Plainness — nothing in the world can compete with it in beauty. — Zhuangzi, “The Way of Heaven”
2023.4.1
There is still nothing like sleeping in your own bed. I woke with no trace of fatigue, as if the long days of walking had never happened. The north was bright and clear, the sun pouring down, the room light and open, and my mood lifted with it. I love the dry air of the north.
I’d only been away a week, and the flowers in the compound had all come out — magnolias, white magnolias, purple magnolias, peach blossoms, cherry blossoms, apricot blossoms, apricot-plum, and plenty I couldn’t name. The leaves had only greened a little, thin and sparse, still waiting to thicken. Out on the waste ground beyond the compound, all sorts of little wildflowers were blooming too — dandelions, violets, shepherd’s purse, and Persian speedwell.
The daytime temperature was 20 degrees — very warm. It put me in mind of late October, when I first arrived: the days were 20-odd degrees then too, much like now. Spring is like autumn played backward. Of course you have to wear a hat, or the sun burns. The wind was from the south, so the waves were big, rolling in toward shore one after another with a steady roar. Quite a few tourists were out; a few cars were parked on the beach; families came in groups, women holding children by the hand, a big boy running about flying a kite — and I watched from the shore.
Now that I’m back I can eat simply again — only rice, noodles, vegetables and eggs, and nothing but plain boiled water to drink. Eating this way makes me very happy; only a restrained, plain life makes a person purer. No gorging, no luxury, no showing off. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
2023.4.2
The sky was light early, but it’s so quiet here — no voices outside, no traffic, only birdsong. The sun climbs higher and higher, and now it lights only a small part of the south balcony; by the summer solstice, when it shines straight down on the Tropic of Cancer, that patch will be smaller still. Not like winter, when the sun lit the whole balcony and slanted far into the living room. No more sunbathing on the balcony. Still, it isn’t cold now, so there’s no need to sit in the sun, and no need for long johns or long underwear either; the breeze outside is mild, brushing my face. This really is a fine place to grow old. But the high season is coming, and more and more people are arriving — not a good thing as far as I’m concerned. A family has moved into the same-floor flat in the building across the way; I can see them from my balcony, and they can see me from their kitchen and the north bedroom. I’m too embarrassed now to sprawl in the balcony chair the way I used to, feet up, idly pondering life; and I don’t dare dress scantily anymore — picking my nose, wiggling my backside, yawning, stretching, hitching up my trousers — I have to keep well away from the window. No freedom. This is why I don’t like crowds. I want to live somewhere with no people — in the mountains, ideally, or on an island. Robinson Crusoe’s life is the one I long for.
After lunch I went for another stroll by the sea (lunch was rice and two fried eggs — as simple as that). Two o’clock was high tide; the water was rising, not much wind, not much surf, but the waves still made a lovely sound. I walked west along the shore, picking up a lot of junk-looking shells as I went, filling my pockets — heavy, and full of wet sand. I set my little tripod up on the beach to film the waves, and twice the water knocked it over; luckily the phone is waterproof, though my shoes got soaked. I don’t know whether I’m tired of the sea by now; it’s just that after nearly half a year lying flat here, some new thoughts have been creeping in, and they leave me unsettled.
No one way of living is the right one; no one road is the one you must take. Every person is one of a kind, and every life is unrepeatable. We should stop listening to all that nonsense advice about how a person ought to live — what you should be doing at twenty, what you should be doing at thirty. There’s no set answer, as in Bob Dylan’s song — the answer is blowin’ in the wind. Let’s go at our own pace. At thirty you can do what people do at twenty, and you can do what people do at forty. So what if you’re behind? Don’t measure yourself against others — only against who you were — “If you can one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day. Yea, let there be daily renovation.” That’s enough. Be brave, don’t be afraid, don’t worry about things too far off; if you’re still worrying, how is that different from when you had a job? Don’t live anxiously. Live happily. Seize the day if you like, keep quiet and do nothing if you like — anything but a sour face. “Hey, hey, hey, don’t be down — just think of it as going to a funeral. You’re still young, you’re still fresh; chest out, on you go — ahead lies the bright road.”
