Longing to Return to the Village to Farm

This wave of the epidemic in Beijing has lasted nearly a month. I have already taken nineteen nucleic acid tests, and it is far from over. Thank goodness that although the neighborhood directly opposite our back gate and the one immediately to our west have confirmed cases, ours has had none. We were therefore classified only as a precautionary zone of the lowest risk level, and even that label has now been removed. Life has been greatly affected, but we have not been locked down or quarantined.

Beijing's outbreak is not under control, however; the Rt value still occasionally exceeds 1, and new cases keep appearing outside the control zones. This means the risk remains high, the situation could still spiral out of control, and we could be locked down at any time. If Beijing continues its current approach, the coming month will probably not bring much improvement. Beijing's measures are looser than Wuhan's and Shenzhen's, with more loopholes in enforcement, so this wave cannot end as quickly as it did there. Even so, current measures have already taken a toll on Beijingers' work and lives: commercial streets are desolate, students still cannot return to school, and consumption has fallen sharply.

I have barely left our compound gate for nearly a month, spending my days reading at home and working remotely. My wife and son came home for the May Day holiday and have not returned to school since. My wife works in the public sector; this year she moved from frontline teaching to an administrative post. During this period she has worked from home online. We sit in the same room, and I witness daily how her system drowns in mountains of documents and meetings, endlessly revising single words in official papers that, when executed, turn out to be empty clichés with no grounding at all; little genuinely meaningful work gets done. Watching this, I feel deeply fortunate that I have lived a freewheeling life and never chose a career like hers; otherwise I would feel I was simply wasting my life.

Life in semi-lockdown is oppressive, and it inevitably breeds a weary resentment toward city living. I often watch my father's life in our rural hometown through a webcam and chat with him for a few minutes; I envy his freedom so much that these camera chats have become one of my pleasures.

These past few days my father has been harvesting rapeseed to press for oil. Watching him thresh the seeds in the main room, I too long to go back to the village. In an age like this, what does so-called success even mean? It is enough just to live; to live with fewer constraints would be even better. Born a human being, I want to live freely and will not spout grand ideals. Rural life suits me better. Living in a big city, the moment an order comes down in an outbreak, life immediately becomes much like imprisonment.

News reports say that in the last two days many people have been fleeing Shanghai; one man even built a raft from planks and foam boxes and, with his dog, rowed along the Huangpu River to leave. I feel their sentiment deeply. If my son's education were not unfinished, I too would want to flee Beijing. I would take my books back to the countryside, find a sparsely populated place, grow some grain and vegetables, keep a few chickens and ducks, read, write, and help patients remotely online, and muddle through a life.

At the dinner table I asked my son what he most wanted to do now. He said he most wanted to go back to our Hubei hometown and eat at a flowing banquet. Hearing him, I wanted to go back too—tables full of guests, eating meat from big bowls, laughing loudly. How splendid! Alas, we cannot go back.

Our family has lately found a new joy: after dinner we ride stationary bikes for exercise while watching an episode or two of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer on Bilibili. Bilibili's danmu (bullet comments) are lively, and watching with the comments on adds a lot of fun. The whole family has gained a shared vocabulary of silly internet phrases like "the Four Sisters of Mount Hua."

This generation of children has it hard. The outbreak struck before their high-school entrance exams and, it seems, will not end even after their college entrance exams; their brightest youth has been forced indoors, deprived of so much entertainment. So I no longer try to restrict him; he watches what he likes and plays games when he wants. Life is gloomy enough already; let him have what joy he can. If life has no joy, what can I show him to prove that life is joyful? And how can I raise an optimistic child? Without a spirit of optimism, an age like this is sheer torment.

I only want to raise my child to adulthood, letting him live in physical and mental health. Whether he is outstanding in future is not my concern; as long as he is satisfied with his own life, I will be happy. I came from the countryside, and I still want to go back to it—in an age of plague, urban life truly cannot compare with rural life.