You have to make the trip to Xiamen and Quanzhou at some point. — Master Hongyi
2023.3.25
It had been a long time since I left Silver Beach. You have to get out and look at the world now and then, or you shut down and turn inward. Lying flat at Silver Beach, besides resting and recovering, I should take this chance — no job to go to — to wander about and visit some of the places I’d wanted to see but never had the time for when I was working. I’d already been to Lhasa and Qingdao; this time I meant to head south, to Xiamen and Quanzhou in Fujian. They’re on the coast too, so I could see how the sea in Fujian differs from the sea in the north. I’d only ever been to Mount Wuyi, in northern Fujian — never to Xiamen or Quanzhou.
I’d booked a car a day ahead. The driver came to the gate of my compound at nine in the morning. There was already one passenger in the car; he picked up two more on the way, so four of us in all. It took him only two hours to get us to Penglai Airport in Yantai. My flight was at nearly three, so I had a long wait at the airport. I ate lunch in between — curry chicken drumstick rice at Dicos, RMB 43, outrageously expensive — then sat on a bench and slept for a while, and only just managed to last until boarding time. In the north it was a clear sunny day, the air dry and very pleasant. Because I was going south I took off my long johns and changed into thin underwear, and in the north I felt a little cold. (Forgive me for breaking my rule and eating meat — out in the world you can’t always help it. The meat did me no harm; it even tasted rather good.) (Why leave from Yantai? Because Weihai has very few flights and Qingdao is too far, while Yantai sits right in between.)
It took only a little over an hour to reach Hefei. A connecting ticket is the cheapest, and I wanted to save money. At Hefei Xinqiao Airport I waited another three hours. In between I ate again — teriyaki chicken drumstick rice at Dicos, no soup, only RMB 29, a little cheaper than in Yantai. I watched a man buy instant noodles from a vending machine and then fetch hot water from the airport to eat them. I felt a little ashamed; I was far more extravagant than he was. Hefei is already the south, and the shops in a southern airport are plainly much better than in Yantai — there were more of them, and I saw National Geographic and Lego, and Laoxiangji, a brand from Anhui. Southern girls are a head shorter than northern girls, but their skin is finer. Maybe because I come from the countryside and am myself a bumpkin, everyone I saw struck me as fashionable and good-looking, and I felt shabby beside them.
The plane flew from Hefei to Xiamen. In the air I saw the traffic lights below, beautiful lines and colors, and I saw the crescent moon and Venus in the western sky, the moon above, Venus below, dazzling bright; they stayed outside my window the whole way and accompanied me to the skies over Xiamen. Xiamen lay under a thick fog, and the moon and Venus quickly vanished. The forecast said Xiamen had had several days of rain. The lights on the ground shone up onto the thick fog, and I, higher than the fog, saw weird and gorgeous colors beneath the plane — sometimes yellow, sometimes blue, sometimes like the aurora. Relative to the plane those colored fogs moved fast, and I was astonished.
I called a ride-hailing car, and the driver rolled down all four windows of the taxi and let the wind gust through. He asked me whether I wanted the windows closed. Without thinking I said no need. The south is simply too damp — the humidity must have been a hundred percent. I could feel my jeans sticking to my thighs. If the windows hadn’t been open, I’d have been sitting in water, and the car would have been driving in water too. After living so long in the north I’d grown used to dry weather and come to love the dry climate, and I thought the rainy, damp south was purgatory. (I’d always assumed Xiamen’s license plates read Min B — Min being the old name for Fujian — but it turned out to be Min D, that far down the list. Min B is Putian, Min C is Quanzhou.)
The car sped along Huandao South Road to the entrance of Zengcuoan. I knew the sea was right beside the road, but it was already pitch dark and I couldn’t see the water in the distance. The street trees were tall palms, and that alone was very southern — there are no palms in the north. There were many other green trees too, and green lawns, none of which you’d see in the north at this time of year. If there’s anything to be said for the south, I have to praise its sheer greenness — it doesn’t lack for it even in winter, while the north has nothing but bare gray.
