You have to make the trip to Qingdao at some point. — Lao She
2023.2.24
At Silver Beach there’s a dedicated car service that ferries people to the airports and railway stations in Qingdao and Yantai. You call a day ahead to book, and the next day someone comes to the gate of your compound to pick you up. To Qingdao it’s RMB 100 a person. There are return runs too, booked the same way.
At seven thirty in the morning the driver came to the compound gate to pick me up. Along the way we picked up a few more people. The car passed through downtown Rushan — my first time through downtown Rushan, my first look at what the city itself is like. All this time here I’d never been downtown, and I hadn’t wanted to go. What would I go downtown for? There’s nothing to do in downtown Rushan; how is it any different from my hometown? And yet there really is a difference: the whole of Weihai is remarkably neat and clean, the streets and roads are spotless. No wonder it’s China’s first sanitary city.
The scenery all the way was still winter — the trees bare and leafless, the low hills a wash of gray rather than green; if it snowed and settled on those hills it would surely look like an ink-wash painting. The trees were full of magpie nests, and without leaves to hide them they stood out sharply. Magpies were carrying twigs in their beaks, building. We crossed the Rushan River Bridge; a pity I couldn’t see Mount Darushan.
Qingdao had fog today, or rather smog; the sky was white, and once we got into the city the traffic was terrible — no wonder it’s Shandong’s biggest city. The car was supposed to take me to Zhanqiao Pier, but the driver said the roads were too jammed, and he might as well drop me at Qingdao North Station and let me take the subway to the pier myself. I’m an easy-going sort, so I agreed to the driver’s arrangement. I knew he still had to take other passengers to Jiaodong Airport.
At Qingdao North Station I went to catch the subway. Wow — I hadn’t been on a subway in ages. Cities with subways are so fancy! Qingdao is crowded, let me tell you. The subway was crowded. I hadn’t seen this many people in a long time. I was actually a little nervous! Have I dressed too shabbily, am I too ugly and too old? The moment I’m in a crowd I start worrying about how I look, and put on a serious face. People really are such phonies.
Zhanqiao Pier was thronged with people and seagulls; people were feeding the gulls, and the gulls weren’t afraid of people. I stood on a rock by the water, watching the gulls, watching the people, watching the girls. There were so many young people here — young men, young women, tender-faced boys, pretty girls. Utterly unlike Rushan, which has only old people; you never see a young or pretty girl there at all. I even felt a stir in my heart. Young pretty girls really are a lovely thing — delightful to the eye, stirring up desire, making a man want to come to the big city.
Then I walked on to St. Michael’s Cathedral, where a lot of couples were having wedding photos taken outside; the girls in their wedding dresses were lovely. I paid RMB 10 to go inside the cathedral; there wasn’t much to see. I came out and wandered the square a while, then set off for Signal Hill. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and it was well past lunchtime, my stomach growling, so I ducked into the first small eatery I could find. For small eateries, Qingdao beats Lhasa by a mile — you can find a few of them on any little side street. I noticed a lot of restaurants had signs for pork-rib rice, so pork-rib rice must be popular in Qingdao. Braised chicken with rice was everywhere too. In Beijing, braised chicken rice had a stretch of popularity and then thinned out again. But in Qingdao it’s all over the place. So I had braised chicken with rice, in a tiny little shop with only four tables. And I’ll tell you, it was really good. Maybe I was just hungry.
I headed for Signal Hill and unexpectedly ran into a building I’d nearly forgotten — the Jiangsu Road Christian Church. Eleven years ago when I came to Qingdao I’d been to this church, and left behind a very odd experience there. “A green tower, red terracotta tiles, artistic masonry set with granite, imposing in scale” — it really is a very beautiful building, worth a look, though it costs RMB 10. When I came eleven years ago, a fellow believer brought me; she told the attendant at the door that we were believers. Christians don’t have to buy a ticket — only Christians, apparently. But I’m not a believer. So this time I dutifully paid for my ticket.
