Falling in Love with Beijing’s Slow Pace of Life
I have been in Beijing for 26 years, and only sometime this year did I finally feel a complete sense of belonging to this city, no longer always pining to return to my hometown.
During the Spring Festival I met my older cousin back home. Sitting at my aunt’s door, looking out at the cropland in front and the river winding around the village, my cousin said the countryside is still the quietest place. I told him that in my eyes, Beijing is now just another big countryside like home. The life I lead in Beijing is no different from the old days when I farmed and studied at the same time.
Indeed, this bustling city is, for me, the countryside. I still keep my rural habits: I rent a small plot to grow vegetables, and I make use of every spare bit of land in my housing estate, planting peppers, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and lettuce in planters. Watering my crops every day, watching them grow from seed to sprout, then thrive, flower, and fruit, the quiet joy in my heart is beyond words.
The happy life I want is actually very simple: slow the pace, touch the earth, enjoy the pleasure of planting, and the pleasure of reading and thinking. I now have all of it, and I am fully content. At harvest I cannot eat all the vegetables I grow; my wife keeps giving them to the neighbors, who return warm smiles. This scene is deeply familiar to me: as a child back home, my mother kept on neighborly terms this way, constantly exchanging little treats.
I feel I have never really grown up; all my life patterns merely replicate what I experienced as a child. What I most admired then was the work style of an elder in the village who practiced medicine, responsible for massage and bone-setting for the whole village. Rural people do heavy physical labor, and fractures plus low-back and leg pain are common, so his house was packed with people every night.
His wife boiled large pots of ginger-scallion water every day for his manipulations. The waiting villagers were nothing like today’s hospital patients; they played poker at his house, and the whole room was full of laughter. That harmonious doctor-patient relationship is worlds away from the generally tense one today.
In effect, I am now replicating his model, except that in the internet age my “villagers” are scattered across the country. I want to spend another ten years or so developing into a general practitioner, so that in future I can provide simple medical care for friends I have long known and their families, while continuing my research and medical popular-science writing. I consider such a life complete. When people occasionally tell me that my articles have brought them peace and relieved their suffering, my heart swells with happiness; it gives me a real sense of achievement.
My son, too, is enjoying the joy of not having to grow up. His greatest ideal now is to spend his whole life within a five-kilometer radius of home on a campus: first as a student, then as a teacher, never leaving the ivory tower, never leaving the home he has known since childhood. Sometimes I tease him for being such a homebody; he says, “Dad, you have no idea how many people dream of exactly this life. How lucky I am to live it!” Judging by his ideal and his outlook, his inner core and mine are deeply aligned. I hope he will someday find a partner who accepts and embraces this way of life and share this long life with him.
On holidays I like to ride my bicycle through the hutongs with my family, or wander in the country parks at the foot of the hills. Beijing’s hutongs are world-famous; those around Shichahai largely retain old Beijing, and the old gentlemen there still love carrying birdcages and walking their birds, and grow all kinds of potted plants by their doors. Haidian has many waters, and anglers are everywhere. Peking-opera lovers abound: in courtyard hutongs and park corners, spontaneous little opera groups play, sing, and make music, with a charm all their own. I love this way of passing time; life need not be an endless rush like an exam.
On the morning of Chinese New Year’s Eve 2024, I was basking in the sun back home chatting with my father, when our community neighborhood officer called with good news: my household-registration transfer application had been approved, and I was about to get a Beijing hukou. She and I are on good terms; once, in an awkward situation with many bystanders but no one helping, I had stepped in to help her out. From then on she thought well of me and went the extra mile processing my transfer. Perhaps from that call on, I no longer psychologically felt like a perennial Beijing drifter.
I have a good impression of the officers at our local police station. When my son went through adolescent rebellion and stormed out, scaring me half to death, I went to the station for help. Several officers skipped lunch, staring at the monitors to find him and calming me down; their dedicated, warm manner was truly moving.
During the pandemic I donated a big box of protective suits and masks to the station, and several officers greet me warmly whenever they see me. I also often stop by the station’s coffee machine for a cappuccino—a large cup for a dozen yuan, which I particularly like.
I still like to repeat my mother’s way of being: she always built friendly relations with everyone around her, which is why most of her life was quiet, calm, and joyful. This is a precious legacy she left me: she loved peace, hated quarreling, got along with people, and avoided conflict. She also loved life, which is why most of her days were untroubled.
Tao Yuanming wrote: “With a heart far from the world, the place itself grows quiet.” My reading is that a good mindset and lifestyle can keep one’s life in lasting peace, never needing to live amid clamor. Whether deep in the Dabie Mountains or in the bustle of central Beijing, I now live as though in a Peach Blossom Spring: few desires, kind to others, at ease.
An ancestor on my mother’s side was named “Ziyuan”—the name seems taken from Tao’s line “heart far, the place grows quiet”; my maternal grandfather’s village is even named for it. I think this may be some cultural gene of my maternal line, and a fine one. I believe such genes are the most valuable wealth ancestors can leave descendants; so even if my walls were bare, I would still be rich—and I have a great deal now.