Late at night there were still plenty of young people strolling around Zengcuoan, eating late-night snacks. They all looked like visitors from out of town; locals probably don’t come here. The guesthouse was right inside the night market. The street was noisy, but the lanes were quiet, and the noise didn’t reach me in bed. No sooner had I settled in than it started to rain outside, drumming on the ground and the awning — southern rain is much heavier than northern rain. It rained on and on through the night, like ASMR. Luckily the bed and the quilt didn’t feel damp or cold, though my head, sticking out, was a bit cold.
2023.3.26
I’ve worked it out: what I call traveling is just walking somewhere else. Today I walked more than 38,000 steps. I really do love walking — from south to north and from north back to south, from daylight into darkness and from darkness back into daylight. Walking is the only way to feel the world truly. A person is given two legs, and legs are for walking. I walked until my legs went stiff, but it felt like quite an achievement.
I woke early in the morning and dawdled a while, then went out at eight sharp. The rain had stopped, but the sky was packed with dark clouds and it could start again at any moment. Plenty of the snack shops in the lanes were open too, selling breakfast — congee, noodles, rice noodles, all sorts. I didn’t feel hungry and had no strong desire for food. With me, I don’t eat until I’m desperately hungry. I headed straight for the sea. The air was damp but fresh, the wind cool, the ground wet, and I was thrilled to see so many palm trees. Last night I’d only made out blurry shapes; today I saw them clearly — tall, imposing, thick, lined up in a row. Southern people are short, but the trees are extraordinarily sturdy.
I went around to the seafront. The sky was overcast, the water muddy, the waves rough. There weren’t many people by the sea, probably because of the rain and because it was Monday. Fewer people suited me fine; I like a quiet beach. Xiamen’s beach slopes down steeply, so standing on it you feel pulled downward, and walking on it is tiring. Rushan Silver Beach is practically flat — you can barely feel any slope at all. Also, Xiamen’s shore is full of huge boulders scattered in the water. I don’t understand how such rocks form, but Silver Beach has none; it’s nothing but sand and mud. Rocks do make it prettier; without them it looks plain. And around Xiamen there are many islands — Gulangyu, Little Kinmen, Greater Kinmen — visible as far as the eye can see. Out on the water, plenty of big cargo ships pass by and lie at anchor.
By the sea I saw a pedestrian skywalk up on the hills, with people looking down from it, and I wanted to go up too. But it took a long detour just to reach the entrance — the Linhai Route of Xiamen’s Mountain-to-Sea Health Walkway. Southern roads twist and turn, and the dense trees block your view, so you can’t see where the crosswalks are; you have to find the best route on a phone map. Not like Beijing, where the roads all run straight and there are no tall trees along them — open and clear, you can see the situation ahead at a glance. I finally got up there from beside the Taiqing Temple.
Besides the Taiqing Temple, right at the exit of Zengcuoan there was a shrine — the Yonghu Temple — and across from it the Yonghu Temple opera stage. And not far outside Zengcuoan there was another shrine, the Fuhai Temple, much the same in style as the Yonghu Temple and very southern Fujian. The roof ridges are incredibly elaborate, crowded with every kind of animal and little figure — dragons rearing their heads, phoenixes spreading their wings, brilliant polychrome painting, eaves swept high. Who exactly is worshipped inside I couldn’t tell; probably some figures of folk belief, not any great Buddha or great patriarch. They say the Zengcuoan neighborhood alone has seven or eight shrines like these. So folk belief in southern Fujian really is interesting — I must study it properly when I have the time.
I kept walking along the mountain-to-sea walkway. Up on the hill I saw many plants and flowers I didn’t recognize — southern flora is so rich — and many birds I didn’t recognize, and I even saw a squirrel. Looking out from the hill to the sea, the view was vast and magnificent. From the Longing-for-Return Tower I could see Dadan Island, Erdan Island and Little Kinmen not far off. It reminded me of something: a while ago a soldier from the Taiwan side swam over from there and was rescued by the mainland coast guard; he still hasn’t gone back, and the Taiwan authorities have listed him as wanted. I don’t know how it ended. The rain and mist hung thick, and the way home on the other shore hung thick too.
