When a man finds himself at odds with the world, he is close to finding himself. — Hermann Hesse, Demian
2023.1.1
Holidays are a time of rest and pleasure given to people who work. To me, who doesn’t work, a holiday means nothing — it’s just the same as any other day. And to the sun, every day on earth is the same too: “Heaven and earth do not act from any wish to be benevolent; they deal with all things as the dogs of grass are dealt with.” To a person whose unit of time is the day rather than the year, New Year’s Day is nothing but one more day — he has lived one day more, not one year more. Take animals and plants: what does New Year’s Day mean to them? What sets man apart from the beasts and the trees is probably a certain sense of ceremony, of taking things seriously — believing that holidays mean something, that love means something, that photographs mean something, that keeping a diary means something, that living means something. And that gives him a reason to go on living.
So what kind of life really counts as a life? When I lived in Beijing, I thought life anywhere else didn’t count. On the phone with my parents I’d often say, “Things in Beijing are different from the small places” — meaning, what kind of life is that, in a small place; how could you possibly understand me; I can’t be bothered to explain my life in Beijing to you; life in Beijing is the greatest and most glorious there is. I admired life in Tokyo, New York, Paris — and yet looked down on life in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, just as in Beijing I looked down on life in a small county town. Now I’ve left Beijing and live in a sparsely peopled, out-of-the-way, unhurried little town, and I’ve thought a lot. Wherever you are, life in every place is real and equal — there is no higher and lower. Every person’s life is an epic. You’re grinding it out in Beijing, I’m giving up in Rushan — there’s no difference between us, only two different kinds of poem.
So I’ve always believed that a person should live in different places rather than be trapped for a long time in one. Trapped in one place, his spirit sinks into the well-bottom view and becomes extremely narrow, just as these three years of the pandemic have left everyone half-stupefied. Go out bravely, look more at the world outside, and only then does a person become open-minded and broad and tolerant. My life in Rushan, too, will nourish and enrich and open me up. May the new year bring me happiness, health, more knowledge, more places to go, and a fuller self.
2023.1.2
Here at Rushan Silver Beach — or in any small county town or small place in China — it’s utterly unlike the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen. There’s no cinema here (Rushan has only two, both in the town center), and no bars, no karaoke, no cafés, no art galleries, no McDonald’s, no KFC. Nobody here uses food delivery, and nobody rides a shared bike. There’s no subway, not even taxis. After seven in the evening it’s pitch-dark outside, and I’ve long since crawled into bed. This place is at odds with all the noise and clamor and showing-off on social media.
People ask me, don’t you find it boring? For me, not boring at all — I like the quiet, without clamor. I don’t need socializing, and I don’t need the cinema. I don’t drink, so I don’t go to bars; I don’t drink coffee, so I don’t go to cafés; I don’t go to karaoke either — I can just sing at home by myself. Art galleries are too highbrow for me; I’m just a bumpkin. I can do without McDonald’s and KFC — and honestly I don’t eat meat now, not a scrap of it, I’m fully vegetarian. Food delivery I can quit too; there isn’t any around here anyway. I have my own bicycle, so I don’t need a shared bike, and I don’t go anywhere far, so I don’t need the subway or taxis. I just like being alone; to walk down to the sea by myself and look at the sea and the sunset is enough to satisfy me. If you find it boring, then you can study: learn English, learn video editing, watch documentaries, take photographs, shoot video, keep a diary, exercise, learn to cook — there’s plenty you can do. And if you have a side hustle and can make a bit of money, so much the better. When you feel bored on your own, you’ll be even more bored in a crowd. “Solitude is one person’s carnival; a carnival is a crowd’s loneliness.”
On the beach by the sea, a stranger greeted me warmly. We were far apart — he walking this way, I walking that way. I looked up and froze for a moment; I hadn’t expected anyone to speak to me. But I caught what he was saying. He said with a smile, “Have you tested positive?” I answered quickly, “No, nothing at all.” He said, “The air’s good here.” I said, “It is.” And then we passed each other, he going on ahead, I going on ahead, back to back, like two parallel lines that never meet.
