That day I was twenty-one, in the golden age of my life, and I had so many wild longings. I wanted love, wanted food, and wanted to turn in an instant into a half-lit, half-dark cloud in the sky. Only later did I learn that life is a slow process of being hammered: a person grows older day by day, the longings fade away day by day, and in the end you’re like an ox that has been hammered. But when I turned twenty-one I didn’t foresee this. I thought I would stay fierce forever, that nothing could hammer me. — Wang Xiaobo, The Golden Age
The world is changing all the time. This year is not the same as last year, and next year will surely not be the same as this. Take this summer, for instance: this summer is utterly unlike last summer. This summer has been far too hot. The people who study climate change say this is the hottest year on record. In any case, in my two years at Rushan Silver Beach this year has indeed been much hotter than last. Last summer I had no fan and didn’t feel especially hot; but this summer I have to run a fan all day and all night to sleep, or the heat is unbearable. Extreme weather really is getting more and more common. What the future holds, who can say.
With summer grown this hot, is Rushan Silver Beach still a good place to escape the heat? Silver Beach’s high season is July and August, because that’s when the children are on summer holiday and their parents or grandparents bring them here for a vacation, to play in the water by the sea. But because the daytime is so hot, and the ultraviolet by the sea is fierce, they absolutely won’t go out in the daytime — only around six or seven in the evening. And then you really do see crowds at the shore, wonderfully lively, and the seaside night market buzzes with people, full of the warmth of everyday life. If there were no sea here, there certainly wouldn’t be many people; Rushan Silver Beach’s selling point is that it has the sea — and seafood.
In June Silver Beach has only just begun to get hot, and the seawater isn’t especially warm yet — going in swimming still takes a bit of courage. And there aren’t many tourists then either; usually it’s only at the weekend that you see more people, and on ordinary weekdays there are few at the shore. The people at Silver Beach are mostly old people who don’t work. There are a lot of old people, but next to the sheer number of flats here, they still look very few. There are simply too many flats, and vast numbers stand empty; even when a lot of people come to stay, at night you’ll find whole blocks of buildings pitch dark. June is a month when the population slowly grows, a month of thriving.
Not only is the temperature rising and the population growing — the creatures in the sea are waking up too. Take sea lettuce, for instance: an invasive seaweed that in recent years always comes up from the Jiangsu coast to the shores of Shandong. When the weather turns hot it multiplies, the sea turns green, and if you go swimming you come out draped in green weed; the beach gets filthy and starts to stink, and it’s a nuisance to clear away — an unwelcome marine pollutant. But it comes every summer. The locals build a sand dam at the river mouth to keep it out of the waterways, which is why every June and July you see a tall sand dam at the river mouth, and the pond the dam holds back behind it.
And July is Silver Beach’s rainy season, its most humid month. Many people say Rushan Silver Beach is terribly humid — that’s because they come during the rainy season. Apart from July, every other month here seems to me quite dry, not humid at all. But July is miserable: off-and-on rain that lasts more than a month. It isn’t like the south, where it rains for months at a stretch, or for days on end; Silver Beach’s rain comes in short, intense bursts that stop after a while, and it often rains most at night. But even so, the air is often clammy, and the bed clammy to sleep in — very uncomfortable. I don’t like rain.
By August the rain thins out noticeably. August is the hottest month at Silver Beach and the month with the most people. This is when the shore is liveliest (every evening) — lots of people swimming in the sea, lots of people playing in the sand on the beach, some flying kites, some pitching tents, some setting off fireworks; and on the days of the great spring tide, when the water goes out, plenty of people forage the shallows, with the bright moon overhead lighting the beach up as if it were day. The seaside night market is packed shoulder to shoulder, so you can only walk slowly, and the vendors all shout themselves hoarse — this is their chance to make money; only these one or two months can they earn, and then September tips fast into the off season.
There are far more people at Silver Beach this year than last — after all, it’s been two years since the mask rules were lifted, and things are back to normal; people can come and go freely. This year was probably a peak; next year there may not be as many people as now. More people have come to do business here, many new restaurants have opened, and the Rainbow Food Street opened this year too — commerce looks to be booming. But someone told me that with so many restaurants opening, the customers get spread thin, and they actually earn less. True enough: the Rainbow Food Street is a stream of people, but everyone just looks and doesn’t buy. The Menghuan Wangguo amusement park, shut for years, has also been renamed Silver Beach Ocean Park and reopened — who knows how many years it’ll last this time.
In May I was forced to move house. The place I’d been renting was sold by the landlord, so I had to move out. Luckily the agent was a responsible one, and found me another flat much the same in the same compound, and helped me move, too. Moving is a nuisance, but renting always runs into one problem or another; you just have to keep an even mind and accept reality. After that I asked the agent again and again about buying, and found that flats at Silver Beach are getting harder and harder to sell and cheaper and cheaper — they’ve already dropped below RMB 2,000 a square meter. If you put in the time hunting, you can find cheaper ones still. But for the moment I don’t mean to buy.