I kept going along the walkway, which was built up on the hills, and gradually realized it was carrying me farther and farther from the sea and deeper into the hills, and the slope was getting steeper, and it began to rain again. I didn’t dare go on, so I looked for a fork and headed down. But the fork turned out to be a hidden mountain path, muddy underfoot, running through the middle of nowhere, nothing but dense woods — an abandoned road, really. I grew tense and afraid, dreading that someone would come out and rob me. I even had to pass through a dark culvert half flooded with water. It was a long while before I reached a road with people on it, and only then did I relax. I wouldn’t have believed a city could contain a road like that.
At last I reached Huangcuo Beach, where there were a few more people, all visitors from out of town. This beach is famous as a good place to watch the sunrise, but unfortunately these were days of unbroken rain and cloud — no sunrise, and no sunset either. The sand sloped steeply as before, and there were plenty of boulders along the shore, with people taking pictures beside a small red lighthouse. By now I’d seen rather a lot of the sea; all I wanted was to find the sign reading “One Country, Two Systems, Unify China.” It was right at the very end, hidden by the tall palms along the roadside, and I don’t know whether it can be seen from the other shore.
I was too tired, so I rode a shared bike back to Zengcuoan and wandered a long loop through the lanes. They were all snack shops — shacha noodles, rice rolls, stinky tofu, oyster omelets, sea-worm jelly — all much of a muchness, and fairly expensive. In the end I picked a shacha noodle place; a bowl cost RMB 35 and the portion was tiny. Everyone out strolling was young, in their twenties, dressed to look fresh and pretty; many of the girls went bare-legged in short skirts — sexy.
After the shacha noodles I set off west again, to Baicheng Beach, then to the Yanwu Bridge, which spans the sea with cars driving across it. I kept walking and finally came to Shapowei, whose streets are quite distinctive — like qilou, the arcaded shop-houses where you walk along the covered passage under the buildings instead of on the road, with the shops opening right onto the passage, homely and close to the street. You’d never see that in the north. In the Shapowei Art West Zone lots of people had set up stalls selling all kinds of trinkets, drawing crowds of young people. From upstairs you can see the fishing harbor, and there’s a wall of colored mosaic where many pretty girls stop to take pictures. The art zone looks arty, but it also seems very far from art; I can’t quite explain it. It’s just a lively internet-famous spot — young people love a crowd. I found it a bit wearisome, honestly.
I never got a sunny day in Xiamen, but experiencing the rain wasn’t such a bad thing. Rain has its own pleasures. That damp, sticky feeling is good for plants — they can drink their fill. The variety of plants here is astonishing: huge leaves, lush and green, flowers of every color — white, pink, purple, red, yellow — as if I were living inside a garden. The north simply doesn’t have so many kinds of plants, and by autumn and winter it all turns bare, and the city sinks into gray. Of course the north has its own virtues: more clear days, abundant sunshine. And I still prefer clear days; I love the north more.
2023.3.27
Today I went to only two places, Gulangyu and Nanputuo Temple. I walked over 17,000 steps, only half of yesterday’s. The sky stayed cloudy, with rain on and off, and when I climbed Sunlight Rock the sun even came out for a while and made me feel rather hot. When I got back my calves were still aching and swollen. But staying in a guesthouse I could take a hot shower whenever I liked, and after the shower most of the tiredness was gone. The day wasn’t wasted.
From Zengcuoan to the Xiagu Wharf there’s a minibus. The sign said RMB 15, but it actually cost only RMB 12 — the price must have come down. And yet there were only two passengers the whole way. Beside the bus stop people had set up breakfast stalls, with plastic stools and folding tables on the ground. In about half an hour we reached the wharf. Xiamen has many wharves, but tourists can only take a boat from the Xiagu Wharf, on a dedicated tourist route. The boats come in grades: there are luxury cruise boats that circle the island before landing, and ordinary boats that go straight in, in twenty minutes. I took the ordinary one.
On the boat the crew kept stressing how complicated and forked the island’s roads were, but I didn’t take it seriously — it’s just a small island, a few steps and you’ve seen it. Then I set foot on the island and was dumbstruck: too many roads, too narrow, too hidden, no idea where any of them led. I gave up on the map and just wandered at random, only glancing at the signposts now and then in case I had the general direction right. The little lanes were fun too — turn one corner and there’s another building worth photographing. The island has buildings from all the Western countries and also houses of southern-Fujian style. Having seen plenty of Western architecture, I liked the southern-Fujian houses better: red brick, red tile, upswept eaves, decorated roof ridges, courtyards, trees planted inside and outside them — all of it gives a feeling of warmth and vigor. The south is not the same as the north; a hot climate shapes the way houses are built and the character of the people.