Signal Hill didn’t seem like anything special; from the top you can see Zhanqiao Pier and Little Qingdao, the church below the hill, and to the east the TV tower and a row of soaring modern buildings. The old red-tiled buildings are all plain to see, of course. After that I walked to Longjiang Road, an internet-famous street with a lot of internet-famous shops, their walls painted over with Japanese cartoons — Totoro, Mario and the like. Lots of girls were taking photos there. The road is narrow and steep. Then I went on to Lao She’s former residence; unfortunately the bookings were full, so I didn’t get in.
Walking down from there you come to Qingdao’s famously internet-famous wall, the intersection of Daxue Road and Yushan Road — its red wall and street sign are a must for girls checking in. I stood there only a short while and saw at least ten stunning, sexy beauties. Shandong girls really are tall, slender and graceful. Then on to Xiaoyushan Park, which is lower than Signal Hill, hardly a climb at all. From there you can see the First Bathing Beach below, and the signal tower on the summit of Signal Hill Park, and the same tall buildings to the east.
My guesthouse turned out to be right by Xiaoyushan, on Fushan Branch Road — a short walk down from the park and there it was. I called the guesthouse owner and she soon called out to me from the mouth of the alley and took me to the room. This whole area is old houses, and the guesthouse was converted from an old one; inside it was tiny, done up in Japanese tatami style — a little sitting room outside, and the bedroom behind sliding lattice doors, a very low bed, linen-colored sheets and duvet and pillowcases, mats on the floor with a straw cushion and a small tea table on them, and the curtain too made of straw matting, rolled up with a cord. There were radiators in both the sitting room and the bedroom. Wow — I hadn’t seen or used a radiator in ages. Only the soundproofing was a bit poor: the walls are partitions, not solid, so you can hear the least bit of noise from next door and from downstairs. So there was a notice on the wall: “Before seven in the morning and after ten at night, please do not talk loudly or run about, so as not to disturb the neighbors. Thank you for your understanding.”
I rested a bit and took a hot shower, then decided to go out and watch the sunset. The guides I’d read online said the sunset at Jinmao Bay was lovely. I called a ride-hailing car and got there in no time, and it didn’t cost much. The big city has ride-hailing; Rushan Silver Beach doesn’t. Unfortunately the guide was wrong — this season you can’t see a beautiful sunset at Jinmao Bay; you have to wait till summer for the finest sunsets, because then the sun comes near the Tropic of Cancer and sets over the sea, instead of setting over land as it does now. So if you recommend a place for sunsets, besides getting the exact time of the sunset right for each evening, you also have to tell people that sunsets are seasonal.
After a day of walking I was tired, so I took a taxi back and ducked into a random Shaanxi noodle shop for a bowl of oil-splashed noodles — a huge bowl, very little noodles. The wind was strong in the evening; I don’t know whether it was just today or whether Qingdao’s wind is always strong, but it made a person cold. Venus, Jupiter and the moon made a straight line, though the moon was high up and Venus and Jupiter were closer together. Along the way I saw grocery stores, fruit-and-vegetable shops, little convenience stores, and plenty of coffee shops — so life in Qingdao really is convenient, and it has an artistic streak.
In the evening I closed the sliding lattice doors and lowered the curtain; the room had heating, and outside the wind rose now and then, but indoors it was cozy and not cold — not like Rushan, where you have to switch on an electric blanket to sleep at night. Sometimes living in a big city isn’t so bad. But in a big city you never feel quite settled, because the world outside is too bustling and too noisy, the temptations too many, and it easily unsettles a person’s heart. Living in a ghost town, no one unsettles you; outside it’s always silent, you hear no one’s voice, see no one’s face, and it’s easier to steady yourself. That was my feeling on my first day in Qingdao. I’m very tired; I’ll rest first.