I think I’ll only buy a flat if I mean to settle here for good. Besides, I feel the housing prices here haven’t hit bottom yet; wait another two years and flats will be cheaper. For instance, a third- or fourth-floor two-bedroom for RMB 100,000 — that I’d consider buying. But right now such a flat still sells for around RMB 150,000. I’m not ready to settle down; I still want to look around — Yunnan, say. For now renting is enough. The agent also said that if I renew, I can have it for RMB 3,500 — that’s per year, mind you. The first year it was RMB 4,000, the second year he raised it by RMB 500, and now it’s only RMB 3,500 again — which goes to show the flats are worth less and less.
I’m always asking myself, must a person own a house? Of course, if you have money and the flats are cheap, buying is worth it. But if you have no money and the flats are pricey, you’ll hesitate again and again and end up renting. As things stand, though, flats are only going to get cheaper — especially in small places, where in the end they may be given away with nobody wanting them. I want to go out wandering for a year or two first, and come back in 2026 to see what the flats here are worth; if they’re very cheap, I’ll buy one and settle here. So — another two years’ wait. Who knows what the world will look like in two years? Or what my own thinking will have become.
Silver Beach only suits people who can bear solitude very well. The high season is just two months; the rest of the time it’s the off season, with very few people — especially in winter, when it’s like a ghost town, cold and desolate. And many flats have no central heating, so it’s cold as death — not something an ordinary person can stand. Above all there’s nowhere for entertainment — apart from the sea; and if you don’t especially love the sea, or tire of it quickly, then young people won’t be able to bear it either. They only love bustle, only love bright lights, only love pretty women. And lastly, at Silver Beach you can’t earn money. With no income and the savings shrinking day by day, a person gets frightened and has no choice but to go to a big city to work.
The economy is getting worse and worse. My income is shrinking too, both passive and active. The passive income is the interest on my savings (or funds and bonds); in August my earnings were actually minus 600 — a big loss all at once. And the active income is what I make from videos, and that too is shrinking. First, the platforms have no money either. Second, too many people are making videos, the competition is brutal — too many monks and too little porridge. So against the backdrop of a bad economy, ordinary people have a hard time. But when will the economy pick up? And where are we, this generation, to go? I’m confused too.
My brother came and stayed at Silver Beach two days. Luckily my flat here is big enough to put up a guest. Only, I don’t have much money, and he had to eat as plainly as I do. When we ate out, he paid. I’ve never bought a watermelon myself — he bought the watermelon. I rarely eat oysters or barbecue either; it was only because he came that I got to eat them once, and he paid. I never go swimming in the sea by myself, because there’d be no one to watch my clothes; but with him here we went in and played in the water — while he was in, I watched our things on the shore, and while I was in, he watched. Silver Beach’s beach is very flat and gentle, no one can drown there; it’s like one huge flat-bottomed basin.
Those old people who just come for a holiday — they’re all retired, no longer troubled by work, no longer troubled by earning money. Unlike the young, the old are full of vigor, while the young are lifeless. When old people come to Silver Beach they’re doing it a service: they add to the life of the place, and bring a little benefit to its employment and economy. Only, they’re like migratory birds — they come in summer and leave once autumn is over, and the place sinks back into silence. Silver Beach is by definition a tourist resort, and it only suits old people on holiday. The young here will never grow in number, just like this country, which grows older day by day, with more and more old people. Aging is severe.
I don’t like socializing, so when someone asked me to write about the people who live here, I couldn’t — I can only stand to one side and observe their lives, not enter into them. The old people who live here are beyond question happy: they sing, they dance, they go about in groups, as if they never tire. And the young people who’ve come here to “live in seclusion” — most of them, like me, dislike socializing; they hide away in their own little worlds, some of them never even going out, playing games at home or writing novels (as their trade, to earn a living), or simply giving up and doing nothing at all.
Because I don’t socialize, love is even further out of reach. Does anyone still believe in love these days — do people in their thirties still believe in love? The economic base is everything. There are some young women at Silver Beach too, but I’ve never actually met any of them (I’ve seen them online), let alone had anything to do with them. Not many women come here on holiday either; when I occasionally spot one or two at the shore I always look them over carefully — in summer women are always at their prettiest. So it seems I still have desires, only I’ve pressed them down, or else it’s the various social pressures that leave me no way to go after women. Come winter it’s fine — there are no women here, and it’s cold enough to chill a person’s feelings.
If you ask whether I like summer at Silver Beach, I’ll answer: I do. I love the four seasons here, spring, summer, autumn and winter — I like them all; it’s just that I like winter better. Summer has its advantages too: you don’t need to wear so many clothes, you can wear only flip-flops, you can go paddling in the sea; at home you can go without clothes and bare your shoulders; getting up early to watch the sunrise you won’t feel cold, going out late to watch the sunset you won’t feel cold either; there’s none of winter’s great cold wind; and at night you don’t need a thick quilt to sleep — sleeping naked is the freest of all. Silver Beach’s summer is lively too — a bit noisy, but it soon passes and can be borne, and come autumn it’s calm and cool.