I went up Sunlight Rock. The ticket cost RMB 50, but since I’d come all this way, and it was a rare chance, I’d spend the money. At the top I felt it was worth it. From there you can see the red-tiled roofs below, the beach at the island’s edge and the people on it, the modern high-rises on the far shore and the sea in between. At the foot of the rock there’s also a small temple, its architecture southern Fujian too, with peculiar roof ridges and dragons coiled on either side, painted in bright, warm colors. There’s also a memorial garden to Li Shutong (Master Hongyi). Seeing Li Shutong, I couldn’t help thinking of his “Farewell”: “Beyond the pavilion, beside the ancient road, the green grass stretches to meet the sky.” Up on the hill there are many trees — banyans, palms, plantains — and the sea breeze stirs the leaves and branches, a pleasure to look at.
Small as the island is, the roads wind about and go up and down, and walking them is tiring, so I never got to many places. I’d meant to walk a full circle around the island, but in the end I couldn’t go on and had to take the boat back. Then I took the bus to Nanputuo Temple. Xiamen’s buses have one good thing about them: you don’t have to swipe your card both getting on and getting off — just once, boarding, and every ride is RMB 1. Northern buses always make you swipe twice, which is a nuisance. Riding the bus also lets you look at the buildings with covered walkways along the street, and at the people. The bike lanes aren’t marked off with their own lines, and there are quite a lot of electric mopeds.
Nanputuo Temple is right beside Xiamen University. There’s a saying going around online that the people burning incense in temples these days are all post-90s and post-00s. I noticed it too — plenty of young people bowing there, holding incense sticks, deferential, bowing several times, and you can’t tell what they’re praying for. The roof ridges of the temple have dragons too, very strange. In the grounds there are many tall kapok trees, and kapok flowers are beautiful — big, vivid, fragrant. The pond was full of water lilies in bloom, white and pink, strikingly bright. The north has no kapok trees, and in winter you can’t see lotus flowers either.
Today I ate rice rolls and braised pork rice. The rice rolls were light and good; the braised pork rice was a bit greasy. What I liked best in both, though, was the lettuce — cooked lettuce dipped in some of the meat juices; I could eat a ton of it. In the evening it began to rain again, a fine drizzle, and I lay in my room listening to it.
2023.3.28
A little after seven in the morning the rain got heavier and heavier, until it was a real downpour, clattering and drumming, and it went on for an hour or two. Lying in bed I thought: southerners are pitiful — rain like this and they still have to go to work. Northerners don’t have to worry about such things; it never rains in the north. And in winter the north has central heating. It’s so lucky to be a northerner. People are born to different fates; where’s the fairness in that?
Yesterday I’d planned to go to the botanical garden and Jimei School Village today, but with all this rain in the morning, and having to check out and carry everything on my back — the backpack too heavy — I crossed the botanical garden off and decided to go only to Jimei School Village. It’s off the island, on a direct subway line, very convenient, and it happened to be on the way to Xiamen North Station. Jimei School Village is a truly beautiful place; anyone visiting Xiamen must go there, or they’ll regret it. Xiamen’s subway is not at all crowded — they say the BRT relieved the passenger flow. On the subway screens, messages from visitors rolled past: “Five days here, five days of rain,” and I couldn’t help laughing out loud.
Coming out of the subway station I went first to the Ten-Mile Embankment, where you can see the long sea-crossing road bridge with cars and subway trains running across it — very impressive. The rain had stopped, but the sky was overcast, not good for photos. And it being neither a weekend nor high season, there were hardly any visitors. The tide was probably out, exposing a great stretch of mudflat, so there was none of the surging sea. Somehow that made it feel all the more quiet. The air after the rain was damp; the rocks at the shore were covered in slick sea lettuce, so you had to be extremely careful walking on them. On the mudflats in the distance stood a few long-legged white storks. A young couple was taking a selfie standing on a pile of rocks, sweet and lovely, and I quietly took a picture of them from behind.
