Reading in Hangzhou

In the spring of 1992, I was intern­ing at a court in Shang­hai. It was ear­ly spring, and every­thing was damp. Every day, I had to squeeze into bus­es for three to four hours to com­mute. Amidst the damp cars and crowds, I often had this thought: gar­lic sprouts in the damp mud.

A‑Yi returned from his intern­ship in Hangzhou to pick up his belong­ings. That evening, they had a farewell din­ner with peanuts and beer, and every­one was so excit­ed they want­ed to see A‑Yi off. A‑Yi boast­ed about Hangzhou all the way, incred­i­bly proud. A‑Jia got angry and said, “Let’s go,” so they arrived in Hangzhou that evening.
In Hangzhou, I stayed at Zhe­jiang Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty, near the Sixth Park. It was a med­ical school, after all, and the dor­mi­to­ries were mixed on the first floor. Enter­ing the hall­way, I could see a girl’s hand­writ­ing: “No mat­ter how white your shoe pow­der is, it can’t hide the black mole on your face!” It was said that a few dor­mi­to­ries away had lost their white sneak­ers the day before, and the own­er had writ­ten this in anger. It was quite cold that night. I did­n’t bring a quilt, so I pulled a blan­ket over the bed, wrapped my feet in my clothes, and wrapped myself in my coat, bare­ly man­ag­ing to fit in. The advan­tage of stay­ing this way was that it was easy to get up ear­ly.
That morn­ing, my room­mates all went off to their intern­ships, leav­ing me alone with my free­dom. But how should I spend this free­dom? I remem­bered a com­e­dy I saw years ago, “The New Biog­ra­phy of Ah Hun,” star­ring Yan Shunkai. The scene that stuck with me most was when Ah Hun, see­ing the Yue Opera “But­ter­fly Lovers” on TV, sud­den­ly had an idea and yelled, “I want to read in Hangzhou!” The next shot showed Ah Hun falling into Hangzhou’s West Lake. Hangzhou is indeed a great place to read books, but based on my research, a rent­ed row­boat isn’t the right place for read­ing.
I grabbed a book and head­ed out. Break­fast was, as usu­al, a bowl of soy milk with gluti­nous rice wrapped in fried dough sticks. Three ounces of gluti­nous rice was plen­ty, and sprin­kled with plen­ty of sug­ar, so lunch was prac­ti­cal­ly neg­li­gi­ble.
I made my way through the slight­ly crowd­ed morn­ing exer­cise crowd by the lake and head­ed straight for Geling. I climbed all the way to the Chaoyang Tea­house. The sun was just above the lake, lev­el with the moun­tain, warm but not glar­ing. I sat down at a tea table by the rock, ordered a cup of Longjing tea, and began to read.
I’m hold­ing a copy of The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being. I’ve read it before, but I was in a rush and missed some parts. This time, I can review it care­ful­ly. It’s a book that left a deep impres­sion on me, but I can’t say whether it’s good or bad. I can only remem­ber a few triv­ial things about it, such as the painter’s strange hat, the cute piglet, and a sen­tence the author wrote some­where: Life is a sketch that can only be drawn once.
West Lake is dot­ted with stone bench­es. If the sun warms you up, find a shady spot and spend a com­fort­able half-day read­ing. The path from Bai­di Cause­way to Pinghu Qiuyue is lined with these won­der­ful spots. I remem­ber fin­ish­ing anoth­er Milan Kun­dera book there in a sin­gle after­noon: “A Farewell Par­ty.” It’s a fast-paced nov­el, depict­ing an absurd and infu­ri­at­ing era, a ridicu­lous­ly endear­ing doc­tor, and sev­er­al absurd sto­ries, told with a cin­e­mat­ic, jumpy style. Read­ing it all in one breath felt like a life­time ago, and it was quite to my taste.