2023.4.3
Today brought my first water cut since coming to Silver Beach. People here often say that some compounds lose their water now and then, but it had never happened in mine. I knew it couldn’t be only my flat — the whole compound was without water, and it would be back soon enough, so I wasn’t really worried. I just found myself thinking: living here, I know no one — not the people on the other floors, not the management office — and I wouldn’t know who to ask, or who to get advance word of a water cut from. I’m completely shut off from information. If I knew ahead of time when the water would go and when it would come back, of course I’d feel easier. And what if it were my own pipes that had burst — who would I turn to for help? In this place I’m utterly on my own. Just idle thoughts. I hope nothing bad ever comes my way.
Today was overcast, with a strong wind off the sea — rain and a cold snap coming. Even so, April has been the best month I’ve known here. Not cold, not hot; neither too many people nor too few; the trees in the compound all in flower — one white here, one pink there — a pleasure to the eye. I’ve seen more than enough of the waves, but every time I go and look, it calms me; the vastness of the sea opens the heart. The only thing is that I can’t see the beautiful sunsets anymore, which I regret — but what’s to be done? I can hardly move the sun, or move the coastline. Accept it: no place is a perfect hermitage.
On the way back from the sea I passed the Yinlong Bay night market and bought eggs (RMB 7 a jin, twenty of them), salted duck eggs (RMB 10 for seven) and apples (RMB 6 a jin, five). At my door, while I was unlocking it, the salted duck eggs fell and broke. Lucky it was the salted duck eggs and not the fresh ones. And lucky it was the salted duck eggs and not me. I hope I never have an accident out here.
2023.4.4
“A drizzling rain falls like tears on the Mourning Day; the mourner’s heart is going to break on his way. Where can a wineshop be found to drown his sad hours? A cowherd points to a cot 'mid apricot flowers.” Today it began to rain — pitter-patter, not heavy, but the wind was strong, an easterly of force seven or eight, howling, driving the raindrops slantwise. It doesn’t rain often in the north, and when it does it feels like a piece of luck. The wind was too strong; even with an umbrella your shoes and trousers get soaked, so I stayed in. I stood by the bedroom window watching a peach tree below, its branches full of blossom, dancing in the wind — quite a sight.
It rained all day; toward evening it eased a little but never stopped, and the forecast says tomorrow will be wet too. The wind especially was frighteningly strong — the strongest I’ve met since coming here. I remember someone joking online that Weihai has rather a lot of wind: it blows twice a year, and each time lasts six months. Weihai is in the north, Rushan in the south; in winter Weihai gets more wind than Rushan, while now it’s spring, and spring often brings a south wind, so Rushan gets more than Weihai. I’d guess summer is mostly south wind too. In summer there are typhoons at sea as well, carrying great loads of moisture this way, so there’ll be more rain then — we’ll wait quietly and see.
Someone online wrote that he’d driven a long circuit around the Jiaodong Peninsula — from Yantai to Weihai, Weihai to Qingdao, Qingdao to Rizhao — and found any number of resorts like Silver Beach, all new buildings put up by the big developers — Evergrande, Vanke, Country Garden — hundreds of blocks, whole districts of them, and every one of them empty. Ghost towns, nothing but ghost towns. He was left with a tangle of feelings and no words for them. Maybe this is the future of real estate: small county towns and the countryside will only wither and empty out, and young people will have no choice but to go off to the big cities to look for opportunities. But big-city property prices won’t fall, so the young still can’t afford to buy — they rent, work their whole lives away, and burn through their youth.
2023.4.5
I’d been away a week and missed two market days (the big market comes once every five days); the day I got back happened to be a market day too, but I didn’t return till evening, so of course I missed it. There were only a few vegetables left in the fridge, and for the next three or four days I had none — just plain rice, eggs and instant noodles. Today is the fifteenth, a market day and a spring-tide day, so I was up early to go buy vegetables. I got green peppers (RMB 4, at RMB 3 a jin), potatoes (RMB 13, at RMB 4 a jin), napa cabbage (RMB 3.6, at RMB 0.8 a jin — the price has gone up), bananas (RMB 6.3, at RMB 3 a jin), jujube cake (RMB 4, at RMB 10 a jin) and sunflower seeds (RMB 15 a jin). After so many days without vegetables I’d grown a bit constipated. There was plenty more I’d have liked to buy — tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflower, cabbage, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, garlic scapes. The market’s vegetables were a dazzle to the eye — “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.” As for meat and seafood, I don’t touch them — I’m a committed vegetarian. To keep life simple I bought only napa cabbage and potatoes again; they’re easy to cook. I reckon that will last me ten days or so, and I’ll buy other things at the next market.