Then I walked further in, and soon saw the classrooms of Jimei Middle School and Nanxun Tower. Jimei Middle School is extremely beautiful, like the tropical architecture of the Nanyang (Southeast Asia), very distinctive; the students taking classes inside are so lucky. What Nanxun Tower is for I have no idea — it’s a rather tall tower with a pointed attic on top. The two buildings stand together, with the Dragon Boat Pool in front, and from a distance they look like a landscape painting. Beside them is Huaqiao University, whose buildings also have a Nanyang flavor. Behind them is Jimei University. And Mr. Tan Kah Kee’s former residence is nearby too. There’s also the Jimei Ancestral Hall; the hall and some of the buildings around it have kept the southern-Fujian architectural style, and are worth a look. Finally I wound around to the snack street on Shigu Road to get something to eat, then went back to the subway station and rode to Xiamen North Station.
From Xiamen to Quanzhou is only twenty-five minutes by high-speed rail, quicker than getting around inside Xiamen. And now the sky actually cleared, the dark clouds swept away, and the sun on my skin felt almost scorching. In the south it’s either raining or blazing hot — the climate is simply brutal. Outside the railway station is a bus stop, and I took a bus straight to Kaiyuan Temple. Both Xiamen’s subway and Quanzhou’s buses make announcements in the Minnan dialect. The bus announced the stops and reminded people to wear masks, but there was also music playing the whole time — astonishingly, Lin Shengxiang’s “Mianhui Cai” (“The Last Meal”).
The moment I stepped into Kaiyuan Temple I saw the West Pagoda. Wow — what an ancient-looking Buddhist pagoda, with the marks of history plainly on it. This is a relic of the Song dynasty. Beneath the pagoda the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, setting each other off beautifully with the pagoda and the green trees. On the bus ride from Quanzhou Railway Station to Kaiyuan Temple I’d noticed that many of the street trees bore a small yellow flower with an intensely fresh fragrance, the blossom like osmanthus and the scent like osmanthus too. I assumed they were osmanthus trees, and I saw them in Kaiyuan Temple as well. I checked with a plant-ID app and it told me the tree is called a mangguo — that is, a mango. You never see these in the north, no wonder I didn’t recognize it. It smells so good. Kaiyuan Temple has every kind of tree and flower too — banyans, camphors, mulberries, azaleas, cherry blossoms, camellias. Old trees, bright flowers, and with the sandalwood incense burning, the whole compound was wonderfully fragrant, like a great garden. I also noticed that Quanzhou differs from Xiamen in having fewer palms.
Outside Kaiyuan Temple is West Street, packed with snack shops along both sides, crowds coming and going, lively beyond measure. It’s an internet-famous spot too, but this one really does have plenty of food peculiar to Quanzhou — fish rolls, fish balls, meat zongzi, misua soup, fried vinegar pork — and foods you also find in other southern-Fujian cities, like ginger duck, sea-worm jelly, oyster omelets. The internet-famous photo spot Xiaoxicheng is on West Street as well, but there’s nothing special about it; I don’t understand why Bai Yansong’s words are printed on a wall there. I was worn out, so I went to the guesthouse to rest first.
Going out again in the evening, I noticed some new things. Quanzhou has many people riding motorbikes; Xiamen not so many, and the north fewer still — you see it mostly in Southeast Asia. There are also many buildings in the qilou style, where you walk in the covered passage under the building, very close to the shops, and it keeps the rain off. Southern-Fujian houses turn up everywhere, not torn down but wedged in among modern buildings, so the city is never monotonous. Many households have bougainvillea planted at the door in big jars you can move around; the flowers are deep red and give the place a lovely charm. Every so often you see locals sitting by the roadside, unhurried, brewing and drinking tea. There are quite a few shops selling tea leaves. And cut fruit is sold everywhere.
The south and the north are so different (by “the south” here I mean southern Fujian; these days even Hubei counts as the north, and Jiangnan doesn’t count as the south either). Here I felt it plainly: people are far from politics (Beijing), and even far from culture (the culture of northern rule) and technology. Everywhere there hangs a smell of commerce and of the marketplace, and the faith of the ancestral halls (not the political faith of the north). Here the rainfall is plentiful, the climate hot, the plants growing like mad, and people too must be full of desire; everyone cares only about food and breeding. To someone like me, who has spent so long in the north (the northeast and Beijing), all this felt new and struck me deeply. They must be happier.
