Two years is not too long to spend thinking about a single point. — Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935–1951
I. Why I Came to Silver Beach
In the first half of 2022 I already felt life pressing down on me unbearably. The masks were still the order of the day then, and getting worse, with no end in sight and no hope in sight, the road ahead utterly dark. On top of that came the churn and torment of work, which kept me tense every day, on the edge of breaking down, unable to sleep at night. I didn’t know what meaning there was in a life like that — I had to change. At the very least I had to rest. Rest for a year, like what foreigners call a gap year. Once I’d rested enough, once I’d thought it through, I’d go back and look for work. In July I finally made up my mind to quit — to quit outright, with no job lined up, to flee Beijing, that cage.
Because of some arrangements at work, and my annual summer leave in August, it wasn’t until September 1 that I told my boss I was quitting. Then I went through all the checkout procedures, finished them at the end of September, and officially became a jobless man, a free man. At last, on October 23, I took the high-speed train out of Beijing to Weihai, where I stayed two or three days. And on the morning of October 26 I took the long-distance bus to Rushan Silver Beach, the so-called ghost town, the Hegang by the sea, and began my life of seclusion by the sea. Looking back now, it was all very simple and smooth, but at the time it must have been full of difficulties, my heart full of misgivings.
In July and August I went to a great many sights and spots in Beijing, taking photos for the record, leaving a few mementos. It was, after all, a place I had lived; there were some good memories there too. Though by then I was thoroughly dissatisfied with Beijing, I had after all spent seven years there, a very long stretch of a life. Once I left, I might never be able to go back. I felt no attachment to Beijing; I only wanted to leave, to leave and make my life somewhere else, an easy life, not a tense, pent-up life. By then I truly could not bear it a moment longer; apart from leaving I had no other way.
About Rushan Silver Beach I did a lot of research online. At first I wanted to go to Qingdao, but the cost of living there was too high — the rent was too high. Then I took a fancy to Weihai, but the flats in Weihai were expensive to rent too. Then I turned to Rongcheng, under Weihai, but the flats in Rongcheng weren’t cheap either. After that I discovered that the cheapest rents of all were at the Silver Beach resort in Rushan, under Weihai. At the time people online called Rushan Silver Beach a ghost town — and wasn’t I just looking for somewhere with few people and quiet to stay? Add the cheap rent and a sea to look at, and wasn’t it exactly the ideal I had been dreaming of?
I wasn’t worried about my future in the least, because at the time my plan was just to rest for a year and then, once rested, go back to Beijing to look for work; and I had already saved a lot of money, enough to live without working for a very, very long time. I didn’t want to worry too much, or fret about things far off in the future. So once the checkout was done I felt hugely relieved, and let out a long breath. A person shouldn’t be a slave to work. I said goodbye to my friends in Beijing — I hadn’t many friends, and I had never liked socializing, preferring to go my own way. Independence and freedom are the ideals I’ve pursued all my life. Without freedom, I’d rather die. Treat every day as the last day of your life, and you won’t be afraid.
II. The Merits and Demerits of Silver Beach
Rushan Silver Beach’s greatest merit is, of course, that it has the sea. For us people of Hubei, for those of us from the inland south, we long for both heavy snow and the sea — and at Rushan Silver Beach there’s both heavy snow and the sea. The sea and the snow hold an enormous attraction for me. I had grown tired of big-city life — forests of high-rises, rivers of traffic, foul air everywhere. I wanted to escape the city and live a quiet life by the sea. Just one look at the boundlessly wide sea, and I get inner peace. By the sea the air is fresh, the view opens wide, stretching to the horizon; whatever illness you have, come to the seaside and — whoosh — you’ll be cured.
The second merit is, of course, that the flats at Rushan Silver Beach are very cheap: for just three or four thousand RMB you can rent a very nice, very large flat. Listen carefully — three or four thousand is the rent for a year, not for a month. In Beijing, a tiny flat, and shared with others into the bargain, cramped and stifling, costs three or four thousand a month. And if you want to buy at Rushan Silver Beach, RMB 100,000 will get you a very good flat. What’s more, these past two years the prices have been falling and falling, and they’ll be cheaper still later. Living in a big flat, seeing the sun and basking in it every day, and seeing the stars and the moon at night — you’ll be much happier.
The third merit is that there are few people here — it’s quiet, one might say perfectly silent. Most of the time there are very few people at Rushan Silver Beach. Except for June, July and August, when there are slightly more — that’s the high season, when many people come to travel, holiday and escape the heat — but in the other nine months, and especially the three winter months, there are very, very few. The shore is quiet, the roads are quiet, the compound is quiet — like Silent Hill, like a ghost town, just like Rushan Silver Beach’s reputation abroad. And that’s exactly the ghost town I love: I like the quiet, I like not being disturbed, I like having a whole sea to myself, a whole sky to myself, a whole great world to myself.