Having bought the vegetables, I could cook — and it had been a long time since I’d cooked properly. It was only the simplest thing, fried eggs and stir-fried napa cabbage, but to me it was a great pleasure. Tear the cabbage, wash the cabbage, peel the garlic, chop the garlic, wash the green peppers, chop the green peppers — set them aside and wait. Rinse the rice, cook it; when there are eight minutes left, fry two eggs, then stir-fry the cabbage. When rice and dishes are both done, it’s time to eat. I don’t use a bowl — I eat straight out of the rice cooker, sparing myself a bowl to wash. My cooking may not look like much, but it tastes good, or at least I like it very much. I love this pared-down life. After eating I don’t rest; I wash up the bowls and the pot. I like washing up too. Everything with my own hands, asking nothing of anyone, needing no one’s help — I like this independent life. I can manage everything on my own. What a satisfying meal!
In the afternoon the weather app on my phone showed the air quality at severe pollution. I wondered how there could be pollution with such a strong north wind. I opened the window: the outskirts were a blur of thick smoke, hazy, like dense fog but with a bluish tinge — clearly smoke, not fog. The air smelled of smoke too, like something burning — crop stalks, or paper. It took me a moment to realize: today is Qingming. They were burning paper money to honor their ancestors, and had burned the air into severe pollution. Such devotion. Having read Zhuangzi, I’m less afraid of death than ever. If I die, just cremate me, or donate me to a medical school; don’t waste land, and don’t bother putting me in some urn — when a person dies the lamp goes out, like a wisp of smoke that slowly dissolves into nothing. Take life and death lightly.
Today was not only Qingming, a market day and a spring-tide day (the wind was too strong and it was a bit cold, so I didn’t go to the sea) — it was also a full-moon day. All day it had been cloudy and hazy, but by eight in the evening the mist had cleared away entirely, and a dim, distant disc climbed into the eastern sky. A cold wind blew outside; the compound was silent. I stood by the window, “raising my head, I look at the bright moon.” As the hours passed the moon rose higher and grew whiter, spilling a cold, clear radiance over the balcony.
2023.4.6
The rain finally stopped, the wind dropped, the ground dried, and I went for a walk by the sea. Along the way I saw the little yellow dandelions on the waste ground — one here, a few there, scattered, spreading out, dressing the barren grass beautifully. The yellow winter jasmine had come out in a great mass, crowding together, a brightness to catch the eye; yellow looks more vigorous, more vital, than pink or red. No wonder the emperors of old favored yellow. There were many other little purple and white flowers on the ground too. By the roadside a tall peach tree had put out buds, not fully open — colorless against the light, but with the light behind you, branches of pink on the bare, still-leafless twigs. In winter, passing these dead-looking trees, I’d never have imagined they would come back to life like this — flowers first, leaves after. It’s a kind of miracle: the miracle of nature, the miracle of life.
There are noticeably more residents here now, and it’s noisy outdoors again. Many of the ground-floor households with gardens have come back and are busy in them — turning the soil, fertilizing, planting flowers and vegetables, talking and laughing. Out at the square by the sea people are singing and dancing. Today is a foraging day, but the weather still isn’t especially good, and the tide hasn’t gone out very far, so not many people are out foraging. I stood on the embankment and didn’t go down onto the beach or walk to the water’s edge — just stood in the sea breeze a while and looked at the coastline.
I cook only one meal a day now, and have noodles for the other (dried noodles or instant noodles with napa cabbage and egg) — the pattern has more or less settled. Eating has become regular; so has everything else; no constipation — all to the good of my health. To a southerner, “a meal” means rice. The dish is hot-and-sour shredded potato. Ever since I learned to make it, I make it often. I don’t need to know many dishes, and I don’t tire of it. It’s just that hot-and-sour shredded potato isn’t as easy as stir-fried napa cabbage, because you have to peel the potatoes, shred them, and soak and rinse them in clean water to wash out the excess starch (I learned this from a recipe and don’t know the reason, but I trust recipes — a recipe is at least more reliable than I am). The vinegar I bought had never been used before; only since I started making this dish have I used it often. And dried red chilies. The result goes wonderfully with rice. But potato counts as a staple, and it’s very filling. Two potatoes is too much; I can only peel one.