2023.3.29
Yesterday afternoon the sun came out, and by evening it was raining again. Waking this morning I listened to the rain pounding away and worried I wouldn’t be able to go out. Luckily, by the time I got up and finished washing, the rain had eased. All day it came and went, now heavy, now light; when it started you had to dig out the umbrella and put it up, which was a nuisance. Using an umbrella is second nature to southerners, but out of the ordinary for a northerner. In the north, rain lasting a day or two is a major event; in the south, a week or a month of it is entirely ordinary.
Yesterday I walked over 26,000 steps, today over 23,000. I wandered all over the city center: first to the Luoyang Bridge, then back to the Guandi Temple, the Qingjing Mosque and the Tianhou Temple — the old Maritime Trade Office was closed — then on to Chengtian Temple, then to West Street, the site of the Southern Imperial Clan Court was closed too, and finally back to Kaiyuan Temple, and that was the day. Wandering the streets and lanes, I found the old city’s houses and relics very well preserved: the temples distinctive and vivid, the houses modest and plain, and the blocks converted into shops used thoroughly and naturally. Ancient as the city is — a thousand years and more — it doesn’t feel old at all, not sodden and moldy with rainwater. It holds vitality and desire.
The Luoyang Bridge is a fair way from the old town; the bus took over an hour, though at least I didn’t have to stand — there were always empty seats on board. And it cost only RMB 1, just swipe on boarding (the swipe-once business I have to keep going on about: perfectly normal to southerners, most peculiar to a northerner). I got off at the south end of the bridge and walked to the bridgehead, passing Qiaonan Street, which has many traditional houses, women sitting at their own front doors shucking oysters. The Luoyang Bridge of course takes no vehicles, only pedestrians, and happily there’s no ticket — it’s free. I’d thought it was just a bridge across a river, but in fact it’s called a sea-crossing bridge. A sea-crossing bridge a thousand years ago is truly a marvel. The piers are pointed on the upstream face, like the bow of a boat, to cut the current, and flat on the other side. As for the stone slabs on the bridge, I don’t know whether later generations replaced them, but measuring with my own steps, each slab ran to twelve paces, ten meters at the least — such enormous stones are astonishing in themselves. The river mouth is all mudflat, that is, mud, not sand; in the middle of the water lies a great stretch of mangrove, dense, leaves vivid green, trunks dark red. And many white storks or white cranes stood or strolled along the water’s edge, then flapped their great wings and flew a short way off. I saw one huge unnamed fish with its dorsal fin showing, swimming in the muddy inlet, and I was utterly astounded — as if I’d seen a monster. (The Luoyang Bridge was built under the direction of the great Northern Song calligrapher Cai Xiang; there’s a Cai Xiang ancestral hall right on Qiaonan Street. Cai Xiang was an elder clansman of Cai Jing’s.)
I don’t understand why people draw fortune sticks at the Guandi Temple. Outside the temple stands a row of kapok trees in full bloom, eye-catching and gorgeous, and plenty of blossoms had fallen to the ground, each one huge — if one hit you on the head, I’m sure it would knock you senseless. Right beside the Guandi Temple is the mosque; that the two sit so close and in such harmony is remarkable in itself. Every other temple charges nothing; why does the mosque need a RMB 3 ticket? There’s little to see inside — only the ruined walls left of the Fentian Altar and nine stone columns, which set the imagination going. The Tianhou Temple is, as I understand it, a temple to Mazu. The shrine to the Three Kings who opened up Fujian, in Chengtian Temple, did teach me a little about the history of Fujian in the Tang dynasty. Kaiyuan Temple has a memorial hall to Master Hongyi, and Chengtian Temple has the place where he was cremated; Li Shutong’s connection with Xiamen and Quanzhou was something out of the ordinary.
