Is Beijing the greatest city in China? — Gui Xiaopang
On October 25, 2024, my lease at Rushan Silver Beach ran out, and I decided to give it up and leave Rushan Silver Beach. The landlord told me that if I renewed he could let me have it for RMB 3,500 a year — Silver Beach’s houses were becoming harder and harder both to rent out and to sell. I hesitated; the price really was very cheap, and I was a little tempted. But I was set on leaving, no longer reluctant to go; I wanted to begin a new life, to go to another place and experience a different life. I had, for the time being, experienced seaside life thoroughly enough. My brother is in Beijing; his work dormitory is a big two-bedroom flat, and he’s often not there, so he could let me stay. I thought it very good: in winter Beijing has central heating, and it wouldn’t cost me anything; I could hole up in Beijing for the winter and think about my future life.
Nine years ago, my journey from Chongqing to Beijing is still vivid before my eyes. I bought a plane ticket for the night of July 24, 2015 — night flights are the cheapest — and arrived at Beijing Capital Airport in the small hours; I made do for the night on an airport bench, waited for the first airport-line train of the morning, wound my way to Line 13, got off at Shaoyaoju, and dragged my suitcase to the compound I was renting in, waiting for the agent to bring the key over. Opening the door, there was only a very small second bedroom facing north, holding nothing but a bed, a wardrobe, a desk and a chair, and just enough space left to stand. I shared the flat with one other person; the flat wasn’t big either, with a shared kitchen and toilet. His room faced south and had a balcony, but I never once went onto that balcony, because to get there you had to pass through his room, and he lived there with his wife. For such a small room the rent was RMB 2,300; more than four years later it rose to RMB 3,000, and only then did I move to a new place and live alone. Sharing with others is too much trouble; I wanted to be freer and more peaceful, so I spent RMB 6,000 a month on a small flat of my own — a very large bedroom, newly decorated, with a balcony facing east, a little entrance hall where I could put some things, a small kitchen, and a bathroom with the wet and dry areas separated; to me it was a very luxurious little flat. There I lived for three years, which happened to be the three years of the pandemic.
Someone asked me, why did you go to Beijing — was it because you longed for Beijing life? I thought for a moment and said, strictly speaking, I don’t long for Beijing life, because I’m a country child: I prefer the countryside, prefer places with few people, places with plenty of nature. But why did I go to Beijing? It was only a young person’s curiosity — because I’d never been to Beijing, that’s why I had to go, nothing more; and once I’d been, once I knew what the real life there was like and whether it suited me, then if it suited me I’d stay, and if it didn’t I’d leave and go somewhere else, nothing more than that.
How I left Beijing two years ago is also fresh in my memory. On October 23, 2022, I finished packing, put on my backpack, pulled my case, closed the door of the rented flat, walked out of the compound, called a car on a ride-hailing app, and headed straight for Beijing South Railway Station. It was still the pandemic then; you had to wear a mask, show your PCR test and health-code and itinerary pass (many of these historical terms have since faded into the dust), and travel was extremely difficult. The high-speed rail station had few people, and silence showed through everywhere. At the thought of leaving Beijing, what I felt was not happiness but a kind of melancholy — not because of parting, but because I knew nothing of what lay ahead. By the time I reached Weihai it was already dusk, and there were all kinds of certificates to show again; at last I got into a taxi and smelled a whiff of garlic — truly worthy of Shandong. The car drove up and down the rolling slopes, an experience Beijing doesn’t have. By the time I reached the seaside guesthouse it was dark; the wind by the sea was strong and a little cold, and after a hot shower I went downstairs to look at the sea. The sea was roaring, very loud, and the tide was coming in; spray blew into my face and felt very damp. The sea far off was pitch dark, but close up it was white waves and foam; two girls in white down jackets were taking photos on the beach. O sea, at last I have come; let me open wide my arms and embrace you without limit, along with my own limitless and utterly unknown future.
