Arrived at Qingdao Station yesterday at 14:30.
I wanted to see the sea, so I walked out of the station to Zhan Bridge. Packed with people. Walked along the coast all the way to Xiaoyu Hill. Passed a middle school, the Qingdao Art Museum, the China Maritime College. Walked from Xiaoyu Hill to Xinhao Hill, passing Liang Shiqiu’s former residence, Lao She’s former residence, a street lined with elaborately decorated coffee shops.
Thirsty and hungry, at a little roadside tea stall no one else was visiting, the woman running it made me a passion fruit drink while scolding her kid for playing on the phone. The sweetness and temperature were both custom-asked, so it was a room-temperature, sugar-free passion fruit drink.
Climbing Xinhao Hill felt high, even made my knees hurt. The sunlight finally fell on the reddish-brown roof tiles on the east side. The former German Governor’s Residence is the quintessential example of the type; the other residences that followed were probably imitations they had no choice but to follow. Uniformity comes from custom and the coercive power of government.
The sky was overcast. “Qing” [green/blue] should probably be blue — Qingdao, Qinghai Lake. So there was no shooting upward, only downward from high ground. These shots are too mundane, too much like tourist photos, the kind that flood Xiaohongshu. The photography aesthetic jy inherited is beyond reproach.
Took the bus past Qingdao Station toward the west side of the city, the road winding and rolling, a lot like Gaoting Port. Went through the undersea tunnel, and coming out was an entire stretch of Beihai Shipbuilding. It happened to be when the workers were getting off shift — huge crowds of them in gray-blue work uniforms with silver reflective strips, pushing bicycles. It felt like something that only ever existed in a past, thriving age. I remembered going to my father’s ship as a kid, him wearing the same kind of work clothes. How much difference is there, really, between a first mate or a captain and these small, dense crowds of workers? Is settling down in a city already too much good fortune? What more could I ask for?
Arrived in Huangdao District, the layout of the roads here, the greenery, the design of the new residential developments, really so much like Daishan. Even the beer festival grounds were bare, run-down and empty. The new district was all desolate, the loneliness setting in, the overcast rainy weather, the distance between the high-rises — all made me, once I imagined living here, start to notice how cheap and easily-had the cultural consumption is, start pinning the bright spots of life on some tiny, insignificant window inside a tower block. The misty fog and the vast, desolate gray world have to be countered with family and kinship. In Haidian, looking out at the world from Haidian, a person’s mechanical and instrumental nature comes first, and thoughts like these never arise.
People in Qingdao can’t really speak Mandarin. Hotpot restaurants, scenic spots, asking directions, communicating — there’s difficulty everywhere. Mandarin is an advantage skill for professions like taxi driving. This place really is so much like Daishan, or some other island.
Started the half marathon too fast, and after 18km it got extremely hard, though not too dramatically so. Going forward, I could start at a 6-min pace, and get more positive feedback at the end. This is a lot like these years of my studies — sometimes overreaching myself, exaggerating my own abilities far too much, and lacking the grounded, steady spirit of doing well with what’s in front of me. Employment pressure, with nowhere to go, crushed me, and the root of it all is really that, out of fear, I avoided the direction that actually suits me. Should I go there? Advice on this point is hard to accept.
While eating, the anxiety surged up again. But actually, maybe this doesn’t need to be seen this way. Knowing oneself is what matters most.