2023.1.3
What kind of minimalist life can a person live? In terms of clothing, food, shelter, and transport: clothes need only cover the body and keep it warm — a pair of shorts in summer, a little more in winter — and you can throw out all the fancy things meant to attract attention or look respectable. The food is all vegetarian, no meat, one meal a day or two — throw out the nonsense that a person must eat three times a day. No cola either, only plain boiled water. Housing need cost only two or three thousand RMB a year in rent, just enough to keep off wind and rain — furniture, decoration, air conditioner, TV: all dispensed with. For getting around, just a pair of legs — no car, no electric scooter, at most a bicycle, or public transport. The above is my own imagining; everyone should do what their circumstances allow. If you can manage even less, I admire you all the more. The ascetic’s life can be lived only by an ascetic; ordinary people can’t live it, because ordinary people need to socialize, to be bound up with others, and that means obeying the world’s rules. Only someone with no social ties can ignore the rules and follow nothing but his own heart.
With no socializing, it’s hard for me to test positive in the ghost town. To this day I haven’t. I shop for vegetables once a week and fetch water once a week. I don’t take the bus; I don’t go to crowded places, and when I can’t avoid one I put my mask on properly. The seafront is wide and empty, and I keep my distance from everyone — nobody’s getting close to me. If I don’t have to go out, I don’t. As long as I don’t leave the ghost town, it will be hard for me to test positive. I hope the virus keeps getting weaker, so that the day I do catch it, it’s less frightening than a cold. And better still if it simply disappears.
The weather lately has been warm all along — no wind, fine sunshine; even going to the shore to watch the sunset isn’t cold. The forecast says it will last until the 14th, another ten days or so. A winter like this hardly counts as a cold winter. I sit in the sun on the balcony every day — happier than Diogenes.
2023.1.4
Looking back at Beijing, I was like the frog at the bottom of the well, thinking Beijing was the whole world — Beijing’s sky the bluest, Beijing’s buildings the best, Beijing the greatest city of all time. Now when I think of it I only feel it was pitiful, ridiculous, sad.
Zhuangzi, “The Floods of Autumn”: The time of the autumn floods had come, and the hundred streams were all pouring into the Yellow River. Its current was so swollen that from bank to bank and islet to islet one could not tell an ox from a horse. On this the Earl of the Yellow River laughed with delight, thinking that all the beauty of the world was gathered in him. He followed the current east until he came to the North Sea, and looked eastward without being able to see where the water ended. Then the Earl of the Yellow River turned his face about, gazed out over the expanse as though confronting Ruo, and said with a sigh: “What the vulgar saying expresses about him who has learned a hundred points of the Dao and thinks no one is his equal — that was surely said of me. And I have heard men make little of the learning of Zhongni and the righteousness of Boyi, and at first I did not believe them. Now I have beheld your all-but-boundless extent. Had I not come to your gate, I should have been in danger, and would long have been laughed at by the great masters.” Ruo, the Lord of the North Sea, said: “A frog in a well cannot be talked with about the sea — it is confined to the limits of its hole. An insect of the summer cannot be talked with about ice — it knows nothing beyond its own season. A scholar of limited views cannot be talked with about the Dao — he is bound by the teaching he has received. Now you have come forth from between your banks and beheld the great sea; you have come to know your own insignificance, and you may be talked with about great principles. Of all the waters under heaven there are none so great as the sea. A myriad streams flow into it without ceasing, and yet it is not filled; and afterwards it discharges them without ceasing, and yet it is not emptied. In spring and in autumn it undergoes no change; it takes no notice of flood or drought. Its superiority over such rivers as the Yangtze and the Yellow River cannot be told in measures or numbers; and that I have never, in spite of this, made much of myself, is because I compare my own bodily form with heaven and earth and remember that I have received my breath from the yin and yang. Between heaven and earth I am but as a small stone or a small tree on a great hill. So long as I see myself to be thus small, how should I make much of myself? I reckon all within the four seas, set against the space between heaven and earth, to be no larger than a pile of stones in a great marsh. I reckon our Middle States, set against the space within the four seas, to be smaller than a single grain of rice in a great granary. When we set forth the number of things in existence, we speak of them as myriads, and man is only one of them. Men occupy all the nine provinces; yet of all whose life is maintained by grain, wherever boats and carts can reach, men form only a single part. Thus, compared with the myriads of things, they are not equal to a single fine hair on the body of a horse. Within this range lie all the territories the Five Emperors received in succession from one another; all that the royal founders of the three dynasties contended for; all that troubled benevolent men; and all that men in office have toiled for. Boyi declined them and was accounted famous for it; Zhongni discoursed of them and was accounted great for it. They acted as they did, making much of themselves — just like you, who a little while ago made much of yourself because of your water.”