A pity that many people can’t bear solitude and easily feel empty — especially the young. They like lively places, like big cities, like bright lights and wine, like pools of wine and forests of meat, like carousing in crowds; if they can’t be with other people they don’t know what to do with themselves. So the quiet of Rushan Silver Beach is, to them, a shortcoming. And because there are so few people, the amenities aren’t very convenient either. For instance, there’s nowhere to eat, so you have to cook for yourself; public transport is very inconvenient; there’s no big supermarket, no cinema, no café, no bar, no KFC, no McDonald’s. Apart from the beach, there’s nowhere at all to amuse yourself.
This is a place for travel, holiday and recuperation, ideal for retired old people and for young people who aren’t short of money — but if you want to earn money here, that’s very hard. Without money, it’s hard to survive here. I’ve seen far too many young people who vow at the start to stay at Rushan Silver Beach a year, even longer, and before long you see them subletting their flats; some stay only a month or two, some only a few days, and then flee in disarray. They had imagined the place far too fondly; once here they found they couldn’t live in it — first because of loneliness, second because they had no money, or couldn’t earn any.
III. How I Get By
You must have savings. You can’t have not a penny and still stop working. As for how much you need, it varies from person to person. Some dare to quit with only RMB 100,000; some need a million to feel secure; others need ten million before they can retire early. For me, a million is enough to retire early — though a few hundred thousand would let me rest a few years. I myself have only a few hundred thousand, but I feel that’s enough for five years, ten years, of not working, even twenty or thirty. That being so, why shouldn’t I rest two or three years? And as for the world two or three years from now — who knows what it’ll be like? Why worry?
Why do I say I could go thirty years without working? Because I’m a man of extremely low desire, and my cost of living is low. Suppose I live at Rushan Silver Beach — a whole year’s expenses come to at most RMB 15,000, so thirty years would be RMB 450,000. Someone says, aren’t you afraid of falling ill? Just as with the future, I don’t fret about things to come, and I don’t worry about falling ill. Besides, I don’t work, I’m relaxed, I eat healthily, I exercise often — how would I fall ill? And even if I do, what’s so frightening about it? When the enemy comes, there’ll be a general to meet him; when the flood comes, there’ll be earth to dam it. Every man must die, and every death is lighter than a feather. Look on life and death as lightly as Zhuangzi did: what joy is there in life, what pain in death?
Someone else says, if you just eat into your capital, the savings will run out one day. A person can’t help worrying a little — unless he’s a fool, and I don’t take you for a fool. Of course, not working doesn’t mean having no other way to earn. In today’s society, whatever you turn your hand to, you can always earn a little — it’s only a question of how much. Take my making videos, posting a few online each year; I earn a little from that too. On top of that I have my savings, and the savings earn some interest. This money is enough to cover my cost of living. And someone else says, what about inflation? Friend, I’ll say it again: you worry about far too many things.
My material desires are extremely low. I don’t need to buy a house; renting is enough. I rent a two-bedroom, 85-square-meter flat at Rushan Silver Beach, and the rent is only RMB 4,000 a year. I don’t ask much of food and drink: I drink no beverages, only plain boiled water; I can even go a year without meat, though to get my protein I eat eggs and soy products. I don’t need to buy any faddish toys or gifts. Reading is good, but there’s no need to buy paper books — e-books can be found anywhere. I don’t need a wife, or a girlfriend, or even friends; I can be a lone steppenwolf.
I have the stars and the sea, the rising sun and the setting sun, dawn clouds and evening clouds. Spring’s green leaves and flowers, summer’s cicadas and croaking frogs, autumn’s withered branches and fallen leaves, winter’s frost and graupel. Foraging the shallows I see every kind of sea creature; at the country market I see every kind of farm produce, seafood and people. I am an observer of this world; I came into it to experience life, not to be a beast of burden for others. I live for myself, not for others. I don’t live for my parents, I don’t live for my friends, and I certainly don’t live for strangers. First of all, I must live for myself.
IV. Losing Touch with the Outside World
I came to Rushan Silver Beach at the end of October 2022; it was still the mask era then, everyone wore a mask every day, and there was no need to speak to anyone. And Silver Beach then was a ghost town — you met no one on the streets, you saw no one at the shore — so for the first three months at Silver Beach I spoke almost not a word to anyone. Later I noticed my ability to express myself and my Mandarin had both fallen off badly, and for a time I was rather alarmed. But then masks were no longer needed, and I spoke to strangers more often; and making videos, writing scripts and posting them, I’d often read the scripts aloud — and my speech came back.
