a jin, RMB 24), a napa cabbage (one, RMB 4), potatoes (eight, RMB 8.7), long green peppers (ten, RMB 5), and caramel sunflower seeds (a little over a pound, RMB 15). Someone said these prices are higher than where they live. But they surely don’t know how good Shandong’s vegetables are. Take Shandong apples — there are a dozen or more varieties, but outsiders only know Red Fuji; their idea of apples is idiotic. And when I shop I hardly ever ask the price; I trust that the old farmers won’t cheat me — besides, you can’t read the scale anyway, and these vegetables are cheap to begin with. So I just pick the ones that look best: the cabbage fresh, the potatoes firm, the eggs enormous (often double-yolked when you crack them), the peppers a vivid green, the apples as red as a Tibetan girl’s cheeks, one as big as your head. And the sunflower seeds are my snack.
2022.12.28
Nothing to do today; I sat in the sun at home all day, feet propped up on the balcony, playing with my phone in the sunshine — truly the life of an immortal. Or, of course, you could call it giving up, being a listless no-hoper, having lost all ambition. But isn’t the whole point of working hard to be able to live at ease? I only went out at half past three, to watch the sunset at the shore. Today’s sunset wasn’t much different from yesterday’s. With no clouds there’s no sky full of red glow, only a washed-clean blue sky and the last light. Especially after the sun goes down, the horizon gradually shows a gradient, from deep blue to orange-red; lights dot the coast; the sea is dyed pale orange, the sand black, the moon pure white. In short, the colors at the horizon and on the sea change little by little with the passing minutes, and my poor vocabulary struggles to describe them. When I got home it was already dark, and I saw that two more households in the building opposite had gone; then I realized that yesterday I’d seen one of them putting up weather-sealing film — they were leaving, sealing up the flat, and they left today. When the other one left I don’t know. New Year’s is coming, the Spring Festival is coming; they’ve all gone home for the holidays, and only I have stayed — me and a few odd young people lying flat. In winter this place is a ghost town in the truest sense. Before long, on New Year’s Eve, I really can’t imagine what it will look like.
2022.12.29
This evening there was a little thin cloud at the horizon, turned pink by the last light — quite beautiful, soft and gentle, intoxicating. I was dressed warmly and there was no wind, so I didn’t feel the cold. Having lived in the northeast and in Beijing, I find Shandong’s cold really is a notch milder. Without a job you lose all sense of the week; all you have are the market every five days and the spring tide every fifteen. Because the day before yesterday was the fifth and I went to market — rather like a Monday at work — I mistakenly thought today was Wednesday, when it was actually Thursday. My body clock no longer knows what a seven-day week is. I’ve become abnormally attentive to the weather and the temperature, to whether the wind is blowing, to the waxing and waning of the moon, the rise and fall of the tide; as for what day of the week it is, I couldn’t care less.
2022.12.30
Good weather, so I rode out for a wander. Out west by Chaoxi Lake there were even fewer people — no one on the road, no cars, empty and open, nothing to see. On the curb to the south there was still snow from eight days ago, unmelted; that shows you how deserted it is. The compounds by the lake are among the earliest built in Silver Beach, and clearly much more dilapidated than the compounds in the center and east: peeling outer walls, and the buildings gloomy inside, giving off a chill that frightened me as I passed. I pedalled quickly to where there was sunlight, to the shore, and only then felt at ease.
In the evening I was scrolling a video site and came across a funny clip with a comical male voiceover: “Come to Weihai for New Year’s. I get to Weihai and find: no one at night, no one by day, no one at the shore — nothing but sea, and more sea, sand, footprints, and one strange creature (a razor clam, which outsiders probably wouldn’t recognize).” It had me in stitches. Yes — Weihai simply has very few people, only the elderly.
2022.12.31
On the last day of 2022 I went to the shore again. A pity there was some smog, but the temperature was all right, no wind, and the beach was still wide open and quiet, like a wasteland. I strolled over the wasteland, emptying my mind, thinking of nothing, only looking at the vast landscape. Life is like a wasteland too: fewer and fewer people around you, until only you are left, head down, walking on in silence. Even in a crowd, where you don’t look lonely, you are in fact lonelier than when you’re alone. Only by getting away from people can you find yourself again.
December: from still being under lockdown at the start, to the full lifting, to wave after wave of positive-case peaks that are still surging now. Three years of suffering are over at last, and a new wave of suffering has arrived; no one can master the tide of history. In this it’s unlike the sea: the tides of the sea are so regular, calculable to the very day, minute, and second, while a person caught in the tide of history is like a log in a great river or a great sea, entirely without control, able only to drift with the current and huddle together for warmth — how tiny we are. But how does a person become himself, how does he keep from being swept along by evil, how does he stay brave and upright and kind? At thirty-odd, I’m at a loss.
Summing up 2022, I did only one thing: I left Beijing, came to the seaside, got away from the big city, and took up a life of leisure — of giving up, if you like. Every day I watch the sea, watch the sunset, sit in the sun, sleep, and don’t worry about anything outside. It has all been worth it. Life is short; enjoy it while you can. I hope 2023 will also be free of troubles, with good health and nothing but happiness. Goodbye, 2022.