The life of the big city has nothing to do with me anymore. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Changchun, Harbin, Changsha, Guilin, Xiamen, Sanya, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao — I don’t want to go to any big city again. I just want to stay in Weihai and enjoy the quiet and the nature here.
Today was thick fog the whole day; the sun hung inside the fog, and you could look straight at it. In the early morning the sun was red; by evening it had turned yellow. Strong light couldn’t reach the ground, and with no warm sun it was chilly — you couldn’t sit still even indoors. Inside the house it was only eight or nine degrees. On ordinary days, with warm sun, I can sit on the balcony and sun myself, like Diogenes asleep in his tub. When I was young I thought of myself as a Cynic; in my Beijing years I was more like an angry young man; and now I’ve gone back to being a Cynic. Happiness matters most. Leave politics to the people in Beijing. I walked down to the shore — the tide was coming in — and followed the water’s edge for a while, got my shoes wet, and it was still a little cold. There were two hours yet before sunset; I was a bit hungry, and I couldn’t wait. On the way back I passed the Yinlong Bay market and bought a few cakes and a bag of sunflower seeds. The cakes looked very plain — probably made by hand by the villagers, though what they’d baked them in I don’t know. But these cakes looked a hundred times better than the cakes at a chain store. Just as a sweet potato roasted over a fire always tastes a hundred times better than one from an oven. A refined life isn’t necessarily happier than a rough one; city life isn’t necessarily happier than country life. Only you yourself know.
2023.1.5
Still thick fog today, and even some heavy pollution. With no sun it’s cold, and I don’t want to get out of bed; I burrow under the quilt early in the evening too. Sitting indoors is cold and there’s nothing to do, and at the shore there’s no lovely sunset or glittering sea to see — it’s a little melancholy. Coming back from the shore I saw the moon rising over the bare woods, and remembered Wei Yingwu’s lines: “He gathers firewood down in the ravine, and comes home to boil white stones for his supper — the food of immortals.”
2023.1.6
I skipped the market on the tenth; that day was New Year’s Day, the mornings were too cold, I couldn’t get up, and I still had vegetables to spare. Today is the fifteenth, I’m out of vegetables, so I have to go buy some. A foggy day, very thick fog — the thickest I’ve ever met, you could even feel a dampness in it. Very few stallholders and buyers; a few old farmers with chapped skin were still doggedly selling vegetables. The vegetables are so cheap — I don’t know how much the farmers make on them. Five apples, RMB 14; fifteen eggs, RMB 14.8; ten potatoes, RMB 8; one napa cabbage, RMB 6. This is enough to feed me for five days, even ten. Thoreau said: “Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary, eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.”
Back from the market, I took a shower. Now it’s a solid once a week — no more often, and not a day longer — with a hair-wash in between. I think back to my Beijing days, when I showered every night; it seems so extravagant and wasteful now, though I shouldn’t be too hard on it — after all, work was so tiring, and a hot shower eased the fatigue; and at the office you had to keep up appearances, not look too slovenly. Now it’s changed: no job, no socializing, and it’s too cold to exercise much, so I don’t sweat — once a week is perfectly reasonable.
2023.1.7
Gorgeous weather, a clear boundless sky, the winter sun lovely. I can sit on the balcony in the sun, wash yesterday’s clothes and hang them out to dry on the balcony, and be in the mood to cook — on cold, overcast days I don’t want to cook. I’ve found that cooking really is an activity that calms the mind: rinsing rice, chopping vegetables, stir-frying — all of it takes a good deal of patience, and without patience you can’t do it well. In my office days I had no mood at all for cooking: first, no decent kitchen; second, work was too tiring, and all I wanted when I got home was to lie down. Now it’s different — I can settle down, prepare the ingredients slowly, wait patiently. And my needs are extremely simple: one pot of rice and two dishes is quite enough, and the dishes are extremely simple too — cabbage stir-fried with green pepper and garlic, and two fried eggs. That’s my deluxe lunch.
