Spending a Relaxing and Pleasant May Day Holiday

This May Day, I decided to take a proper break. I declined all appointments; when relatives came to Beijing for tourism, I did not accompany them to the crowded popular sights. I chose to spend a few leisurely days with my family. We did not travel far: every day we slept until we naturally woke, and after breakfast we wandered nearby. Only on May 4th did we spend half a day, at a friend's invitation, going to the countryside of Tongzhou for a barbecue. Five or six families—over twenty people in all, who had known each other for more than twenty years—gathered in the small courtyard of our friend's home for a self-service barbecue. It was quite lively, much like the large family gatherings back in my hometown.

During the May Day holiday, most of the time we rode shared bicycles around the free parks on the outskirts of Beijing, ate nearby when hungry, and cycled home to cook for ourselves when there was time.

I have been in Beijing for 25 years. Over the past 25 years, great changes have taken place in the city, and one of the most noticeable is that sandstorms are no longer as frequent as in earlier years. In my first few years in Beijing, every spring the city had sandstorms, often with yellow skies and a gray haze overhead. Now sandstorms are much better; most of the time there is not a single one all year. Sandstorms are very hard to control; the state has invested large sums in building the Three-North Shelter Forest and developing green belts, and only thus has today's result been achieved—no easy feat.

Beijing also has an abundance of free parks, especially in the area of Haidian District where I live, near the Western Hills, where the parks are connected into a continuous belt and almost all are free. The Sijiqing township of Haidian, for geographical reasons, is not suited to high-rise buildings, so here the population density is low, green belts are plentiful, buildings are low, the air is fresh, and the environment is more natural than that of my rural hometown.

Xiangshan (Fragrant Hills), Yuquanshan, and the Western Hills form a continuous mountain range. In this area, besides the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, and the National Botanical Garden, there are many lesser-known parks and picking gardens, each with its own character. Here are the “Three Hills and Five Gardens”—the Western Hills, Fragrant Hills, and Yuquanshan together with the five major gardens around them (mostly imperial gardens of the Qing dynasty)—as well as the “one river, ten gardens,” about a dozen plantations and picking gardens scattered along the Han River. The small vegetable plot I rent is among the “one river, ten gardens.”

In spring, summer, and autumn, this part of Haidian is surrounded by green trees, the land is lush, and woods and wetlands are everywhere. Yujiao Country Park, Beiwu Park, and Zhongwu Park are also among the most agriculturally distinctive parks in Beijing, with large fields of rapeseed and rice. In spring the rapeseed flowers bloom and frogs croak; in summer and autumn the rice waves give off a heady fragrance. Having grown up in the countryside and been accustomed to rural life since childhood, I am especially fond of these parks. Throughout the year, whenever I have leisure, I love coming here to idle for a while.

This May Day I decided to treat myself, spending over 300 yuan on an entry-level electronic wind instrument. I plan, in the days ahead, to learn this portable new instrument from time to time, and later, in my leisure, to take it to Zizhuyuan Park or those country parks at the foot of the Western Hills and play for a while. A beautiful life is built up from little joys, bit by bit; people who love life can always find things that cost little yet bring much pleasure.

During the May Day holiday, we also found a potted azaleas for 30 yuan at the flower, bird, insect, and fish market at the foot of Zizhu Bridge. This azalea is the same variety as the ones that blanket the mountains back in my hometown, and the joys of childhood were instantly kindled by this pot of flowers. The fist-sized little flowerpot is covered with green moss, and it even carries the air of a deep mountain. Our cat at home also likes this vivid azalea, but the flowers are on the windowsill, behind the glass; she can only admire them and cannot paw them to pieces, which gives me great satisfaction.

I also picked up a small red maple for 35 yuan, a small pomegranate for 20 yuan, a gardenia for 20 yuan, and a rose for 10 yuan, and for 0 yuan surreptitiously photographed one young woman in period costume by the pavilion in Zizhuyuan Park. I also splashed out a hundred yuan on several cut flowers. These are all my favorites; placing the flowers and green plants I bought on the windowsill and glancing at them from time to time makes my mood very pleasant.

During the May Day holiday I also tidied up my “balcony vegetable garden” properly. On the first floor of our building there is a public terrace of about 10 square meters with good light. I do not remember in which year this little terrace became filled with flowerpots from every household. I live on the first floor, and being nearest the water I got the moon first: my own several pots were placed on this terrace many years ago. Perhaps because everyone was too busy, the pots on the terrace gradually went untended; their original owners abandoned them, and until now another elderly gentleman on the first floor and I had been jointly looking after them.

The two of us split the terrace in half, separated by a small walkway; each of us managed one half, and together we planted some vegetables and flowers on it. Slowly the terrace became a sight in the neighborhood. During the pandemic, when everyone was confined in the community for much of the time, this balcony garden brought a lot of joy to the whole building, and many neighbors made it a must-see spot after every meal.

When the pandemic ended, everyone went back to being busy with their own lives, and on holidays most people chose to travel. On ordinary outings they no longer liked coming to this balcony garden but instead left the community to go to nearby parks. The elderly gentleman who had shared the balcony garden with me was diagnosed with advanced gastric cancer; feeling that a person should return to the roots to die, he went back to his hometown in Anhui, and from then on this balcony belonged to me alone. Occasionally a few neighbors on the first floor still drop by for a bit, but no one else is willing, like that gentleman, to tend this balcony garden together with me—watering consistently is hard.