The old town is crisscrossed with narrow lanes, much like the hutongs of the north, some of them wide enough for only one person. If someone living in them ordered takeout, I wonder whether the delivery guy could find the address. But I don’t think young people would take to those old houses — too cramped and closed in, too low, damp and dark; the young would balk at them, and only a few old people quietly hold on. Some of the houses in the lanes have been turned into corner shops, cafés, flower shops and snack shops, which might well breathe new life into them. Many of the old houses have inscriptions over their doorways — “Descendants of Yingchuan,” “The Heritage of Longxi,” “Descendants of Wuling,” “The Heritage of Qiaoguo” — which is rather charming. What moved me most was that around any corner you might suddenly see a tree in bloom: pink cherry blossoms, pale yellow mango, deep red kapok.
Kaiyuan Temple still had plenty of visitors, but the air after the rain was fresh. I wanted to photograph the twin pagodas from outside but couldn’t find a good spot. The second floor of the visitor center was closed because of the rain. So I went into Xiangfeng Lane to find the photo spot, and through the lane you can get exactly the right shot of the East Pagoda. West Street was bustling too. I bought a beef pastry (RMB 7) that squirts when you bite it, and some mochi (six for RMB 12), for dinner. At noon I’d had beef rice noodles. Quanzhou has many beef restaurants; they’re a local specialty, not butcher shops that only sell beef.
2023.3.30
It rained in the night and it rained in the morning; there was no telling when this rain would end. If it never stopped I’d skip Xunpu Village. Xunpu is a newly trendy internet-famous spot, a must for girls. Why a must for girls? Because that’s where the flower-crowned women are. The xun in Xunpu is properly written with the character for “mud crab,” but perhaps for convenience the maps all render the place name with a simpler homophone — only the boundary stone at the village entrance still uses the proper character. Luckily, a little after eight the sky actually cleared and the sun came out — quite magical. It didn’t last long, though.
I got off the bus one stop past Xunpu Village, wanting to see the mouth of the Jinjiang River and the Quanzhou Bay Bridge. It turned out the river mouth is all mudflat (wetland), muddy beyond words, even a bit filthy, and with the overcast sky there was nothing pretty about it; the Quanzhou Bay Bridge was far off too, so I couldn’t make out any detail. I walked back along the seafront and came to Xunpu Village. Going in through a lane I found the Shunji Temple (a Mazu temple), and many girls taking photographs there. They wore flower headdresses, so vivid and striking that you couldn’t help looking twice. And they were dressed in all kinds of hanfu — white, red, blue-green (forgive me, I can’t name them) — posing beside the oyster-shell houses.
The local women — the great majority of them elderly — also wore flower headdresses (to draw the tourists, I think), sitting at their own doorways prying oysters, their fingers moving without pause, piling the meat into plastic boxes, until the lanes smelled of raw oyster. They say this is the Xunpu tradition: the men go out fishing, the women stay home prying oysters. The lanes in the village are extremely narrow, the houses jumbled together every which way, and you lose all sense of direction. The traditional Xunpu house is called an oyster-shell house — oyster shells, pebbles and mud mixed together to build the walls. But those are the old, broken houses; a few traces of ruined walls survive. New houses certainly don’t use those materials anymore, or else the courtyard wall is made specially to look like it.
I spent a little over an hour in Xunpu Village, then took the bus to Quanzhou Station. There were a few more sights, but they were too far, and with the bad weather I doubted I’d see anything stirring. My shallow survey of Quanzhou ended there. Tickets from Quanzhou to Xiamen can be bought at any time, and there were plenty of empty seats on the train. In a moment I was back in Xiamen. Xiamen was overcast, with drifting rain mist over the sea. I tried Xiamen’s BRT (bus rapid transit); when I swiped, I thought I’d need the bus code, but it turned out to be the subway code. A pity the BRT doesn’t pass Jimei School Village — it runs over the Jimei Bridge, so you miss the fine view of the Ten-Mile Embankment.
Back in Xiamen I saw at once how different it is from Quanzhou: Xiamen is plainly much younger, with more young people. Quanzhou’s history is too long, but Xiamen appeals more to the young. I think it’s that Xiamen’s sea is prettier, with more beaches, and closer to the city center; and there are hills, with footpaths on them, and the environment is better overall. From the fact that Xiamen has a subway and a BRT while Quanzhou has neither, you can also read the difference. But both places have strong clan feeling, with ancestral halls on every side. In the afternoon it rained again. I don’t know how long it had been raining before, or how long it would go on; I often saw underwear drying on their balconies, and no telling when it would ever dry. A week in southern Fujian and it had rained the whole time — by now it was hard for me to take.