2023.4.7
Another clear day — a big sun, not a cloud in the sky, a blue like the sea. There was wind, but a gentle wind. I love clear days; the sight of one makes me happier than the sight of a beautiful woman. I hurried to carry the quilt out to the balcony, laid it over two stools, spread it out, and let it sun. The pillow too went on the windowsill, propped upright against the glass, to sun. I washed the dirty clothes, trousers and socks, and hung them out to dry. The clean, dry shoes I set out on the balcony to sun as well. And I have to sun myself too, until I’m as comfortable and sweet-smelling as hay.
I hadn’t planned to go out — I meant to spend the day in the sun at home. But then I thought: I haven’t been out for days, which is unfair to my body; and anyway, I’ve just eaten, so I ought to walk it off, aid digestion, lose a little weight. I don’t want to get fat again. Once outside I found the open country even more spacious — you can see a long way at a glance (you never get a view like that in the city) — which is very good for the eyes; and the sky was so refreshingly blue that you wanted to keep looking at it, except that you have to watch the road, so you can’t keep your head up, only glance up now and then. It suddenly occurred to me that in the big city my vision was always full of floating black specks like gnats, my eyes always tired, even aching, and now all those symptoms are gone. You can see how harmful a big city is. The air is clean as spring water from a mountain — clear and sweet — and you can’t help drawing deep breaths; with every breath you feel you’ve added a few years to your life. In the big city there’s only car exhaust and the stench of crowds.
The trees outside are still flowering. Down south the blossoms are nearly all over, but up north they’re only just beginning. I saw a low little tree whose buds were small and dense, spread along the branches — very charming. The plant-ID app said it’s a double-flowered elm-leaved plum — “Little Peach Blossom.” The nickname is nicer, and easier to remember. Little Peach Blossom, Little Peach Blossom, you’re so beautiful. There was another low little tree by the road, covered in small yellow flowers like trumpets. I’d always thought it was winter jasmine, but the app says it’s forsythia. So it’s forsythia. Forsythia has only four petals, winter jasmine six. I’ve learned another flower. On the ground, again, yellow and purple and white, in clusters and dots, like stars. At the seaside I saw swallows, tails like scissors. The swallows have come back north too. The magpies and sparrows, though, are the same ones as before; they’re more active now, but they’re residents here, unlike the swallows, which migrate.
There are clearly more people on the streets — quite different from winter. The restaurants that stayed shut in winter have been opening one after another. There are plenty of people sitting in them, with their cars parked outside. The amusement park by the sea has been abandoned for five or six years; I don’t know if it will reopen this year, because I saw some young boys climbing over the fences and running in to play on the broken-down old equipment. Outside its wall a man and a woman — he strummed a guitar, she beat a hand drum, the two answering each other. And a middle-aged man with a telephoto lens hanging at his chest, surveying the sea. Only the old local farmer who cleans the shore was still dozing on his tricycle.
At the mouth of the Baishatan River I saw a few villagers fishing. It was high tide then; the sea surged into the river mouth and the river water poured back out to sea. There were probably fish migrating through, so they could catch something there — but I watched a while, and when they pulled in their net there wasn’t a single fish. Walking back from there, since I hadn’t drunk any water before leaving home and had walked a long circuit, I was really thirsty and wanted a Coke. I passed two Jiajiayue supermarkets and both times wanted to go in and buy a cold bottle, but I held myself back — Coke isn’t healthy.
Though I can’t see a beautiful sunset now, after the sun goes down the afterglow is still soft and tender, blue and orange, and it calms me. Because the day was so clear, at night there were again multitudes of bright stars and the constellations they make — I can’t name them, alas; they were mainly in the southwest — and the shining Venus, which, like the sun, has shifted a long way north. And the full moon rising from the southeast was unusually bright and huge, like a great jade plate, just faintly tinged with warm yellow.
2023.4.8
I got up at seven and the sun was already high, the day bright. Sunrise is at 5:31 and sunset at 18:22 — a long thirteen hours of daylight. Compared with winter, I thought winter isn’t bad either: the days are short and the nights long, so you can sleep more. But now the day breaks so early it’s practically forcing you to wake early, get up early, get to work early. And the sun climbs higher and higher, almost straight overhead; sitting on the balcony you can hardly get any sun anymore, and the temperature keeps rising, as if it were grilling your skin — and it’s dazzling. All the same I put the quilt, pillow and shoes out to sun, and sat on the balcony playing with my phone. More sun is always good — for people and for things alike. This is a northerner’s privilege; down south it rains and stays overcast day after day and you rarely see the sun. I feel for them.