Sunbathing, too, is a thing that calms you and warms you. In Beijing I don’t think I ever once seriously sat in the sun. In a rented room you never see the sun — the room faces north or east, and as everyone knows only a south-facing room gets the sun. In other words, all seven years in Beijing I lived without seeing the light of day. How can a human being live like that? And yet how many young people can only live in rented rooms like that — they can’t afford to buy a flat, and they can’t rent a room with a good exposure, so they just accept the gloom and live in the gloom. I mean to enjoy life properly here by the sea. Every sunbathing I get is somebody else’s dreamed-of, far-out-of-reach ideal.
After sunbathing in the afternoon, toward evening I went out again to the shore to watch the sunset; on the way home from the sunset I saw the golden full moon rising in the east. I stood gazing over the waste ground for a long time — I’d seen both the setting sun and the bright moon; how happy life is. Does the big city have any of this romance?
2023.1.8
I didn’t go out at all today, because this morning I watched Yao-Chinese Folktales, episode 2, “Goose Mountain,” and got quite stirred up; I couldn’t sit still, so I looked into where the story came from and learned a great deal. I learned that the original is “The Scholar in the Goose Cage,” in Further Records of Qi Xie, compiled by Wu Jun of the Liang dynasty in the Southern Dynasties; it’s also collected in the Taiping Guangji. Digging further, I found that Lu Xun’s A Brief History of Chinese Fiction had explored it long ago — and that Wu Jun’s story has a source of its own, namely the Indian Buddhist sutras. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, Buddhist scriptures spread widely into China, and Chinese scholars read the Indian stories and adapted them, and so “The Scholar in the Goose Cage” came to be — and then, much later, the Shanghai Animation Film Studio’s “Goose Mountain.” China’s traditional stories are so rich in meaning, and this shows how important exchange with the outside world is — Chinese culture is not isolated either. I learned something, and at the same time felt ashamed of my own shallowness. Who says reading more is useless? Without reading, how could anyone make an animation as beautiful as that? I must work at it too, and make myself a more learned and fuller person.
2023.1.9
Again an intensely clear sky, an intensely blue sky. I made a point of going to look over the waste ground outside the compound. It used to be a small village called Xiaotan village — which is why the market here is called the Xiaotan market. But the villagers of Xiaotan all left their old homes and moved into the apartment blocks nearby, becoming new-village farmers. The abandoned village houses fell derelict, decayed, collapsed, grew grass, grew trees, became a haunt of wild birds and field mice; the farmland beside the ruined houses lay waste too. It gives a feeling of desolation and decline. Then I walked over to the shore. A gentle sea breeze stirred the surface, glinting silver; the soft wind blew on me, and I felt as if I were drinking fine wine.
2023.1.10
I went out at eleven in the morning and didn’t get back until half past four in the afternoon — five and a half hours of walking, and my feet were worn out; toward the end I was practically dragging them. The total distance was only sixteen kilometers, but I stopped and started, rested and looked, took photos and videos, and walking on the beach is always much harder than on flat ground, so it naturally took longer. I’d meant to cycle, but I’ve always thought cycling is less free than walking, because on a bike there are many places you can’t go — the beach, for instance, or under the bridge.
I set out from home, walked to the shore, followed the coast to the mouth of Chaoxi Lake, then took Huanhu South Road along the lakeshore from the lake’s western outlet to its eastern inlet — that is, to where it meets the Baishatan River — then followed the riverbank straight down until I came back to the shore, at the mouth of the Baishatan River, and finally went home the way I’d come. Back home I couldn’t wait to make an exception and drink a can of cola, to top up my sugar.
Just as I reached the shore I saw many people foraging the shallows. It was the lowest tide; the sun was straight overhead; the sea glittered silver, a dazzling white; the foragers were backlit, like a row of silhouettes — very vivid. The weather has been a little warm these past days, and much of the ice on the lake has melted; gulls rested on the ice that hadn’t melted — I wonder if their feet get cold. The water in the Baishatan River has all but dried up, exposing shallow mudflats; the reeds stand silent in the river, and some black-feathered, white-beaked, chicken-like waterfowl paddle about, foraging.
