“Listen not to the rain beating against the trees; why don’t you slowly walk and chant at ease? Better than a saddled horse I like sandals and cane. O I would fain spend a straw-cloaked life in mist and rain. Drunken, I’m sobered by vernal wind shrill and rather chill. In front I see the slanting sun atop the hill; turning my head, I see the dreary beaten track. Let me go back! Impervious to wind, rain or shine, I’ll have my will.” — Su Shi, “Calming the Waves”
Today is Monday, April 1, 2024, the twenty-third day of the second lunar month — not yet the third month, and not the good season the old line calls “sailing down to Yangzhou in the third month, amid mist and flowers.” In the north it’s only early spring, and the biting spring wind is still a little cold. Especially at night, when you still need a thick quilt. Not like the south, where some places are already into summer. The gap between north and south is just that big. Yet I love the north of all things. I don’t like places too hot, or too humid. The south is already a very unfamiliar place to me, even though I’m a southerner myself. But I’ve lived in the north longer, and I like the north more — I like its four distinct seasons, its countless clear days and blue skies, its plainness and its lack of polish; I’ve all but come to take this foreign place as home. And home I can’t go back to.
On a Monday I don’t need to go to work either, and I still go out every day to walk, look at the sea, watch the sunset. This morning I went out and did a loop to the east, through the still-desolate wilderness to the shore, where I sat on the bank and looked at the sea a while. There wasn’t a soul on the beach. Not far off, the Menghuan Wangguo amusement park is under renovation and upgrade, and will reopen on May 1 with a new look and a new name: Silver Beach Ocean Park. The park had been shut for five or six years and is finally coming back to life. Since last year Silver Beach’s infrastructure has been upgraded and added to a great deal, and it looks better and better. But I think it’s only a temporary surge, and in two or three years it may sink back into quiet. Today there was still a bit of wind, a southeast wind, and sitting on the bank in it, I got a little cold. After a while I had to go back. At noon I ate at home; I didn’t feel like stir-frying, so I steamed an egg and had it with pickles. After a nap I had nothing to do, and dawdled until half past four, when I went out to the west, to the shore of Chaoxi Lake, to watch the sunset. Lots of people were fishing along both banks of the Baishatan River — “sitting and watching the anglers, with nothing but an idle wish for fish.” There was dead grass in the river and a few coots, and the wind sighed. Unfortunately it was cloudy and I couldn’t make out the sun. So I walked on to the shore, to the mouth of the Baishatan River, and sat on the slope watching the waves a while. I felt like Mr. Tree.
Winter is finally over. Another very unusual winter. If you ask me which season at Silver Beach I like best, I’ll tell you without a moment’s hesitation: winter. Of course I like every season here, but winter most of all. Each season has its own character and deserves to be felt properly. Why do I like winter best? Because winter has the fewest people. I love quiet above all, and I love Silver Beach like a ghost town, which gives one such a feeling of peace — and there you have “peace of mind.” For all that winter has many drawbacks — no central heating, cold as death — it has many blessings too, snow among them. Snow by the sea is the loveliest. And this winter it snowed a great many times. The biggest ones I remember perfectly: December 20, January 20, February 8, February 20 — those four heavy snows. The lesser and scattered snows I don’t recall so well. But the heavy snows were stunningly beautiful. Far more snow than the winter before, breaking historical records — which, of course, shows how abnormal the climate is. Though in fact this winter wasn’t as cold as the last, extreme weather was much more common — like all that heavy snow. Every time it snowed hard I’d go to the shore to look at the snow, at the blank white beach, and roll in it; to listen to the sea beating against the ice and snow on the bank, the wind on my face and ears. It was truly cold, but I was wildly excited, wildly thrilled. I’ve seen the snow by the sea; I’ve seen the most beautiful scenery in the world; I feel my whole life has been worth it. Sometimes I’d go out into the fields to look at the snow too — the fields all bleak and desolate, all silence and emptiness: “The sky is high and the land is boundless; I cannot but feel the immensity of the universe” — and how small a man is. This winter I’ve seen too much snow, till I’m almost tired of it. But if there’s more next year, I’ll go on watching it all the same.