After a day in the sun at home, I went out to the sea toward evening. The wind was fairly strong, so there weren’t many people there — and I like a beach with few people: quiet, and you can wander as you please. For the first time I saw people having wedding photos taken by the sea. My first thought was: why would anyone come here for wedding photos? The sea here is nothing special, not especially beautiful — why not go to Weihai or Qingdao? Then I immediately turned the thought around. That’s an unkind way to think. Why shouldn’t people have their wedding photos taken at Rushan Silver Beach? Why the need to compare? Can’t an ordinary scene make a happy picture? I felt ashamed of myself. Most of people’s unhappiness comes from comparing themselves with others.
At the mouth of the Baishatan River I hadn’t expected to see the setting sun cast its light on the water there — ripples stirring, glittering silver, a charm all its own. I stood a long time on the jumble of rocks below the seawall, watching the silver light and the waves. It was ebb tide; the water withdrew slowly, exposing more and more stones, and the sandbar not far off emerged from being submerged to show a broad expanse. I walked out onto the sandbar to look at the water; the sand was still wet, and I left a string of shallow footprints. A pity there was no golden sheet of sea to be seen.
On the way back I passed the night market — and the night market really is a night market now. In winter there were few stalls, and they packed up and went home early; once it got dark there was no one about. Now there are plenty of people even after dark, and many stalls that weren’t there in winter — barbecue, pancakes, cooked food. I badly wanted to buy something, but I restrained myself; I’ll go home and boil noodles for dinner. The country must dislike me for not consuming. It’s just that seeing those young vendors waiting for customers who never come, their eyes blank, I couldn’t help feeling for them.
2023.4.9
Today I did something stupid: I forgot to peel the potato before cutting it. Potatoes are big here — one is enough for a meal. I took one out and washed it; it was covered in soil. Then I cut it in half — and thank goodness I cut it in half. I took one half and began slicing it with the knife, and only when I’d finished that half did I realize I’d forgotten to peel it. But once it’s sliced it’s hard to peel; I hesitated over throwing it out, then felt it was a waste. So I held the slices tight and peeled as best I could — some places I couldn’t, but I made do — and sliced the slices into shreds. The other half I mustn’t forget to peel: peel it, then slice it, then shred it, then rinse off the starch.
I read the report about four young people who agreed to jump off a cliff at Tianmen Mountain. It reminded me that the lying-flat group chat in Rushan used to talk about the same thing — “if you can’t go on living, go and die.” Sometimes I think that way myself, but only think it; really it’s a way of giving myself the courage to live on. I’d never do it. Yet there are many people who genuinely can’t go on — helpless, despairing, with no choice but the extreme. Whose fault is that, in the end? I won’t blame them as individuals: if there were people, organizations, a government, a country to help them, to lend them a hand, they wouldn’t choose that road. Whose failure is this? It’s other people’s failure. It’s a collective failure.
2023.4.10
There was still plenty of food in the fridge, enough for five days, but today was a market day and I had nothing else to do, so I went out to wander and join the crowd. The market had many stalls and many shoppers — a spring scene. The car park was full; looking at the license plates — Beijing, Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Henan, Liaoning, Zhejiang, Qinghai, Jiangxi — they were all from out of town. There were not only many old people at the market but many middle-aged ones too; young people are still few. The seafood stalls have the same catch year-round — oysters, sea cucumber, abalone, turbot, monkfish, hairtail, crab — except that kelp had appeared, probably in season now. The vegetable and meat sellers are always there; eggs, cake and sunflower seeds as ever. The fruit, though, was new: strawberries, pineapple, durian. I bought two sticks of youtiao for RMB 10. Youtiao at Silver Beach is sold by weight, and one stick is worth four down south. I bought a head of cauliflower at RMB 4 a jin, two jin. Then I wandered about a bit and went home. One person really can’t eat much. I’m easier to feed than a dog.
In the compound, one ground-floor household with a garden is having its yard renovated. Many others are doing work too, as if it’s the busy season for renovations: some have come back from elsewhere to live and are fixing the place up, others have lived here all along but are giving it a facelift. In that garden it’s lively — workers going in and out, and a crowd of onlookers, all old people from the compound, who must know one another, gathered and chatting. They seem to be putting up a canopy; they’ve set out tables and chairs in the yard, and a few people have already sat down. Come summer, day or night, they’ll be able to eat and drink tea and talk freely out there. Many garden households are tending their yards, watering the vegetables, busy about; little dogs circle their owners.