Someone asked me why I left Beijing. I summed it up as two reasons, each half the weight. The first was the boredom of the work. The work grew more and more boring, the pressure greater and greater, and reviews of every kind more and more numerous, which in turn made relations between superiors and subordinates more and more strained; in this state of boredom and high pressure my gray hairs grew more and more, my head balder and balder, and I felt the meaninglessness of life. The second was the constraints of the masks. I was born a freedom-loving person who likes to run about everywhere and is unwilling to settle long in one place, but the pressure of reality in turn left me “unable to move, poor and lowly as I was” — unless I quit my job and stopped working, caring nothing for the consequences. And so, under infinite pressure, I struggled once and made a bare-faced quit — worst comes to worst, I’d throw myself into the sea; I wouldn’t think about what the future held.
After that I lived at Rushan Silver Beach for a full two years, with no job, simply enjoying life. I’ve described it all in great detail in earlier pieces and diaries, so I won’t repeat it here. In short, by the sea I was completely free. In between I went back to Beijing once, in September 2023 — you can leaf back to “Notes from Beijing” — and I formed some new impressions of Beijing; in short, definitely not good ones. Of the friends I have in Beijing, I don’t think any one of them is happy; they are merely living numbly. That’s something I don’t want to see and don’t want to go through again. I can’t change their lives, but I can change my own. I can choose not to jump into this pit, and enjoy my freedom by the sea; they have a settled, stable life, but I’d rather take the risk.
Before this second trip to Beijing, I had meant to go to Yunnan, but my brother said I could stay in Beijing a while; considering that there was central heating (in winter Rushan Silver Beach has none), I planned to hole up in Beijing for a winter, write a few things, think about life, and go to Yunnan when spring came and the flowers bloomed. But then, having come to Beijing and stayed about ten days, I found Beijing really was as dull as ever, and there was nothing for me to do there; not like by the sea, where I could go for a walk by the shore and watch the sunset every day. After much deliberation I decided to leave Beijing early and go to Yunnan. It happened that a friend was in Dali, and I could go to him first. So I hurriedly bought the cheapest plane ticket, and a week later I’d go from Beijing via Fuzhou, one day’s stop, to Kunming, and then on to Dali.
For the first few days in Beijing there was severe smog every day (someone said the smog before I arrived had been even worse, with visibility under 50 meters), and the air quality was extremely bad (a world apart from the seaside); my throat was uncomfortable, my nose blocked, my snot turned black. And the dust in Beijing is also extremely heavy — one walk outside and you’re covered in dust from head to foot, dust hanging on your eyelashes, a foreign body seeming to sit in your eyeballs; leave a room unswept for a single day and a thin layer settles, plainly visible when you flick it with a finger, and even the phone screen, when it dims, shows specks and fuzz. And Beijing’s air is extremely dry, so that for the first time in two years I experienced static electricity; I had to drink water constantly, and still my skin was dry, my lips chapped, the skin on my calves cracked into little flakes that shed white powder when you rub them. For someone like me, coming from a seaside place with extremely good air and fairly damp weather, it really was a nightmare and a hell.
I don’t know what kind of person can live here, and want to live here. Are they truly doing it willingly? I certainly am not. When I first went to Beijing it was out of curiosity — I’d never experienced Beijing’s life, so I wanted to give it a try. But after seven years of experience, I think it’s enough. What Beijing’s real life is like, I know very well. Here we are only hired workers, not masters. We can’t afford houses; we can only live in cramped, narrow rented rooms. Even if we can afford a house, we then take on a heavy mortgage, and from then on dare not quit, treading on thin ice with the greatest care. Once you marry and have children, life enters yet another yoke. Then why do most people, especially young people, go to the big cities? Because the city “kidnaps” humanity. The city’s economy is the best; the city’s education, culture, health care and sports all draw young people in, forming an effect of concentration. But are the people living in the city truly happy?
On the subway it’s people pressed on people, barely able to move; if you have far to go and there’s no seat, it’s worse still; and even if there is a seat — is the seat clean, are your trousers still clean after you sit on it, can you still sit on the chair and the bed when you get home? Have the places your hand has touched any bacteria; does the breath others exhale carry viruses; by touching other people have you caught some disease (forgive me, I’m a bit of a clean freak). What’s the difference between city people and country people? The first thing I noticed riding the subway is that city people are all so white, with a sort of puffiness, looking very weak. Not like me, who lived the country life by the sea for two years — the people there are all tanned dark, lean and wiry. City people have never seen the sun, I laughed to myself. They all work in offices; where would they find the time to sunbathe — office, home, subway, one straight line.
