Diogenes by the Sea

A drifter in Beijing, seven years in the city. In those seven years he paid rent, couldn't buy a place, had two relationships that went nowhere, and had nothing else to show for it. The job was nine to five, pressure stacked on pressure. Then came the pandemic years — Covid tests, alerts, quarantine — and the days were squeezed tight. He couldn't say which part was worst. He knew only one thing: he wasn't free. Not in the least. So he quit his job outright. Gave up the apartment, handed back the keys, and got on a train heading south, alone. The place he went was a ghost town — Rushan Silver Beach, by the sea. The buildings were new, the people few. Once winter passed, nothing was left on the whole street but wind. The supermarket shut early, the streetlights were dark, nobody walked. He lived there four years. In those four years he figured some things out, and plenty more he hasn't figured out to this day. In between he went off on several long trips — Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Guizhou, Guangdong, Hainan — traveled to a great many places, wanting to see whether there was somewhere in China that suited him better. When the traveling was done, he still came back to the sea. He still doesn't work, doesn't socialize, doesn't date. He just wanders this world on his own. This book is about those four years.