2023.2.25
Yesterday I walked 22,000 steps in all, and slept wonderfully last night, no dreams. I woke at seven, pulled the curtain, and saw the slope leading down to the sea, perfectly quiet; in the distance the sea to the east, the sky already light, the sun already risen but out of sight. Today is a big clear day, the sky very blue, the air very good — not like yesterday, when there was smog and the sky was white. The wind, though, was strong and cold.
Qingdao is hilly terrain, full of ups and downs and turns; Qingdao’s drivers must all be highly skilled. But since I once lived in Chongqing, these little slopes are nothing next to Chongqing’s madness — Qingdao’s rises and falls are far gentler.
Today’s plan was to walk along the seafront; there were a lot of places to check in at. I slung on my pack and first went to Qinyu Road, said to be another internet-famous road, though compared with yesterday’s Longjiang Road it’s much the lesser — it’s just on the waterfront, and you can see the shops strung along the sea and the rocks on the shore. The difference between Qingdao and Silver Beach is that Silver Beach has only white-sand beach, while Qingdao has rocky shore and pebble beach: the rocky shore has grandeur, the pebbles are gentle, and white-sand beach is just sand. At this end of Qinyu Road is Lu Xun Park.
At the other end of Qinyu Road is Little Qingdao Park. “Qingdao” originally meant Little Qingdao; later the whole larger area around it also came to be called Qingdao, so this one got stuck with “Little Qingdao.” A real injustice to it. On Little Qingdao stands a lighthouse from the German occupation, over a hundred years old. It’s a protected relic, so of course you can’t go up. Walking a circle around Little Qingdao you can see Zhanqiao Pier, the Catholic cathedral, the Christian church, Signal Hill and Xiaoyushan, and a great many warships out at sea. Below the lighthouse is a bronze statue of the Maiden of the Zither. Nothing else much worth seeing.
Coming out of Little Qingdao Park, I headed back along the seaside path to the First Bathing Beach. The beach isn’t open in winter; no one swims. There weren’t that many visitors on the beach either, but compared with Silver Beach there were a great many — on Silver Beach the whole stretch has only one or two people. There were some seagulls here too, though not as many as at Zhanqiao Pier, and some people were feeding them. Qingdao’s seawater is very clear.
Walking on I came to the Badaguan scenic area, full of detached old houses — private residences, or high-end restaurants and clubs; tourists can’t just wander in, so I could only look at the buildings from outside and take in their looks, all of them the various small Western-style villas of the Republican era. I don’t know who lives in them now — rich people, presumably. I also don’t know whether they have heating in winter, or how they keep warm.
Beside the Badaguan scenic area is the Second Bathing Beach, with a breakwater and a lot of breakwater blocks below it; couples were having wedding photos taken here too. Then through another neighborhood of old houses to the Third Bathing Beach. So I walked all three bathing beaches. This one is rocky shore too; at low tide a lot of people walk out onto the rocks to look at the sea and at the traces of life on them. The neighborhood beside the Third Bathing Beach is a cluster of CBD towers, standing by the sea like giants — you have to tilt your head back to see the tops.
I walked on for a long while and came to May Fourth Square — that landmark red sculpture like a fluttering ribbon; I don’t know its name or what it means. The square was full of people; some were fishing off the waterfront for kelp and seaweed. Nearby is the Sailing Center, with a lot of yachts moored in the harbor. Outside the Sailing Center’s embankment there’s another embankment, Lover’s Dam. Below Lover’s Dam there are breakwater blocks too, and they say the sunset here is lovely as well. But it was still too early, and there was nothing here worth staying for, so I decided to take the subway to Xiaomai Island.
Xiaomai Island’s sunset is the most praised of all. Coming out of the subway it was all young people heading to Xiaomai Island for the sunset — all young people. A lot of people online say Xiaomai Island is the most artistic place around. I think what they call “artistic” just means youthful. Sure enough, there were plenty of singers strumming and singing on the entrance plaza, doing the famous songs of various folk singers; as I walked past, one of them was singing Omnipotent Youth Society’s “Kill the One from Shijiazhuang” — “Living like this for thirty years, until the building comes down; ten thousand unbridled horses galloping through his mind.” Why do young people like this kind of song? I don’t get it. Young people all like to play at being melancholy, I suppose. I wandered the western part of the island for over two hours and finally the sunset came. The slopes of the island were packed with young people, all of them watching the sunset. It makes you believe that there are many, many people who love sunsets as much as you do. You are not alone. The sun didn’t set over the sea; there were mountains and buildings in the distance too. But the golden gleam on the water was beautiful.