The wind was from the south today, force 5, so the waves were especially high, booming, rushing up the shore with foam, all white — quite a spectacle. I walked along the water’s edge all the way to the mouth of the Baishatan River, the best place to film waves. It was exactly high tide; the water came right to the edge. I set up my tripod, zoomed in, and filmed the surging tide for several minutes in every direction. The rolling of the waves was ceaseless, and their thrum was like white noise, leaving me utterly calm. In that sense I really haven’t tired of the sea, and I don’t think I could — even just these waves keep me thinking of it. And where I stood, there wasn’t another soul in sight for a long way; no noise, no fear of being watched. This is my own secret little base; this stretch of sea belongs to me alone.
Walking back from the sea I came to a pond (it lies inland of the shore) full of weeds and reeds. In winter it was bleak, the water almost dried up; now I heard a chorus of frogs — quite magical: croak, croak, croak, without stopping, just like the line in Xin Qiji — “Listen, how frogs’ croaks please the ear!” It’s only spring, and the frogs are already this loud; by summer it will be like thunder. Every day brings a new discovery, and it’s even making me look forward to summer. What will Silver Beach be like in summer?
2023.4.11
All day there was floating dust — not as bad as Beijing, but noticeable: the horizon a gray blur, faintly yellow, the sunlight robbed of its force. The wind was strong but warm, and at noon it was 20 degrees. It felt awful, so I stayed in all day. Toward evening the wind seemed to stop; it was very still, and I can’t sit idle, so I hurried out for a walk. The wind had indeed stopped and the dust was gone; the sky was faintly blue, with Venus hanging in it. Out at sea there was still a bit of chop, rolling and slapping the shore, neither big nor small, and only a few people about.
A tofu vendor was calling out through a loudspeaker, hawking his tofu along the street. Pine cones had fallen everywhere — more, it seemed, than in winter. I picked one up, turned it over in my hand, tossed it and caught it. The Lanzhou noodles shop and the Shaxian snacks shop both had their lights on, with not a single customer inside. The Northeast iron-pot stew place and the Yimeng fried chicken place, by contrast, had quite a few customers, groups sitting around together. Children were playing outside the doors. A middle-schooler rode his bike home into the compound. The estate agents were eating their meal in their own shop. With the weather warming, though there are still few people on the streets at night, I no longer feel as afraid walking outside as I did in winter.
2023.4.12
There was still some floating dust today, but much less than yesterday; the horizon was silver, like heavy smog. The sun was fairly bright and warm, so I put the pillow and quilt out to sun. I meant to go for a long hike, walking to Chaoxi Lake, following the shore to look at the scenery, then back. I wore a hat against the sun; the west wind was force four to five, and Chaoxi Lake is due west, so I headed west straight into it, which kept me head down and eyes squinting the whole way. I walked almost four hours; checking my step count when I got back, it was 22,665 steps, about fifteen kilometers.
Perhaps because it wasn’t the weekend and it was the middle of the day, there weren’t many people by the sea — and west of the mouth of the Baishatan River there were even fewer. But the western beach is the flattest and cleanest of all. Unlike Damuzhi Plaza, which is mudflat, this is pure sand, fine and soft, and the water is especially clean, with no litter on the shore — excellent for swimming, and I hear plenty of people do swim here in summer. I walked on and on along the beach to the mouth of Chaoxi Lake, meeting hardly anyone the whole way. Empty and quiet.
Lake and sea both, this stretch — yet the compounds here are far quieter than those in the middle and east; the buildings look as if no one has lived in them for years. You see no pedestrians and no cars on the roads; you could run across the street every which way and it wouldn’t matter. By the lake I saw only one man fishing, and he pulled up a sardine. The reeds were still as they had been in winter, nothing left but bare stalks, no plumes. On the grass there were a few small flowers — dandelions and violets, blooming every which way. I sat on the grass to rest a while and looked at the mountains in the mist far off.
