Prompted by receiving a painting of the sea that I really loved, I went to see the sea this week

I tried taking some photos. I originally thought I’d win with a sunrise-at-dawn kind of shot, but I slept too late, slept too deeply, completely missed the alarm (though I still woke up at 6:30 out of sheer biological clock inertia —just shows how terrifying school can be)

The results of my casual snaps were actually decent? Probably beginner’s luck —but since I was a little proud of them, I couldn’t resist showing off

I had imagined myself in a misty morning, entering some sort of transcendent, enlightening state of oneness with nature, waiting for the sun to rise, letting out affected melancholic sighs —things like “Walk on, the shore won’t keep our footprints for long”; “The sea sets sail from its own homeland, and I wake from my dreams”

Reality was: too little sleep. Although I realized I almost took the subway in the wrong direction, when heading to the seaside I ended up walking along the coast in the wrong direction. After clambering across a huge stretch of jagged, black, hard rocks, I finally found a nearly deserted beach (“nearly” because there was an old gentleman[^1] swimming)

I waded across the sand, tasted a mouthful of seawater, and had barely taken a few steps when I saw a huge dead squid

I beat a lightning-fast retreat back to shore, barely managed to finish listening to the playlist I’d carefully curated for my imagined aesthetic, then sighed and went to wash the sand off my feet at the tap

Maybe that’s why there were so few people here. At that thought, the old man finished his swim and started matter-of-factly showering under the tap next to me

He’s probably retired with time on his hands. I’m here because I happened to have a day off. So the lack of people today might also have something to do with the May Day shift adjustments[^2]. Thinking along these lines, I suddenly felt a sense of kindred spirits —“What night lacks moonlight? What place lacks bamboo and cypress? But few are the idlers like the two of us.”[^3]

I just wonder —did he see that dead squid? It was really conspicuous

My original takeaway was that for the first time, I was viscerally worried about ecological issues

But thinking about it now, I did see a fishing harbor along the way. A dead squid this large showing up near the shore —they must have been the ones who knocked it off, whether intentionally or not. Watch yourselves next time, will you?

💬 Comments

  • Mangcai Pai Gaoceng (2024-04-21 22:54): Not gonna take a photo of the squid?

Footnotes

[^1]: “Old gentleman” (大爷) —A casual, affectionate term of address for older men in everyday Chinese, roughly equivalent to “uncle” or “older gentleman.” It carries warmth and informality.
[^2]: May Day shift adjustments (五一调休) —China’s holiday scheduling system where makeup workdays are arranged around public holidays (such as the May 1st Labor Day) to create longer continuous breaks. This means people often must work on adjacent weekends to compensate, which can affect overall attendance and activity levels during the holiday period.
[^3]: “What night lacks moonlight? What place lacks bamboo and cypress? But few are the idlers like the two of us.” (何夜无月？何处无竹柏？但少闲人如吾两人者耳。) —From the Song dynasty poet Su Shi’s Record of a Night Stroll at Chengtian Temple (记承天寺夜游). Written during Su Shi’s exile, this brief essay captures a spontaneous midnight walk with a friend under the moonlight, finding beauty and solace in shared leisure amid adversity.