This winter also came earlier than the last and left later: winter here used to begin in December and last three months, with spring arriving in early March; but this one began in mid-November and didn’t end until mid-March. Earlier in, earlier cold — people living here left Silver Beach early to winter somewhere else. Later out, later warmth — the flowers and trees budded later: last March I saw many flowers already out, but this year I had to wait till April. I can’t work out why, but I’ve seen it all with my own eyes. Still, spring at Silver Beach is quite cold — it doesn’t have the warm, balmy feel of the south. For the temperature here to rise and warm up you have to wait till May; early May is still pretty cold, but by mid-May you can wear short sleeves, shorts and flip-flops. That’s more than a month away; April will still be a bit cold, and there won’t be many people here. Not until the May Day holiday will people gradually increase, and not until June will it be the least bit lively; only July and August are the noisiest time of all.
Again I didn’t go home for the New Year; I spent it at Silver Beach. I don’t want to go home, and I don’t pine for it. From childhood to now I’ve never been homesick; I only want to be out in the world, free and easy, alone. Freedom is the one thing I want most. At home there is no freedom. People who start a family have no freedom either — which is why I don’t fall in love, don’t marry, and could never have children. I think once you start a family you lose your freedom; you become a bound man, and you’ll never be set free. I won’t set foot in that territory. I only want to stay on my own little plot and till my own field, to be self-sufficient — leaning on no one, supporting no one, supporting only myself. Unless a family could give me the feeling of freedom, I’d rather stay out in the world and never go back. Even if I die out there, I won’t feel it’s pitiable. “Life is a wayside inn, and I too am a traveler.” On New Year’s Eve I climbed into bed early and turned off the light early; the New Year is no different from any ordinary day.
It’s also because I’ve spent a whole year at Silver Beach, and because of winter’s calm, that I’ve thought a great many things through — the cost of living, for instance. Back when I quit my job I never meant to lie flat for the rest of my life; I only meant to take a gap. But after a year of lying flat I’ve found that going on like this is perfectly workable. So long as I keep my desires low, a year’s living costs don’t even come to RMB 20,000. I have savings, and a fair bit of interest, and on top of that making videos earns me a little money — more than enough to cover my living costs, with something to spare. And this lying-flat life has no pressure, no worries of social relations, and is both healthy and happy — so why wouldn’t I? I hope I can lie flat for the rest of my life, never go out to work again, never compete again with the young people of the big cities. I’m sick of big-city life, sick of chasing worldly success and happiness, sick of a life that’s been defined for me.
I used to call this way of living “lying flat,” but now I’d rather explain it with another phrase: early retirement. Why can’t I retire now? Why must one work until 60 — why can’t you retire at 30, or 40? I don’t have many needs; so long as I have health, happiness and freedom, I’d rather live a life poor and plain, of doing nothing and caring about nothing. I live in the countryside, in open country, under no ceiling, by the sea — and I am happy, healthy and free. I don’t want to compare myself with others, or to become someone else; I only want to be myself. So what if I’m giving up? I’m not eating your rice — what business is it of yours? Of course, learning not to care what others think is a hard discipline. I can only do my best at it.
With food, the simpler the better. People often tell me, you should learn to cook a few more dishes, eat a bit more lavishly, don’t give up meat — it’s bad for your health, life needs a sense of ceremony, and so on. But to me, simplicity is my sense of ceremony, and plainness is my sense of ceremony. I’m not willing to spend too much time or too much money on eating. Besides, in winter the tap water is so cold — I don’t want to wash vegetables, or wash dishes. People often snap back at me, it’s just because you’re poor. If they insist on explaining it that way, I won’t argue. To them, poverty explains everything. All I need is to learn a few simple dishes to meet my daily needs. I don’t eat meat because I think vegetarian food is better for your health; I ate too much meat in the past and it disgusts me now. Cabbage and eggs are my favorites. With food too, there’s no need to chase the pleasures the world calls pleasures; you can be happy without meat, happy without alcohol.