Kun­dera is good, but it’s too intense and too quick­ly digest­ed. I need­ed some­thing more sub­stan­tial by the West Lake. The most delight­ful part of West Lake in spring is the Ori­oles Singing in the Wil­lows. Ten­der wil­low branch­es droop gen­tly, the broad lawn is invit­ing­ly green, and bursts of chirp­ing emanate from large bird cages. The most eye-catch­ing thing is the sam­pans prac­tic­ing on the lake, their bright­ly col­ored sails glid­ing leisure­ly across the water. Every­thing is sooth­ing and relax­ing. The tea in the tea­house here is also the cheap­est among the parks, and the unlim­it­ed self-refill water is espe­cial­ly help­ful, allow­ing me to fin­ish the fried dough sticks I brought with me, elim­i­nat­ing the wor­ry of a mid­day hunger.
A whole day in a place like this would­n’t be too much. I unknow­ing­ly fin­ished a book called “Gua­va Fra­grance,” a jour­nal­ist’s inter­view with Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez, which con­tains many fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries. What sur­prised me most was the depth of Cuban Pres­i­dent Cas­tro’s lit­er­ary sophis­ti­ca­tion; he’d read near­ly every book on Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s list. Of course, the most fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries were about how Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez skipped school to read Kaf­ka on the city bus, and about his mag­i­cal jour­ney along the Ama­zon Riv­er.
At a used book stall, I found a par­tic­u­lar­ly deli­cious book: Taniza­ki Junichi­ro’s The Makio­ka Snow. It was incred­i­bly thick, and only cost two yuan. It’s a tru­ly elu­sive nov­el, rich­ly fla­vored with Japan­ese ele­ments. It tells the tale of the mun­dane lives of four sis­ters from a declin­ing aris­to­crat­ic fam­i­ly, with excep­tion­al­ly nuanced psy­cho­log­i­cal descrip­tions. It’s a life-size micro­cosm of the world. It’s a clas­sic, but exhaust­ing! I read from Ori­oles Singing in the Wil­lows to Watch­ing Fish at the Flower Har­bor, and from there to Changqiao Park. I could­n’t stand it any longer, so I climbed to Yuhuangding Peak in one breath, only to come down to catch my breath before fin­ish­ing. But it was also thanks to this book that I dis­cov­ered the per­fect place to read in Hangzhou—Changqiao Park.
A good place for out­door read­ing is nei­ther too com­fort­able nor too com­fort­able, nei­ther too noisy nor too qui­et. While the prin­ci­ple of nei­ther being too uncom­fort­able nor too noisy is obvi­ous, too much com­fort can eas­i­ly lead to a loss of moti­va­tion, while too much qui­et can make one rest­less, a prin­ci­ple less wide­ly under­stood. Ori­oles Singing in the Wil­low Waves is too com­fort­able, so read­ing a few short essays is enough. Watch­ing Fish in the Flower Har­bor is either too busy or too seclud­ed, so strolling in an emp­ty pavil­ion and hum­ming a few lines of poet­ry is accept­able, but the entrance fee and tea are too expen­sive, mak­ing it unwor­thy. The stone bench­es along the Bai Cause­way are bustling with peo­ple, so they’re fine for read­ing grip­ping nov­els, but read­ing any­thing more roman­tic can be daunt­ing if you let your­self get car­ried away. Chaoyang Tea­house is nice, but after morn­ing, it becomes a place for sun­bathing.
Only Changqiao Park offers the cheap­est admis­sion, rarely sees crowds, and with its moun­tain back­drop and lake views, it’s a tru­ly relax­ing expe­ri­ence. The park lacks any recre­ation­al facil­i­ties, elim­i­nat­ing any dis­trac­tions. Enjoy a stroll in the pavil­ion, recline on a stone bench, or relax on the lawn. It’s tru­ly a per­fect place to read! When you get bored with read­ing, climb to the Jade Emper­or Peak across the way and vis­it the “Lantern Pavil­ion” with its panoram­ic views of West Lake to the left and Qiantang Riv­er to the right. Relax­ing in the breeze is tru­ly a delight! (Note: The winds at the top of the moun­tain are strong, mak­ing it unsuit­able for read­ing.)