2023.3.31
Why did I fly back to Yantai from Xiamen? Because Quanzhou has fewer flights and Xiamen has more, and cheaper ones. That alone shows how many more people come sightseeing in Xiamen. In fact, at first I’d also planned to go to Fuzhou — since it’s a rare trip, why not see a few more cities, and the tulou, Fujian’s great earthen buildings — but with my time, energy and money all limited, I could only manage Xiamen and Quanzhou. Seven days here, seven days of wet, overcast weather, made me understand that the south has its drawbacks; which in turn made me love the north all the more.
Every day these past few days I’ve walked a great deal. I’ve said I like walking, and I carried a pack on my back the whole time; my shoulders were rubbed sore. But a hot shower when I got back at night, a good sleep, and the next day I could walk another whole day. Liking to walk, staying in extremely cheap guesthouses, and caring little about food — so I’m not suited to traveling with other people. Sometimes I even feel that people who travel in groups are dead weight. Of course, people differ. I don’t like company; I’ve always gone my own way and I won’t have anyone else throwing off my rhythm.
As for food, at Rushan Silver Beach I’ve long been vegetarian — only vegetables, eggs and rice, nothing else. But on the road it’s hard to eat vegetarian; to fill my stomach I just eat whatever comes. And I’m very restrained: I only want to be full, not to eat well. Usually I walk until I’m desperately hungry, and only then pick some restaurant at random for a bite. Gluttony is a sin to me. On the whole, southern-Fujian food is rather bland — you rarely find anything spicy — but there’s a great variety of local specialties, so for anyone who loves food it’s a good place. Compared with the south, the north really is a culinary desert, and the service in northern restaurants leaves much to be desired.
Because I eat so little I’ve grown much thinner: my cheekbones stand out, my double chin is gone, my belly and waist have shrunk a notch. The proof is my jeans, which are loose and baggy (size 29) — a wide gap between them and my waist, hanging off my hipbones. When I’m walking I keep worrying they’ll fall down and hike them up every so often (no use, since I have no belt). This may be the trouble with getting thin: next time I go out I’ll have to change to another pair of trousers, or buy a belt (though I haven’t used a belt for many years).
Out in the world you’re bound to have to socialize with strangers, even if it’s only simple exchanges — ordering food, asking directions, answering questions — and even that much has become difficult for me. Living alone so long, never talking to anyone, muttering only to myself, my ability to converse has badly atrophied. For one thing, I’ve grown timid and over-cautious. For another, I can’t express what I mean clearly; my voice is too small, and even my Mandarin isn’t up to standard anymore. In short, I can’t let myself stay closed off; from now on I must talk things over with other people more.
As for lodging, it was guesthouses all the way, near the sights. It’s not high season now — it’s the rainy season — and they cost only a bit over a hundred a night. Some guesthouses are decorated with real warmth, like an ordinary person’s home; others are chilly, like a budget chain hotel. I’ve stopped staying in youth hostels: I’m not young anymore, I don’t want to be crammed in with other people, and chatting with young people there’s a generation gap. Getting old is a frightening thing — not only does the body decline, the mind grows more conservative too. While you’re young you should go a bit crazy; otherwise, when you’re older, you’ll want to and you won’t be able to.
The plane landed soon enough. Jiaodong was bright with sunshine, blue sky and white clouds, dry and cool, open and flat (though Jiaodong is hilly country, beside the mountains of southern Fujian it pales into insignificance). The distant hills are still bare and dusty gray, but a week away and the willows along the road had already turned green and were putting out leaves, and now and then I saw pink cherry blossoms and yellow winter jasmine. From Yantai back to Rushan Silver Beach takes only two hours. Silver Beach was as peaceful as when I’d left it, far from the clamor. Here there is no stream of traffic, no neon and nightlife, no worldly hubbub — only a sky full of stars and the plain, still sea. Maybe this is what I wanted.