As for socializing, I’d rather have none. I remember in the first half year after I came to Silver Beach I hardly spoke to anyone, and as a result my speech went badly downhill — I seemed to have lost the ability to talk, as if I’d gone mute, my Mandarin sliding back into dialect; at the time it frightened me. Later I tried talking to strangers, and took up livestreaming by voice, and the more I talked, the more my Mandarin came back, and I could talk again. And after that I found that so long as I talk to myself, or read aloud from a book, a bit of text, that too can train my speaking. Because I truly don’t want to, and very much dislike, conversing with real people; I’d rather be on my own and train my speech by ways that don’t require talking to someone else — limited though they are. Because I dislike socializing, I have no friends. But I don’t need friends. Nature is my friend — the sea, the blue sky, the trees, the land, the birds, the fish, the wind and the moon and the flowers and the snow — they are all my friends. I have a great many friends, and I am not the least bit lonely. Non Solus.
But back to winter. Though this winter had more extreme weather, its overall temperature was much warmer than the last: last winter’s low could reach minus 13 degrees, but this winter only minus 10, and the number of really cold days was limited; on days without snow it was often bright and sunny, and the temperature fairly high. Add to that the lifting of pandemic restrictions and the freedom to move about, and more people stayed at Silver Beach this winter than last — I ran into the old people in the compound more often, and I know them all quite well. Even from the electricity use you can see this winter was much warmer than last: the power bill was noticeably lower. With the electric blanket, I’d usually turn it off in the small hours; last winter I had to keep it on all night. I ran the little electric heater much less too. It really wasn’t as cold as last winter. Of course, compared with the south the temperature is much lower — but here it’s dry and clear, and there’s none of the misery of damp cold.
The pandemic’s effect on people was profound, and I’ve almost forgotten it. It seems time washes many things away. But if something happens to wake it, it makes you very sad, and sorrowful. I often say I quit because I couldn’t stand the lack of freedom in my work — but I forget to mention the lack of freedom in the wider world at the time. The lack of freedom in the job was only the small picture; the pandemic was the main cause. It changed everything, it changed the course of my life. Without the pandemic, perhaps I wouldn’t have quit at all. Quitting was of course a good thing — but just because quitting was good doesn’t mean I should thank the pandemic; that’s impossible. In the end the pandemic is unforgivable and must not be forgotten, just as we must not forget history. Yet many people are whitewashing and erasing history. If in future someone asks me why I quit, why I chose to lie flat, I’ll say: the source of it all was Covid.
Each generation has its own history, and history must be recorded truthfully and honestly. I’m recording my own history too, and I think it’s a very meaningful thing to do — it doesn’t need exquisite writing, but it must be sincere. An individual’s history is also great history. I’ve spent two hard winters at Silver Beach. Through the first I wrote a diary every day, and you can go and leaf through it; this winter I stopped writing a diary partway, so now I set down a summary, as a kind of accounting to myself.
To me, March at Silver Beach is winter too — not only do the flowers come late, the heating is turned off late as well. A notice from the city said that because the weather had been cold, the end of the heating period was postponed to March 31. Which shows how long this winter really was. The notice also said that because this was the first year of nuclear-powered heating, some problems had turned up, to be fixed next year. It reminded me that the city’s heating comes from nuclear power, and that Rushan now has a nuclear plant on either side — the Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant and the Rongcheng Shidao Nuclear Power Plant. A pity that only Rushan’s town center has heating; Rushan Silver Beach still has none. When, or whether, Silver Beach will ever have heating is an unknown — perhaps never. Silver Beach is a ghost town, and in winter the people here are pitifully few, which makes heating a very bad bargain. Everyone who lives at Silver Beach heats themselves: those with money install a wall-hung boiler or run an air conditioner; those without make do with an electric blanket or just tough it out. And it’s precisely because Silver Beach has no heating that many people dare not come and live here — which is why winter is so quiet, and why I love Silver Beach in winter.