I haven’t kept in touch with a single former colleague; former friends have gradually faded away; and my family, my parents, don’t understand me at all — in this world you can only rely on yourself. So socializing is, to me, essentially useless. And I’m a person with a very strong capacity for amusing myself; even alone, I can always find plenty to do and discover plenty of pleasures in life. Take simply being an observer: at Rushan Silver Beach there’s more than enough that’s fresh and strange for me to observe, think about and write about. The world beyond Rushan Silver Beach holds little interest for me — especially the shallow people and the vulgar stories of the big cities.
At first people talked to me about masks — but at Rushan Silver Beach, with no people about, you could almost go without one. Later people described to me the knife-in-the-throat feeling of the infection, which I couldn’t imagine — until August 2023, when I caught that disease for the first time, with only mild symptoms, over quickly. People talked to me about Blossoms — but what have the bright lights of great Shanghai to do with me? I’m in a cold, quiet countryside, a ghost town. Films, calligraphy and painting, coffee, bars, livehouses, pretty women, makeup, fine clothes, luxury cars, mansions, love, intrigue, disputes — none of it has anything to do with me.
The first year I traveled; the second year I never went out at all. Travel, too, has almost no meaning — and of course it costs a lot of money. I’ve been to Tibet and Xinjiang, to Xiamen and Quanzhou, to Qingdao and Weihai, Beijing and Jiagedaqi — I’ve been to quite enough places. Though I haven’t covered the whole country or the whole world, Laozi said, “The farther he goes, the less he knows.” I’ve lost much of my interest in travel. I’d rather stay at Rushan Silver Beach, this little patch of seaside, observing the small things around me; even if they repeat, I don’t tire of them — so long as I’m unconstrained.
So I often say I’m a man of extremely low desire, and many small things make me happy. Some people may taunt me — it’s just because you haven’t any money. I don’t care to argue with such people. The more desires a person has, the more troubles he has; a person with no desires has no troubles. I mean, of course, worldly desires — fame and profit. If a person has glimpsed a bigger world but never been to it, he wants to go to that bigger world. But once he’s been to the big world, he knows there isn’t really much difference between the big world and the small. Staying shut in his own room is no bad thing either.
V. Silver Beach and My Future
After the masks were over, in 2023 and 2024 the numbers coming to Rushan Silver Beach bounced back and rose quite a bit. But such a rebound can’t possibly last; once it reaches its peak it’ll go downhill — just like China’s population, which will only ever shrink. So Rushan Silver Beach’s housing prices keep falling and falling, and will be cheaper still. If you want to buy a flat, in another two years the prices here will hit bottom. I’ve been thinking too: when a one-bedroom here drops to around RMB 50,000, and a two-bedroom to around RMB 100,000, I’ll come back and buy one. Then I’ll settle here for good and go nowhere else.
It isn’t that we young people don’t want to buy; it’s that we can’t yet afford to. Renting is cheap, but it has many inconveniences — after all, it’s someone else’s house, not your own. If it were your own, you’d care for it properly, and you could add plenty of furniture and arrange it in your own style, so of course it would feel warmer and more settled to live in. Besides, Rushan Silver Beach suits people who like quiet, not people who like bustle. If you want to buy here and live here long-term, you have to put up with the desolation, the solitude, the loneliness. And you also have to solve your own problem of survival — earning a bit of money each year to cover basic expenses.
When I had just come to Rushan Silver Beach, after three months here I got a bit restless and went off on a trip. But coming back from traveling, I still felt Rushan Silver Beach was the most comfortable. Then I stayed here nearly a year, meaning to move somewhere else — to the Greater Khingan Mountains in the Northeast, for a year. But for various reasons — mainly that the Northeast’s winters are too long, and I’m a man who loves the outdoors and finds it unbearable to go a day without going out, and the openness by the sea suits me best — I stayed by the sea another year. Now, after two years, I mean to move somewhere else; it isn’t that I’ve tired of the sea, it’s that I still want to experience life in different places.
As the saying goes, a tree dies when moved, a man thrives. Especially for the young — they should go and see the world, rather than stay rooted in one place. By seeing the world I don’t mean traveling; I mean staying at least a year in one place, living through its four seasons, coming to know its people and customs. That helps broaden your horizons. Besides, I’m a vlogger making videos now, and I need a change of place to shoot videos, so I have something to talk about and can earn a bit of pocket money. Of course, the precondition is that you have no one to worry about, only yourself. The ancients said, “While your parents are alive, do not travel far; if you must travel, have a fixed destination.” I have no burdens, and I’m headstrong.
I still like Rushan Silver Beach very much, because it has the sea — a sea that brings one inner peace. If I could afford to buy a flat here, I’d like it even more. I’ll leave, but perhaps I’ll come back soon too. Who knows what the future will look like? Young people, don’t worry; be brave, have a spirit of adventure. By “young people” I don’t just mean those young in years, but those young in heart, however old they are. Caesar said, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” To the seaside too I came, I saw, I experienced it — and I’m well satisfied with my life.
August 10, 2024, Rushan Silver Beach Resort, Weihai, Shandong.