Wherever you go you have to commute for a long time, wasting great spans of precious time on the road; and on the road you can’t do anything, only scroll your phone — some people may like to read, but I really can’t bring myself to praise what pleasure there is in reading on the subway. My brother lives in the city and works in the countryside; his commute is three or four hours back and forth every day — up before dawn and home after dark, bored on the road, wet and blown about by wind and rain. Because he rides a motorbike he broke his arm in a fall and had to rest for months, spending a great deal on medical fees while his wages were cut too. Someone will ask, why not live closer to your workplace? Because he’s married, and his wife works in the city. Likewise, many young people live in the suburbs where rent is cheap and work in the city, enduring the same back-and-forth commute every day, the same dull city life.
You can’t say city life has no advantages at all. The biggest advantage is that you can earn a lot of money, and with money you can enjoy the “good” life. But earning money costs you — whether the wearing down of the body (sitting long, shortsighted eyes, a hunched back, a bald head, greasy skin, irregular periods, diabetes), or the warping of the mind (too much pressure, depression, tension, anxiety, emptiness, loneliness, boredom) — nothing is gained without a price. No pain, no gain. In the countryside I can’t earn much, because the chances to earn are too few. If I can earn RMB 10,000 a year, I’m more than content. But in the city, one month’s wage is at least RMB 10,000. In the countryside I can only eat vegetarian every day, to save on expenses, but in the big city you can eat meat with every meal. Though I think eating so much meat does no good at all. The city has cinemas, art exhibitions, museums, stand-up comedy — you can pursue higher tastes. In the countryside you can only look at weed-choked fields and slowly moving old people, because the young have all gone to the big cities.
One shouldn’t favor one over the other: in the countryside and in the city alike one can realize one’s ideals; but undoubtedly, for the vast majority, one can better achieve one’s goals in the city — after all, the city has more opportunities and a bigger stage. People all say it’s a “city of desire”; the city is all desire — food, drink, beautiful women, handsome men, fine cars, grand houses, fame and gain, power and position — like a magnet, drawing in hosts of voracious guests. The desires of the young are more obvious still, and they swarm toward the big cities seeking their own chance — to get rich, to become famous. “Food and sex are human nature”; “all the world bustles to and fro; every man comes for profit and goes for profit.” Without desire, this society could not advance either. Desire is the driving force. The things you want are like the dazzling wares in a shop — it depends on whether you have the ability to get them. Whether you’re willing to put in effort and pay a price to get them; whether effort is sure to bring reward; and whether the effort is worth it.
This time when I came to Beijing I stayed in Beijing’s countryside, at Mafang village in Changping, far from the city center, at the foot of the Yanshan Mountains, ten thousand li from the city’s din. In the previous seven years I lived at Shaoyaoju in Chaoyang, inside the Fourth Ring, a fairly lively place. I saw the city’s prosperity — heavy traffic, neon and wine, handsome men and pretty women, clinking glasses; I often rode my bicycle idly through Beijing’s streets and lanes; I went to those parks many times whatever the season. But I also came to know the loneliness and emptiness of the big city. In the Changping countryside there are few young people; in the village you can hardly see a youthful face, only left-behind old people. Take a country bus and on board they’re all country old people, everyone with a senior card, beeping away; they’re all familiar — folk from this village or the next — and on meeting they greet one another with an endless stream of “nin, nin, nin” (the polite form of “you”); getting off, they ask whether you need help — courtesy to the extreme. The politeness and propriety of Beijing people are displayed to the full. Beijing’s polite “nin” left the deepest impression on me, a southerner who doesn’t know how to use it.
Of course the countryside is quiet too. There aren’t many people to begin with, and those who stay are the old, the weak, women and children; in the daytime you see hardly anyone, only the bare red persimmons hanging on the branches, pecked by little birds and fallen to the ground to rot, with no one to pick them up. At night it’s pitch dark, with scarcely a few lights; the old go to bed early, and now and then you hear a dog bark — a cold dog deep in the lane. In the Beijing city proper you can hardly see the stars in the sky, because the air pollution is too heavy, all car exhaust, and there’s the jumble of lights — light pollution — that covers up the stars’ faint gleam. In the Changping countryside it’s otherwise: I could actually see quite a few stars, and the moon was very bright — it surprised me. Only by the sea could I see countless brilliant stars every day. But on a smoggy day the stars are swallowed up, the moon blurred, the sun bleak. Of course, city and countryside are still very different.