Autumn at Silver Beach is probably the most comfortable season — far fewer people, not so noisy, and the temperature has come down, no longer so hot. Especially October and November: cooler by the day, and the leaves and grass begin turning withered and yellow, in beautiful colors. Silver Beach is a place of four distinct seasons, and each lasts exactly three months — very regular. Usually it’s December, January, February for winter, the coldest; March, April, May for spring, still a little cold; June, July, August for summer, Silver Beach’s high season; and September, October, November for autumn, clear and crisp. Winter is the quietest, and I love it best. Then autumn, then spring, and last summer.
Still, the first summer — the summer of 2023 — was quite comfortable; not as hot as this year. 2024 has been far too hot; Silver Beach is no longer fit for escaping the heat. Global warming — next year will probably be hotter. But next year I probably won’t be here. Is there anything about this summer worth remembering? I’ve seen the marvelous jellyfish, and sea anemones, rarely seen in the first year; I got up early a few times to watch the sunrise, though I never caught a truly magnificent one (the sunrises and sunsets at Silver Beach are only at their best in autumn and winter); I ate some figs too, and so on. And — I didn’t catch Covid, as I did in the summer of the first year; I’ve stayed perfectly healthy.
The first summer I rode my bicycle to a great many places — the Foreign Affairs University east of Silver Beach, Duofu Mountain — and to the Mount Darushan scenic area and into Rushan’s town center. At the time I thought it was really cool to cycle so far, and I was really rather proud of myself. Besides the fresh novelty of those days, and the fact that summer then wasn’t as hot as this year’s, my bicycle hadn’t yet started to wear out and was still new, so it wasn’t so tiring to ride; but in the second year I never rode that far again. These days I just cycle around nearby, with a little camera mounted on the handlebars to film the scenery along the way, and selfies.
This summer’s abnormal heat didn’t actually show up in the temperature — the temperature was about the same as last year, peaking at only 33 or 34, and for most of the time the high was just 32. But this year’s weather was strange: it didn’t rain more than last year, yet the humidity was high, often 60 or 70 percent, even 80 or 90. Too much humidity makes it feel hotter and more unbearable. Someone also said the seawater was warmer than last year; I didn’t notice it distinctly, but from the fact that I’ve been seeing more sea anemones, I think he’s right. I like the cold, not the heat. I don’t want the earth to get hotter and hotter, or Silver Beach to get hotter and hotter.
I’ve spent two years here, springs going and autumns coming. I came to Rushan Silver Beach on October 26, 2022 — it was autumn then, the daytime high still 20 degrees, wonderfully comfortable. When I first arrived there were very few people (still in the mask era, after all), and it was very quiet — I liked it enormously. I often miss those days. For all the inconveniences then, I’d quit my job and no longer worked, I had no worries, I slept till I woke naturally every day, there was sunshine, there was the sea, there was happiness and freedom — I felt like the happiest man alive. At the mere thought of those days the corners of my mouth turn up and something surges inside me, and I want to die in this very moment.
Come autumn, one always feels a bit melancholy. “Men have grieved over autumn’s desolation since ancient times” — and I can’t be like Liu Yuxi and say, “I say an autumn day outdoes a spring morning.” Autumn is simply the season of the over-sensitive. I can only be like Xin Qiji: “Now that I have fully learned the taste of sorrow, I would speak and yet hold back; I would speak and yet hold back — and instead I say, how cool it is, what a fine autumn.” I’ve been at Silver Beach a full two years — two years is long enough. Over these two years I’ve thought a great many things through, and run into no small number of difficulties; it’s time to leave. Parting, and autumn — how sad they make one! It isn’t that I’ve tired of Silver Beach; I simply want to go somewhere new and live a different life. That’s just my nature.
Someone asked me, you’ve been at Silver Beach two years — won’t you have grown tired of it? I said, if I weren’t short of money, I wouldn’t tire of anywhere. Of course, that’s a joke; I don’t know what it feels like not to be short of money — I’ve never once been rich. But I really do like Silver Beach: I like its sea, its calm, its sunshine, its four distinct seasons, its air; I like walking by the sea alone, I like its sunsets, and I like riding my bicycle here; I like this freedom with no one to disturb me, I like the vacuum-like stillness of the small hours — and I like looking up at the stars, so far away you can never touch them.
“Summer, summer slips quietly away, leaving a little secret; press it down, press it down — I can’t tell you…” There are some things, of course, I can’t tell you — I’ll leave you some room for imagination! The long summer has passed, and autumn has arrived so plainly: the cicadas have stopped singing, the frogs have gone quiet too, the seawater has turned cold; with fewer visitors, the crabs on the beach have grown more numerous, coiling dense little balls of sand across the sand; the sun moves south day by day, and is about to reach the midpoint — the Autumn Equinox is coming. The autumn crickets chirp pleasantly enough outside, only now and then one or two fly into my rooms and sing away inside, urging me to go to bed early.
September 10, 2024, Rushan Silver Beach Resort, Weihai, Shandong.