I forcibly fin­ished read­ing “The Makio­ka Sis­ters.” I almost for­got every­thing about this nov­el after fin­ish­ing it, but there’s one scene I’m afraid I’ll nev­er for­get. It tells the sto­ry of a group of sis­ters who meet up at a famous sushi restau­rant on a Tokyo river­bank to eat “live sushi.” Live sushi is made with fresh lob­ster. Thanks to the chef’s excep­tion­al knife skills, the lob­ster seg­ments sand­wiched between the rice balls are still under­go­ing “low-lev­el nerve reflex­es,” so the sushi still moves when you eat it, as if it were alive. The dis­cern­ing female cus­tomers would often let out adorable excla­ma­tions, while the chef would look smug­ly dis­mis­sive. This is my favorite pas­sage. Every time I read it, I get a rage inside me. I take out my fried dough cake, chomp on it, and then, after forc­ing it down with min­er­al water, I’m over­whelmed with the urge and yearn­ing to call for “rev­o­lu­tion”…

It was a beau­ti­ful Sun­day, so A and B went out togeth­er. Hav­ing vis­it­ed West Lake many times before, they decid­ed to try some­thing new this time.
I once read Yu Dafu’s novel­la, “Late Osman­thus Blos­som,” about a mid­dle-aged man who, at a friend’s invi­ta­tion, coun­sels his younger sis­ter. The two spend a day togeth­er on the shores of West Lake, forg­ing a pure, broth­er­ly bond. I read it on a strong rec­om­men­da­tion, and after fin­ish­ing it, I’m still unsure whether it’s good or not, except that it’s a rare Yu Dafu nov­el full of whole­some, bright vibes. I actu­al­ly man­aged to mem­o­rize the gen­er­al route of the West Lake itin­er­ary. The local host in the nov­el is named Weng, and his home is on Wengji­ashan, a moun­tain near Man­jue­long. It’s from here that the hero and his younger sis­ter set out on their jour­ney. The nov­el is set in Sep­tem­ber, and the osman­thus blos­soms in Man­jue­long have already bloomed, but the late osman­thus on the moun­tain is even more fra­grant and beau­ti­ful.
We first took a bus to Lingyin Tem­ple. In front of Lingyin Tem­ple, there’s a small path lead­ing to Zhong­tianzhu and Shang­tianzhu. We stopped for a while at the nun­nery in Zhong­tianzhu, where admis­sion is free. The nuns were chant­i­ng morn­ing prayers. It’s no exag­ger­a­tion to say they were chant­i­ng “Namo Amitab­ha” over and over in a gen­tle, melo­di­ous melody. It was tru­ly refresh­ing and enlight­en­ing, like a rev­e­la­tion.
After cross­ing Shang­tianzhu and walk­ing for a while, we asked the locals and were told that Wengjia Moun­tain lay just below us. We did­n’t want to take the high­way, so we fol­lowed the moun­tain path for a long, some­times uphill, some­times down­hill path. We met almost no one and lost our sense of direc­tion. It was­n’t the right time of year, so we def­i­nite­ly would­n’t see any osman­thus flow­ers, but we did see plen­ty of bam­boo shoots. We passed sev­er­al vil­lages along the way, but since we had no clear des­ti­na­tion, we did­n’t both­er ask­ing for direc­tions and just kept walk­ing.
After climb­ing a hill­side, we found our­selves in a tea plan­ta­tion perched on a hill­top. A few old­er chil­dren popped out from the area, eye­ing us war­i­ly. Upon ask­ing, we learned we were at Lion Peak. The pro­tag­o­nist in the nov­el had also tra­versed this spot. Just below Lion Peak lies Longjing Vil­lage, and not far from the vil­lage is Hupao Spring. It was past noon when we stopped for tea at Hupao. After a quick bite to eat, we head­ed into the Nine Creeks and Eigh­teen Streams.
After walk­ing the Nine Creeks and Eigh­teen Streams, A and B dis­cussed whether to fol­low the pro­tag­o­nist’s lead and walk to the Yun­qi Bam­boo Path. We asked the locals, and they said it was still more than ten miles away, and the road was uphill, so we gave up. I just could­n’t under­stand how the pro­tag­o­nists in the nov­el could walk so fast, stop­ping and start­ing, and still arrive in time for the wed­ding. It was tru­ly incred­i­ble.
It was a very tir­ing day, but it was also a dif­fer­ent kind of read­ing.

Ajia in Decem­ber 1998