2023.1.11
Another blink and it’s the twentieth of the lunar month — market day. I still have plenty of vegetables stored, enough to feed me alone for days. And precisely because I don’t have to put my main attention on buying vegetables, I have the leisure to photograph the old farmers so deeply marked by time. Today is my first attempt at photographing people rather than vegetables and seafood. Be bold: keep your distance, set the phone’s zoom to 2.5×, pretend you’re shooting the fruit and vegetables in front of him rather than his face, and keep the lens moving, pretending you’re shooting video — so he won’t know you’re photographing him and his expression will stay natural and relaxed instead of fixed on you in suspicion. When he isn’t looking, press the shutter — and at last I got a few good pictures. My technique is still clumsy; I’ll try harder next time. At least I’ve found a way to do it.
The old men and middle-aged men all wear black, gray, or khaki, and look gray and dusty, many with cigarettes in their mouths; the older women and middle-aged women dress brightly and cleanly, though mostly in deep reds and prints. Almost all of them wear hats, to shade the sun and keep warm. Every one of them looks weathered, skin dark and rough — a sharp contrast to city people’s pale smoothness and to the deathly white smoothness of retouched photos and videos. They don’t stand so straight; they’re all a bit hunched. Their eyes aren’t so bright either — muddy and dull. Their hair is thin and gray and lusterless, as if unwashed for days; and their teeth need hardly be mentioned — yellowed and crooked, and maybe their breath is bad. Fashion, to them, means garish clothes and heavy makeup — or plain shamelessness; it would only embarrass them. I’m not belittling city people; it’s just that farmers are closer to the land — their look is as lowly as the soil and as particular as the crops.
And I bought a few things too, noted here: a pound of sunflower seeds, RMB 12; five cakes, RMB 6.8; seven potatoes, RMB 6; twenty eggs, RMB 18.8; seven green peppers, RMB 5.4; one cauliflower, RMB 10. Carrying the vegetables, it’s even easier to disguise what you’re doing.
2023.1.12
A foggy day today — thickest in the morning, a little less by afternoon, with a drizzle now and then, but the temperature wasn’t low: 12°C at the highest. I wandered down to the shore; Gongjia Island was invisible, the sea and sky all one blur, fog and rain mingled. The tide beat on the shore and left lines of foam; the wind was neither strong nor weak, and it felt good. Only the rain kept swelling and easing, clouding my glasses, so I had to pull my hood up. I watched the tide a while and listened to the sound of the waves a while, then turned back, satisfied. Passing the waste ground of Xiaotan village, I looked again at the silent, forlorn, abandoned village — the broken houses made me very sad. “I see how charming the green hills are; I suppose the hills see me the same.” (A note, though: thick as the fog was and wet as the rain was, the air damp, it wasn’t the kind of damp that comes from the south and seeps into your body — only skin-deep.)
At night it began to rain, a fine drizzle tapping on the ground outside and on the railings, a patter and clatter like a movement played by heaven and earth. Because it’s so quiet here — no traffic noise from a big city, no sound of voices — the sound of the rain is clear and vivid. This endless dripping is like a lullaby, a massage for my nerves, making me feel utterly relaxed and calm. I close my eyes.
A friend in Beijing says it’s snowing there. I feel not the least stir of emotion. Having seen snow by the sea, who would still care about snow in Beijing? What romance is there in snow between the high-rises of a big city, on concrete roads? Even the snow at the Western Hills, the Fragrant Hills, the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, the Forbidden City couldn’t move me now. I’ll probably never go to Beijing again; I only want to see more and lovelier snow.
Online I learned a new phrase, “the four provinces of mountains and rivers” — vegetable-growing Shandong, coal-mining Shanxi, grain-growing Henan, and steel-making Hebei. In Beijing I didn’t care in the least about places outside Beijing — it was the same as asking why the starving don’t just eat meat. Now in Shandong, though I’ve only been here three months, I’ve come to know the vegetables and apples here as never before — like the way I buy vegetables at the market each time: what a variety, how cheap; and apples, it turns out, aren’t only Red Fuji. If I hadn’t left Beijing I would never have known these things. I see how shallow I used to be — and I’m glad I left.