By the time I got back it was dark, and I saw Venus and Jupiter again, with the first-quarter moon above them — the three in a straight line. Today I walked 40,000 steps; my legs are sore, but I don’t feel especially tired. I saw so much scenery — no time wasted.
2023.2.26
Qingdao’s subway is no different from Beijing’s — both so modern and clean, quick and convenient, tap your phone to get through. Standing in a Qingdao subway car is just like being in Beijing; it leaves you a little dazed. What difference is there between one city and another? Much the same, same core. Qingdao has a lot of young people too, and it seems even more than Beijing, and younger; Beijing feels a bit old, Qingdao is younger. And Qingdao’s young people are taller, more slender, which I — a short man from the south — can only envy.
The malls were buzzing too, swarming with young people — handsome boys, beautiful girls — and only I, aging and dowdy, felt ashamed. A single small mall has KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, a flower shop, coffee shops, a cinema — more developed than the commerce of an entire county town in Rushan, let alone Rushan Silver Beach. It’s only natural that young people want to go to the big city; it’s the tide of history, it’s inevitable. Of course, I’ve disliked crowds since I was small — I’m the exception — and I won’t be tempted by any of this glamour.
A friend in Qingdao treated me to a meal today. It was the first time we’d met in person — we’d known each other online for four or five years, but three of those were the pandemic, and I always said I’d come to Qingdao to see her, but never managed it, until I’d quit my job and left Beijing. She has to work Saturdays too, with only Sunday off. It was she who made me realize that so many young people in China work six days a week — not just a minority as I’d assumed, but a great many, squeezed by capital.
Chatting with a friend one-on-one is quite pleasant, but for me personally I only like talking in twos; I don’t like gatherings of more than two people, I like it one-to-one. With three or more, people always seem to turn affected and phony, unreal, more like a performance. We talked about the future and neither of us had much confidence in it; these three years have changed us, changed this country.
She had things to do in the afternoon and couldn’t keep me company, so I went alone to Shilaoren Bathing Beach. For the next two days I’d stay near Shilaoren. The first two days I’d stayed at a guesthouse by Xiaoyushan — a very good experience; it’s right in the old town, and the old house the guesthouse occupies has real character, I liked it a lot. Now I’d moved to a budget hotel, for the single reason that it’s near Shilaoren and I could get up early to watch the sunrise. I planned to get up early tomorrow for the sunrise, and the day after too; tomorrow I also meant to go to Mount Lao — since I have the time to spare, I might as well make the trip to Mount Lao.
My favorite thing about staying in a hotel is the hot shower, because there’s hot water at any hour — unlike Rushan Silver Beach, where the water heater in my rented flat runs on electricity, and every time you heat water it takes over an hour, so I only bathe once every five days, or once a week. In Beijing it was gas, and I bathed every day. I change how often I bathe according to my living situation, like a chameleon. Of course, it would be better to bathe every day, but that comes at a price — it just depends on whether you’re willing to pay it.
I saw some people and had some shameful thoughts. Waiting at the light to cross the road, beside me was a young man on a scooter delivering takeout — he looked like he was only in his teens, face still covered in pimples. At the subway exit there was a little flower shop built of clear glass, so you could see the flowers and the young woman inside; she was pretty, trimming and arranging her flowers. A middle-aged workman sat on the ground with a small trowel, scraping up mortar to patch the pavement. The little convenience store under the hotel was cramped, all three walls lined with goods, the owner a middle-aged woman keeping watch over her shop. They’re all living with such effort, so hard, so monotonous, and yet they haven’t given up or lain flat — and me? What am I doing?