This year I happened to give up half of my rented plot, renting only a 20-square-meter small vegetable garden. With the garden smaller, there was nowhere to plant many vegetables, so I made full use of the balcony garden. In these flowerpots of varying sizes, colors, materials, and shapes, I planted crown daisy, lettuce, cilantro, perennial scallions, and edible-leaf sweet potato. I also left a few empty pots as seedling trays to raise the seedlings the garden needs; when the seedlings grow to a certain size, I transplant them into the garden.

The community has a shared water dispenser that produces a lot of recyclable wastewater after purifying water. Almost every day I spend ten-plus minutes going to the dispenser to collect some wastewater to water the vegetables; it is a good form of exercise. After watering the vegetables, I spend a few minutes appreciating my own “masterpiece”; watching the seedlings grow day by day is especially satisfying. I am a hardworking person who loves both physical and mental labor; if a day goes by without doing some work, reading some books, or writing something, I feel thoroughly out of sorts.

My greatest good fortune is having inherited my mother's temperament. My mother was hardworking, positive, optimistic, tolerant, kind, and so easily contented; she rarely worried in her whole life. She could always find delights in her own life; even though our family was as poor as could be, bare walls and all, and though she herself was afflicted with stubborn illnesses, none of it could change her optimistic disposition. I inherited some of her key genes. Although in this life I have, under major pressures and blows, briefly teetered on the edge of collapse, each time I have miraculously recovered on my own.

This kind of good fortune is a gift from heaven. Some people are born with spiritual wealth that others spend a whole lifetime trying to attain, and this spiritual wealth cannot be taken away by anyone or by any disaster. I am one of those lucky ones, and I am grateful and content. After studying a great deal of medical and biological knowledge, I understood one truth: innate gifts objectively exist. Among all gifts, the talent for being easily contented and happy is the most valuable, because it lets a person remain positive and optimistic even in the most difficult moments, and helps us overcome hardship.

Among ancient Chinese men of letters, Tao Yuanming, Xie Lingyun, and Su Shi were all such people; their temperaments and their writing are full of beauty. Their learning was certainly profound, but what truly determined their depth was not the knowledge and skills they acquired but their innate nature—their inborn contentment and constant cheerfulness; their talent was merely the icing on the cake. With such a temperament, even without talent or social status they could still live happily. I am qualified to say this, because I have seen my own mother, who could not read a single character, live happily and contentedly her whole life.

My mother never demanded too much of me nor belittled me. All through high school I was very playful, and as a child I was once obsessed with many “unproductive” pastimes; she never criticized me for being playful or for not attending to serious work. Even when my older brother forbade me from fishing and pressured me to do my summer homework, my mother pleaded with him on my behalf, asking him to let me off and let me go out to play, and to come home to study once I had had enough. I had a great craving for fishing and was very focused when at it, often not coming home for lunch until midday. In the afternoon, when she went out to work in the fields, she would bring my lunch to the spot where I usually fished. She was willing to accept every part of me that others saw as a shortcoming; with such a mother, it was hard not to love her deeply.

I have read many articles and books by education experts, yet I always feel their insight and vision are not up to that of my illiterate mother. Because of her tolerance and trust, I rarely experienced negative emotions, could focus intensely on what I did, and was full of passion for both my career and life. My passion for study was ignited in adolescence, and once ignited it erupted spectacularly; powerful focus and enthusiasm have benefited me enormously.

Influenced by my mother, I also raise my own child on the principle of letting nature take its course. My son is also very playful, and has been obsessed with a great many toys and games. I have accepted everything about him, loving him the way his grandmother loved me. Before both his senior high school entrance exam and his college entrance exam he was playing games, and I rarely stopped him; his grades have always been above average, and in university he even ranks near the top in his major.

Now, even though he has chosen the most difficult major, mathematics, he can still calmly complete his studies while arranging a rich and varied extracurricular life. He is positive and optimistic and full of enthusiasm for life; at the very least I need not worry about him being tormented by depression and anxiety. I think that no matter how he makes a living in future, he will surely live a happy life; that is enough, and I have no further expectations.

I am forty-five this year. Although I have achieved nothing noteworthy, the breadth of my interests, my abundant energy, my positive attitude, and my staying power are rare among my peers. Most of the time I feel myself to be happy and fortunate, and rarely do I lament a bitter fate. I sincerely do not subscribe to the idea that all sentient beings suffer; there are indeed people who are inwardly wretched, but there are also many who live a life of joy rather than pain. My life experience tells me that absolute statements are mostly not truth but fallacy.

What is the joy of being born? What is the pain of dying? Such words do not move me either. Death is indeed not much of a suffering, but being alive has many joys. Find things to do that are not too taxing on the mind, set life goals that do not strain us too much, stop caring about others' expectations and opinions of us, focus only on our own inner feelings, and avoid harming or troubling others; let everything follow its natural course, and life will be very comfortable—wherein lies any bitterness?