This year the Start of Spring fell on February 4, and the Spring Festival on February 10 — the Start of Spring came before the Spring Festival. But though it’s the Start of Spring, the season is still winter. Once past the Start of Spring, though, the sun seemed to move north faster, and the patch of light on the balcony retreated quickly south, growing narrow, and there was less warm sunlight falling on me. By March 20 it was the spring equinox — the sun shining straight down on the equator, and by name spring is half over — yet Silver Beach was still very cold, and I’ll go on calling it winter. After the spring equinox it’s even more impossible to see a sunset over the sea from the shore; the sun has run further north, and to the north lies a broad flat plain and low hills. So at Silver Beach, if you want to see a beautiful sunset over the sea, and sunlight striking the water’s surface in leaping gold, you can only do it in the cold winter. Winter is the best season for watching the sunset.
I didn’t go home for the New Year; not until early March did I make the trip back, to avoid the clamor of the New Year. Before going home I first went to Luoyang and Kaifeng in Henan. A pity there was so little time, and to save money I didn’t see many places — only the Longmen Grottoes, the White Horse Temple and the Mingtang and Tiantang in Luoyang, and the Drum Tower night market in Kaifeng; most of the time I was pounding the pavement. After that I went from Kaifeng to Wuhan, and then home. Those days in Henan were mostly overcast too, with fairly high humidity, so that I half felt Henan was the south as well. Back in my home province of Hubei it was even more the south — if it wasn’t overcast it was raining, and the air was plainly damp and chilly. It’s the climate I dislike most; I only like dry, clear days, and I like the sunlit north. The south has become a byword for damp and heat, and a blurred memory. The south, and my home — I can never go back to them.
Back at Silver Beach from home, I returned to the quiet, to happiness and freedom. I like to be out in the world alone, to be by the sea. Once the Spring Festival was over, the people at Silver Beach gradually increased: more windows lit at night, more cars parked below, more people walking in the compound, more stalls and shoppers at the market, more people in the supermarket, the night market livelier, more anglers on both banks of the Baishatan River, and the students of the Foreign Affairs University far off to the east came back for classes, and the weather began to warm up too. I took away one of my two quilts and slept under just one; I stopped turning on the electric blanket; the winter’s thick clothes, thick trousers, thick shoes and thick socks all went away. Though spring came later than last year, it advanced steadily all the same. This is the Way of Heaven, this is the four seasons, this is the cycle: day after day, year after year, the Way of Heaven never changes — only people grow old and die.
Someone asked me, you’ve been at Silver Beach a year and been through all four seasons — aren’t you tired of it yet? Though I already know what the four seasons here are like, to me every day is still different, and every year is different too. Just as this winter was utterly unlike the last — so much snow, and I saw so much beauty — who knows what this spring will be like, or how it will differ from last spring? Only when it comes, and you feel it with your heart, will you discover the miracles of nature. So I won’t tire of it. For the time being I don’t mean to leave either; I’ll stay at Silver Beach another year. If my savings and my ability to earn can support me lying flat here, I’ll go on staying here — even if I do nothing all day but look at the sea and space out.
It’s April now. The willows along both sides of the road are a tender goose-yellow green, and the little wildflowers by the roadside are coming into bloom — yellow dandelions, blue speedwell, purple violets. Whether the shrubby bushes are winter jasmine or forsythia I can’t tell; they’re covered in little yellow flowers. The white magnolias and purple magnolias are opening one after another too, and have already dropped a carpet of petals; the early cherries have put out a whole tree of small pink blossoms that look all the more enchanting in the dusk. In the fields the wheat is a lush green, about to joint and grow tall. The north wind is growing rare, the east wind blowing often — spring is truly here. And it’s the mating season on the grassland again. “This is a season for love; everyone should smile at one another, hug and hold each other — that’s all there is to it.” Silver Beach has no love, and I don’t need love either. I have the sea — the lonely sea, the vast sea — and that’s enough.
April 1, 2024, Rushan Silver Beach Resort, Weihai, Shandong.