A Small World on the Balcony, and It Is Lovely Too

On the morning of April 18, 2022, I went to complete the cancellation procedure for the shared garden. That afternoon, a residential compound near the garden reported a confirmed COVID-19 case. Fortunately, the patient had been taken to a centralized quarantine point more than a week earlier after contacting an infected person on the way back from elsewhere; the positive case was detected on nucleic acid testing during quarantine, so no large-scale lockdown resulted. Apart from the patient's own building being locked down, nothing else was affected.

Still, thinking about it afterward gave me a fright; I felt my reaction had been a bit slow and that I should have stopped gardening in the shared garden earlier this year. After all, during the spread of a highly transmissible variant, the more people one contacts outside, the less safe one is. I have no fear of the virus itself, but I worry about being quarantined and about burdening my family by becoming a close contact. Under the current pandemic policy and the new situation, reducing contact with the outside world is the way to avoid becoming a burden to one's family and to society.

These past two days I have put all the flowerpots at home to use and bought more gardening tools, planting several kinds of vegetables on the balcony: cabbage, water spinach, fennel, garlic chives, yellow chives, baby cabbage, xiao youcai (bok choy), crown daisy, lettuce, sweet potato vines, romaine, tomatoes, and eggplant. I gardened outdoors for two years; my biggest gain was learning how to garden—knowing what to plant in each season in Beijing, where to buy seedlings for various vegetables, and how to grow them—so now I garden with ease.

Since the pandemic began, I have not been to a supermarket or mall, nor to a bookstore or library. Luckily, before the pandemic I bought many books and various cheap little ornaments, which now help me pass the spare time. A good life does not necessarily require material abundance, but it requires a certain creativity; a thoughtful heart and deft hands can add much color to life.

Although my home is only about sixty-plus square meters, it has two balconies. The small balcony is about two square meters, holding a large bookshelf and a low bookcase; on top of the bookcase and along its edges I have placed some Buddhist sculptures I like. I put a folding stool in front of the bookcase; each day I can sit on it, face the Buddhist sculptures, tap a singing bowl, and sit quietly for a while or read. Before the pandemic I liked visiting temples; now I cannot go, but with these ornaments on my own balcony I have the feeling of a shrine, enough to comfort my heart. The large balcony is seven or eight square meters; along the window wall I placed six low bookcases, with some green plants and vegetables on top. Outside the small balcony window there is a windowsill, now filled with flowerpots of all sizes holding green plants and vegetables. Every sunny spot in the home is planted with greenery and vegetables.

COVID-19 will most likely coexist with humans for a long time; whether its virulence will keep diminishing is unknown. Perhaps, like smallpox and HIV, the case fatality rate will stop falling once it reaches a certain level; perhaps, like influenza, its virulence will keep weakening. How the national pandemic policy will change in future is also unknowable; in the end Darwin's doctrine of "survival of the fittest" may once again be confirmed. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, a plague lasting more than a century changed the whole world, and many places were depopulated. But emotionally humanity cannot accept this reality; politics must always consider human feeling, and surrendering without a fight to the virus also goes against human nature's seeking of advantage and avoiding harm, so I understand the various current debates. Under the dynamic zero-COVID policy, we ordinary folk have no choice but to adjust our way of survival.

Though I am rather introverted and do not like socializing, I had never imagined that one day I would live as I do now, almost entirely running everything within my few dozen square meters: life, work, entertainment, exercise. The pandemic has made many people live this way. Even worse off than us are those in locked-down areas, who cannot even get basic living supplies in time and whose basic medical needs go unmet; such secondary disasters may recur again and again, and it is hard to say when it will be our turn.

After adjusting my mindset, I gradually grew used to and fond of this life in my own "independent kingdom"; the small balcony is enough for all my needs. Once I learned to garden, I could live an idyllic life even in the urban concrete jungle; after reducing interpersonal contact, frictions with others also lessened considerably.

I do not glorify disaster, but nor do I quite agree that disaster has nothing to offer. We country folk often say that living is just a mouthful of food; rough as this saying is, its truth is not rough. In disaster mode, people realize that living really is just a mouthful of food—that having food to fill the stomach is enough, and that further pursuits are things one thinks about only once one is full.

I am rather fortunate to be a small person with limited social responsibility. If I were a big person bearing great social responsibility, my days would be very hard at times like this. When I was young I never imagined I would one day become a secondary figure; back then I was used to being the focus. Now I cannot help but admire the freedom and ease of small people, and feel glad to be one.

An ordinary small person is by no means worthless. At the very least, besides doing one's own job well, we can huddle for warmth with the great majority of fellow small people and comfort one another. Leave the greater worries and sorrows to the big people; ordinariness makes me realize that however hard the days are, life is so beautiful. No heavy sense of mission or responsibility presses on us; every flower and tree can make us break into a smile. If we understand the art of living, then however bitter and hard life is, it is not so unbearable.