2023.2.27
I was woken in the middle of the night by noises — from upstairs or next door, I couldn’t tell; half asleep, I heard a man’s panting and a woman’s moaning, which left me quite restless, but I was so tired I fell back asleep to the sound of them. The big city really is a place of overflowing lust!
I got up at 5:45 to watch the sunrise from the shore; sunrise was at 6:31. The sunrise at Shilaoren Bathing Beach is highly recommended too, so I had to go see it. A pity the sea-stack at Shilaoren collapsed a few years ago, leaving only the bottom half. By the time I reached the shore a lot of people had already gathered on the beach, strung out in a long line along the coast, people looking so small.
At first the sky was fairly dark, with only a faint orange glow; the tourists waited quietly, mostly young people too — young men, young women — and more were still coming down to the shore. We hadn’t waited long when a red dot suddenly appeared on the sea, and a chorus of gasps rose from the crowd: the sun was up. To me it appeared in an instant, at a moment no one had expected. It was bound to appear, of course, but no one the second before could say with certainty, “It’s about to appear.” It just popped out.
The rising sun my eyes saw was red, very red, like blood, but in the phone it carried a tinge of yellow, on the bright side, quite unreal. That’s the difference between what your eyes see and what your phone captures. I don’t have a camera, so I don’t know whether a camera can capture it perfectly truly. But I think, phone or camera, it’s certainly not the same as what the eye sees. Only what you’ve seen with your own eyes can be called real.
Slowly it grew from a small red dot, showing one small sliver, then a larger sliver, until the whole red disc rested on the surface of the sea; then it quickly lifted free of the water and rose. Up it climbed, casting a track of gold on the water; the higher it rose, the more it lost its red and turned gold, more and more dazzling, growing blurry, so that you dared not look at it; at last it turned white and gave off white light. Its coming made the morning temperature rise bit by bit too — no longer as cold as it had been in the dark.
After the sunrise I set off at once for Mount Lao. Mount Lao is some distance away — two subway rides and then a bus, about an hour and a half. Mount Lao has many scenic zones; I went to the Yangkou zone. At the foot of the mountain I’d meant to take the cable car up, but I was too early and the cable car wasn’t running yet; I thought it over, decided it wasn’t very high, and chose to climb. It really isn’t high, but the climb was tiring enough. Still, you get some fine views on the mountain path that you’d miss on the cable car — Sheep Rock, Lion Peak, Youlong Cave, Longevity Peak. I finally made it up to the top of the cable car line, the same starting point as the people who’d ridden it. But my route went a bit astray: I didn’t pass through Mitian Cave, and came up Tianyuan by another path — that’s the very summit. Looking down at the beach below, the coastline stretching away, the vast sea, the dim islands out on the water — it truly lifts the heart and opens the breast. “Looking up, I see the immensity of the cosmos; bowing my head, I look at the multitude of the world. The gaze flies, the heart expands, the joy of the senses can reach its peak, & indeed, this is true happiness.”
Coming down was easy enough, and I was at the foot in no time. I’d meant to take the 618 bus to Qingshan fishing village — the 618 runs along the coastline and they say you see beautiful scenery the whole way. Unfortunately too many people were waiting for the 618, a long queue; and the 618 is a minibus, not a full-size bus, with rather few seats, and you have to fight the villagers for a seat on the seaward side — I really wasn’t keen. So I decided not to go and turned back. On the way back I could stop somewhere else, with fewer people and easy to reach.
The most useful thing online, for me, is travel guides. The places and routes I’ve taken these past days were almost all recommended online. Last night I happened to scroll onto a little-known spot called Shazikou, a small fishing village by the sea: houses built up the hillside in tiers, red-tiled roofs, layer upon layer, backed by a green, solid mountain of stone, and beyond the ridged stone mountain the blue sky; in front of the village a harbor and the sea, the water jade-green, the sand earth-yellow — a whole picture scroll unrolled along the coast, facing the sea, warm spring and blossoms opening. Only I don’t know whether it’s windy living there, or damp, or cold in winter.