2023.1.13
Today’s temperature really felt like spring — a spring breeze on the face, intoxicating. In the morning the sun was out for a long while, and I sat on the balcony cracking sunflower seeds. In the afternoon the clouds gathered, dark and heavy, as if something big were coming — a sharp drop in temperature. The temperature had risen, and the ice that had frozen so long on the pond had melted; the water rippled green again. There were more people than usual at the shore: people watching the sea by the water, people strolling on the embankment. When the sky is clear the waves are clear too; when it’s overcast the waves are turbid — I don’t know why. You can’t find pretty shells on this beach, only fine sand; the seabed is flat and shallow, like a tidal flat. And close inshore there are many oyster farms, leaving only the ugly oyster shells the fishermen throw away on the beach. The beach used to be where they stored things; it was only for the sake of tourism that the fishermen and their gear were moved away. Fishermen, like farmers, are probably fewer and fewer.
In the compound you often see a few dogs; I can’t tell whether they’re strays or owned. They’re not at all afraid of people — when you come near they don’t run off, and sometimes they’ll follow you, and if you ignore them they stop, which makes it clear the person isn’t their owner. Of course some dogs do have owners, and those are usually tied or led about by the elderly. Outside the compound you often see a few dogs too, and those are plainly strays; you see them at the market as well, loitering by the meat stalls hoping for something to eat, and on non-market days rummaging about the empty waste ground. There are quite a few stray cats too, but they’re not as easy to spot as the dogs — you only occasionally see one dart past or hear it mewing. People often post cat-and-dog adoption notices in the chat group; the kittens and puppies are heartbreakingly cute, and if nobody takes them in they’ll struggle to survive this winter — a great many of them will die. And in places no one knows about, who knows how many unclaimed cats and dogs have died.
The New Year is getting closer. I haven’t been home for over three years — the last three Spring Festivals I spent in Beijing, and I won’t go back this year either, which makes four Spring Festivals away from home. I have no particular attachment to the Spring Festival; I’ve always been indifferent to it. And I especially hate noise (to me, festivity is noise). If I can avoid going back, I will. As long as I go back to see my parents when there are few people around, I consider my duty done. That’s my plan this year too: after the New Year, find a time to go back. I absolutely don’t want to go back over the holiday itself. I don’t want to hold forth here about family relationships, about the feelings between parents and children — because I don’t intend to marry, and I don’t want children.
I think it was Maugham who said that the hardest thing in the world to understand is human nature. But our great Grand Historian Sima Qian said long ago: “All the world bustles to and fro; every man comes for profit and goes for profit.” It sounds a little mercenary, but man is by nature a creature who seeks advantage and avoids harm. Die for an ideal, and the ideal is his profit. Die for money, and money is his profit. Money too is an ideal. The pursuit of pleasure is an ideal too. A person always lives for something. Or for nothing. Or he himself doesn’t know what he lives for. In short, man is a very simple creature — not so complex, not so mysterious.
Tomorrow the temperature drops, into the coldest stretch of winter, and it will last until after the New Year. The New Year holiday is the coldest time, which fits my idea of it perfectly. If we get a little snow, so much the better. Let’s wait and see tomorrow’s cold.
2023.1.14
Today is Xiaonian — Little New Year, the northern one — and the temperature has plunged, down more than ten degrees; the high is only -1°C. There’s no rain or snow, but the sky is gloomy and the north wind is howling, force 8. I walked to the south-facing shore; the gale pushed me along from behind, and on the way back it blocked me, so I could hardly move. Looking out from the embankment, there were only three people by the sea. I jumped down onto the beach, went close to the water, and looked at the turbid sea under the vast gloomy sky. I took my hand out to photograph, and within moments it went numb with cold. But many gulls were still skimming low over the water — maybe the rising waves bring them food. I watched the sea a while, shivering, and it really was too cold, so I turned back. On the way home a few flakes of powdery snow began to fall, and I couldn’t help feeling a little hopeful.