Staying in the countryside I had rather little to do; having no job to begin with, I was an idler in this world, able only to wander about. Taking a bus into the city took at least two hours — bus and subway both — not only uncomfortable but wasting a great deal of time. I could only observe the crowds in the car: students and those not going to work looked comparatively relaxed; but at a glance you could tell the commuting workers, their faces mostly weary, without joy; some looked very lost, eyes vacant and dull; some did nothing but scroll their phones and play games, showing no interest at all in anything else — the carriage packed full, carrying heavy bodies and empty souls.
In the city there really was nowhere much to go, because I’d been to them all too many times before, and could only revisit old haunts. I had no interest in bustling, noisy places and didn’t want to go at all; I only wanted to go to quiet places. I went to the Fragrant Hills to see the red leaves — there were none; I looked at a ginkgo in the Fragrant Hills Hotel, still golden, while another had lost every leaf. I went to the Summer Palace to see the black swans and the sunset, and the yellow leaves of the Back Lake, and the withered lotus of the Garden of Harmonious Interests. I went to the Ginkgo Avenue in the Old Summer Palace — the smell of the ginkgo fruit was rank, but the yellow leaves spread over the ground were very beautiful. I went to the Studio of Tranquil Heart and the Hall of Timely Snow in Beihai Park, and often thought of “a timely clearing after a light snow,” that beautiful scene. Near the northwest corner tower of the Forbidden City there were many dazzling ginkgo leaves, and Jingshan Park too was swarming with visitors, the hilltop packed with people looking down on the Forbidden City. I also went to Shichahai and the Bell and Drum Towers many times — “what’s there to photograph in a crumbling Drum Tower?” And at Desheng Gate I left many bitter memories. I also went to Wudaoying Hutong, the Imperial College, and the street outside the Temple of Confucius, and gave the Yonghe Temple a glance (without going in). I went to Chongwenmen and strolled in the rain; the ginkgoes in the Ming City Wall Relics Park were also very beautiful, and the southeast corner tower very imposing; I watched a train pull into the station. Then I went to Dongjiaomin Lane, which was somewhat deserted. Qianmen’s Dashilan, by contrast, had many tourists, bustling and crowded, while the neighboring hutongs were very quiet.
In the Changping countryside I wandered in the village, looking at the orange persimmons, at the dozing local dogs, at the Yanshan Mountains hidden in the smog, at the misty reservoir — the water in the reservoir had shrunk greatly in winter, leaving a white line along the bank. The riverbed, of course, had no water either, grown over with weeds and scrub. Walking a long way along the roadside you’d find some trees with yellow and red leaves, all alone. Now and then on the road you’d see an old person walking a dog, and a middle-aged person out for a run; children and young people were very rare. Once I hiked for two hours to Juyong Pass and climbed the Great Wall; in winter the northern mountains are all bare, a single gray, and the north wind on the Great Wall was so strong it made you fear being blown over. Another time I took the S2 line train from Nankou to Badaling, and on the train watched the sawtooth of the mountains and the Great Wall. In spring, many people come on the S2 line to see the sea of flowers at Juyong Pass — but I can’t wait for spring. In a few days I’m off to Yunnan.
I’d meant to stay in Beijing a few months before leaving, to see what had changed in Beijing and whether I could find some new inspiration here. But now I’ve stayed only twenty-some days and already feel there’s nothing to do in Beijing, and no natural scenery to look at (by the sea there’s still the sea to look at); my friends have all drifted away, each with his own life, which can no longer intersect with mine, and I don’t want to trouble or disturb them any further. Though when I left two years ago I was wearing a mask, and now there’s no need to wear one, this change can’t really be called a change — before 2020 no one wore masks either. To me Beijing is truly a place for hired labor, and I neither work nor want to work, so there’s no need for me to stay here. I want to be a free stray cat, not a house cat seeking stability and warmth. That is probably my fate too! Go — to Yunnan, to Dali — and see whether the south holds the new life I want to discover.
November 15, 2024, at Mafang village, Changping, Beijing.