On Qingdao’s streets a lot of pandemic-era signs still haven’t been taken down: signposts for PCR testing points, disused sampling booths, slogans telling you to scan the code and wear a mask, the green horse by the sea at Jinmao Bay — a pandemic memento playing on “green code,” the all-clear color of the health code — and so on. Seeing these relics is like stepping into another age, and sorrow rises in the heart.
2023.2.28
These four or five days in Qingdao I went to many places and walked a great deal — walked my legs off. But I like walking, like hiking; no one loves hiking more than I do. And Qingdao’s old town really is made for walking (you can’t cycle there — Beijing is the city for cycling): you walk down to the sea and the sea appears before you. It’s still a bit cold just now; perhaps summer is the better time to go to the seaside. I asked my Qingdao friend what other sights were worth recommending. She said, You’ve been to more places than I have in four years in Qingdao — I’ve nothing left to recommend. I looked at the map: there really wasn’t anywhere to go. So I’d just go wander the streets and watch people.
Having come all this way to Qingdao, and staying right by Shilaoren, I couldn’t pass up the sunrise. But when I’d washed and dressed and gone out, I found it was a cloudy day — no sun to be seen. Well, since I was out, I’d take a stroll by the sea. There were far fewer people at the shore than yesterday, but still a good number, hoping like me for a miracle, or at least a sliver of light. But the heavens failed us: not the least scrap of light. Thick cloud lay in the east, and only the big waves slapped loudly on the shore.
My train back to Rushan Silver Beach was in the evening, so I had a whole day to wander aimlessly around Qingdao. I didn’t know where to go either, and with nothing to do I decided to go back to the Zhanqiao Pier area. The subway was full of young people going to work, faces all weariness and exhaustion; the girl sitting next to me dozed off and nearly slumped onto me, and apologized; I said it was nothing. Only I, an idler, wasn’t going to work.
Zhanqiao Pier still had plenty of tourists, and plenty of seagulls; the tourists were feeding the gulls. One gull dropped a dollop of shit — dark, utterly filthy, stinking — on my back and my backpack, and I was furious; I hurried to pull out tissues and wipe, and still couldn’t get it clean. I went to look at St. Michael’s Cathedral again; since it wasn’t the weekend there were fewer people, only couples having wedding photos taken. The weather wasn’t great and neither was the light, so the photos wouldn’t come out well either. I had lunch nearby — a bowl of pickled-cabbage fish noodles, only RMB 26, a very big bowl. After that I went to Guanxiang Hill; from Guanxiang Hill you can see the Catholic cathedral and the high-rises by the sea, hazy and glowing white.
In the afternoon I went to Taidong Pedestrian Street, which has all sorts of snacks, a dazzling array, enough to make your eyes swim. I saw the word “desire” written on every face, people stuffing and chewing, like ravenous beasts. A person needs only a little food to keep body and soul together, but people eat not just to keep body and soul together but to satisfy endless desire. The human stomach is like a bottomless pit, never to be filled. And is gorging like that a healthy way to live? I doubt it. Perhaps eating less, eating plainer, is better for body and mind. Of course, I don’t judge others; others have their own choices, and I have my own principles — my principles apply only to me.
As for young people — while you’re young, get out and travel more, see and understand the world; things are different now from the past three years, it’s time to get out. Climbing Mount Lao, I thought: when I’m seventy or eighty, will I still be able to climb Mount Lao? Of course not. By then I’ll be decrepit and worn out. On the way to Lhasa my mood was very calm too, no ripples, not like the excitement of the young. “I’d buy osmanthus and bring wine along, but never again the travels of my youth.” We should live as freely as we can, love and hate boldly. Qingdao, I’m leaving too. These five days I’ve seen how different the big city is, and I know the big city doesn’t suit me; I’ll go back to Rushan and stay in the quiet countryside.