Let me sum up the weather of these three months. In October the daily high reached 20°C, and the low was 7 or 8°C — very comfortable, exactly like early autumn. In November the daily high was in the teens, sometimes 18°C, and the low hovered around 5°C — mid-to-late autumn, like October in Beijing. Except that on the last two days of November the temperature suddenly plunged: the high below 5°C, the low down to minus 5°C — winter, all at once. December was much like those last two days of November: high around 5°C, low minus 5°C, sometimes lower, down to minus 8 or 9. October and November were autumn, the temperature very pleasant, almost every day sunny, the sun wonderfully comfortable; rain, wind, and fog were rare, so the air was dry and crisp, not the least damp. December is the real winter — a little cold, but only at night; the days aren’t cold, and with sun it’s warm, and sunbathing is a pleasure. At night it is a bit cold, but an electric blanket is enough; heating is optional. Not as cold as Beijing or the northeast.
People ask, is a seaside town damp? My feeling is, not damp at all. Even a first-row sea-view flat needn’t worry. But it is certainly more humid than Hebei and Beijing — Beijing is just too dry. Compared with the south, well, the south’s dampness is far too much — a cold, clammy wet that people can’t stand. Rushan doesn’t have that clammy cold; it’s a typical dry northern climate, sunny the great majority of the time.
January is the coldest: the high only a few degrees, the low below minus 5°C, and in extremes in the teens below zero. There are occasional rainy and foggy days. At Silver Beach the rule is: whenever the sun isn’t out, it feels especially cold; when there is sun, even if the temperature is low, it isn’t cold. And this side lies farther south, unlike Weihai to the north; Rushan’s wind isn’t strong either, and with no wind it isn’t cold. So Rushan actually gets very little snow; compared with Weihai, the snow is too little, too light. Sometimes Weihai has heavy snow in the town center while here it’s a brilliant clear day, or a few stray flakes.
By February the temperature slowly climbs, more comfortable and warmer, gradually moving into spring. So I think Rushan’s climate and air are very good — many people who live here say the same; they’re hugely good for body and mind, and suited to lying flat and to retirement.
2023.1.15
Getting up this morning I looked at the thermometer in the living room: 7°C. I opened the curtains, and the temperature quickly rose to 8, then 9. The kitchen is on the north side, and the north windowsills were all frosted and iced — a thin, smooth white layer. Outside, the wind kept roaring without pause. But the sky had cleared: sun, warm light. I ate a cup noodle (how pathetic), then sat on the balcony in the sun, cracking sunflower seeds.
I hadn’t meant to go out, but at noon it began to snow — first very lightly, a few flakes, then gradually heavier, thick and dense, sweeping past the window. I perked up at once and decided to go and see the snow at the shore. I changed and left; my phone was nearly dead, so I took the power bank. Downstairs the curb was already covered with a layer of snow, and the flakes showed up more clearly against the dark green pines. All the way to the shore the snow kept falling and the wind kept blowing. I hurried toward the shore excitedly — but when I got there, the snow stopped. It’s always like this at Silver Beach: the wind is too strong, the clouds are blown away, the snow is gone, and the sky clears. That kind of snow I call sun-snow.
The flat beach at the shore can hardly hold any snow either; the flakes were blown skittering everywhere by the wind. But on the beach there was something that looked like snowdrifts and was in fact ice, at the edges of some hollows — seawater that had frozen at high tide and been left behind when the tide went out. As I said before, that’s ice, not snow: it looks very like snow, but step on it and it’s the crackle of thin ice breaking, and up close it’s sheets of thin ice. Some fine sand had blown onto the ice, covering the white surface with a thin, dirty, earth-colored film — it looked quite filthy.
The sky cleared, blue sky and white clouds, but the wind was still strong; my hands couldn’t take it, and neither could my ears — my nose ran. I put on gloves and pulled my hood up; the phone’s battery drained fast in the cold, so I could only leave it plugged into the power bank. There were a few other people at the shore too, watching the sea and the snow, picking things up. There were plenty of gulls — some resting by the water, some wheeling low; the wind made it hard for them to fly.
Now we’ve entered the coldest stretch at Silver Beach. I suppose that makes me about the world’s coldest — and coolest — man. Only five days left on the countdown to New Year’s Eve. I’ll spend the New Year in Rushan, alone, free and easy yet poor and cold, waiting single-mindedly for spring to come.