Wandering the empty streets, all I saw was desolation: the vast sky, the boundless sea, the wide open fields, the shallow little river, pines and willows, reeds and wild grass, magpies and sparrows, cherry blossoms and wildflowers, a tower standing alone, low houses blotched with age. You can’t help sighing in sorrow — what chance does a small town like this have? What young person would come here? Its future can only be further decline. In the evening I looked again at the lit windows of the other buildings. There were a few more than in winter, but only two or three added to the original two or three — which is to say, in a whole building only four or five flats had lights on. The compound was dim and silent: no sound of voices, no sound of a television, no sound of cooking. Fearfully quiet. May Day is coming soon, the tourist high season, but Silver Beach is remote, the transport is inconvenient, the beach is ordinary, and there’s no dining or entertainment worth mentioning — so who would come here for a holiday? Like the amusement park by the sea, said to have been abandoned six or seven years now. Maybe I was just tired from so much walking, and it made me melancholy.
2023.4.13
The green peppers I’d bought at the market the time before last had gone bad in the fridge, so I had to throw them out. Probably because they were too close to the fridge wall, or had simply been kept too long. As a Hubei man, I must have green peppers in a stir-fry, so toward evening I went to the night market and bought some long green peppers. RMB 2.5 a jin. Living alone, and being especially frugal, I can’t buy too much at a time; keep it too long and it goes bad. Once, to save trouble, I bought a lot of garlic all at once; four months later I still hadn’t finished it, and it sprouted in the fridge.
When I went out I made a point of going to look at the fields. The compounds here are usually ringed by farmland, fields wedged between the housing, with fish ponds here and there and a good deal of undeveloped waste ground. From a distance I saw a stretch of low green crop in a field. I didn’t know it; I took it for scallions. Going closer to make it out, I found it wasn’t scallions — but I can’t tell one grain from another, and as a southerner who eats rice at all three meals, northern crops are especially unfamiliar to me. So I used a plant-ID app on my phone, and it said this is wheat. I don’t even recognize wheat. In eastern Hubei we eat little wheat, and no one in my town grew it. I knew flour but not the wheat plant. On the waste ground beside the field, a dandelion had gone to seed in a ring of white fluff, making a neat hollow sphere — a very pretty shape.
I heard an old English song — a bit cheesy, but lovely — and I’ll share it with myself, and with you: “Be What You Wanna Be.”
doctor, actor, lawyer or a singer
why not president, be a dreamer
you can be just the one you wanna be
policeman, fire fighter or a post man
why not something like your old man
you can be just the one you wanna be
we may have different ways to think
but it doesn’t really matter
we all caught up in the steam of this life
focus on every little thing
that’s what does really matter
luxury cars and bling
that’s not real life
I know you could reach the top
make sure that you won’t stop
be the one that you wanna be
2023.4.14
I went for another wander by the fields. I learned a tree today — the elm, which has put out tender green buds, rather like copper coins, though I’ve no idea how you eat them. On the waste ground there was a little patch of rapeseed in bright yellow flower. It’s rare to see rapeseed in the north — it felt like home. The wheat in the fields was a vivid green, growing promisingly; it must have been sown a month ago, and it hasn’t grown tall yet, so it looks like chives. On the dirt road a plump mole cricket scurried past; I don’t know where it was off to — if a bird saw it, it would be done for. The abandoned, broken farmhouses stood silently in the wilderness, overrun with weeds, and in a big tree beside one of the houses there were two great magpie nests.
Toward evening I went to the night market again and bought a few things: Venus apples (RMB 6 a jin, five of them, RMB 17.8), free-range eggs (RMB 7 a jin, fifteen, RMB 13.8), salted duck eggs (six, RMB 10). For some reason an old man went from stall to stall picking fights with the vendors. The older woman vendor didn’t dare curse him back, only argued reason with him; the old man spoke some dialect I couldn’t make out at all. The middle-aged male vendor wouldn’t put up with him and told him he was out of his mind. Everyone else stood around enjoying the show — a fine bustling bit of street life. Shopping at the market leaves you with a lot of plastic bags, and plastic bags can serve as trash bags, so here you never need to buy bin liners.
My stay at Rushan Silver Beach is about to reach six months — half a year. I’ve had a proper taste of life by the sea, and I can say with pride, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Living by the sea was a dream of mine from long ago, and I can say that dream has come true. Having realized it, of course I’m content, of course I’m happy. Looking back over these six months, every day has been calm — exactly as that child’s ideal went: “to live out a whole life in freedom and peace.” How I hope the second half of my life can be as calm as these six months.