After years of marriage, fatherhood, and dutiful routine, I’d grown accustomed to my orderly life, my small, warm circle.
In recent years, I’ve told others that I like solitude, that I’m good at being alone — but truthfully, that just meant occasionally stealing some time away from the responsibilities of life.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to handle the long-term reality of knowing no one, of going to bed and waking up in silence.

During these three months back in the capital, I felt a small thrill at escaping my stable — but stifling — existence.
But whenever things weren’t busy, the loneliness hit me like a freight train.

Every evening, as coworkers trickled out of the office one by one, a wave of dread and emptiness would wash over me:
What will I eat tonight? Where should I go if I don’t want to return to that rented room so soon?

I opened my map and scrolled aimlessly.
The places I wanted to visit — I’d already grown bored of.
The places I didn’t want to go — still held no interest.

Thanks to the city’s shared bike pass, and the newly planned bike lanes, I managed to ease this existential panic by cycling — riding through the last steamy days of summer and into the breezy chill of fall.

These rides had no purpose.
I chose roads at random, never worried about getting lost.
Beijing’s street grid had become three-dimensional in my head.
Along the way, I stumbled upon a few hidden places that briefly calmed the soul.

One was Xihai, near Jishuitan.
The 331 bus from my office stopped nearby.
Unlike the tourist-packed Houhai to the east, Xihai was quiet and compact.

As summer ended and the heat subsided, I often arrived just after dark.
Luckily, the mosquitoes had disappeared by then.
I’d sit on a bench by the water, or beneath a corridor’s roof.
In the distance to the east, the China Zun tower blinked quietly.
Sometimes, an old local from the nearby hutongs would strike up a conversation.
They’d end up telling me everything — as if I had accidentally wandered into someone else’s life.

I believed in the “20-minute park effect,” so I stayed around 30 minutes — about two cigarettes’ worth.
Then, depending on my mood, I either wandered deeper into the hutongs or made my way to Xinjiekou to catch the subway home.

Another refuge: Financial Street on weekends.
Due to the economic downturn, very few offices had staff working on Saturdays or Sundays.
The shopping malls were empty, the central parks deserted.
Only a bored janitor might pace slowly across the gravel paths.
Cafes were ghost towns.

I’d pull out my Kindle, immerse myself in a book, and ignore the weather outside — be it brilliant sun or sudden downpour.

But those moments of peace were just flickers — after-work scraps, weekend leftovers.

On the first day of work, entering from Exit B at Jingfengmen Station, I was swept into a flood of silent commuters.
They shuffled forward like slow-moving zombies.
The underground corridor stretched endlessly ahead.

When the train came, strangers stood shoulder to shoulder — no room to breathe.
Memories of my hometown — its electric scooters, its laid-back campus days — rushed back without warning.

The overgrown entrances of second-ring subway stops, always leaking, always slick.
Inner-city slums that could never be cleared.
E-bike chaos, bland prefab lunchboxes, double-card-swipe buses.
Once-bustling business districts now half-dead.

All of it unsettled me.

Old friends were now scattered, each drowning in their own obligations.
When we did manage to meet across the sprawling city, conversations rarely strayed beyond kids and money.
“Let’s hang out again sometime,” they’d say.
But the phrase only blurred the once-vivid memories of youth spent side by side.

Then came a storm at work — unexpected and unthinkable.

How could I not be affected?
This was someone I’d crossed oceans with. Someone I’d once watched meet Hangzhou’s gentle rains.
Their voice still echoed in my ears.
The news of their fall hit me like a punch.
Friends kept asking what had happened, but it only made things worse.

I drank alone for several nights, unable to calm the churning inside.
But for someone as insignificant as me, what can I do but sigh?

This summer, Beijing’s rains were relentless — especially during rush hour.
The guy across from me at work called it “bull and horse rain.”
I couldn’t agree more.

On the night of the supermoon, I was stranded at Lotus Market for over an hour by a torrential downpour.
Even with an umbrella and a roof, my shoes and pants were soaked.

But here’s what strikes me now:
The human ability to adapt to suffering is astonishing.

What once tormented me has now become… dull.
I even find myself agreeing with a quote from a yellow app’s “Thoughts from Non-Beijingers Living in Beijing” channel:

“The best thing about living in Beijing is that once you leave, anywhere else feels like happiness.”

And just like that, in a flash, three months passed.
Fast — but still left some regrets:

• I never got to read I and the Temple of Earth in the Temple of Earth.
• Never visited Cao Xueqin’s old residence.
• Never took a short trip to Zhengding.
• And even after publishing the earlier essays, I still felt I had more to say.

Maybe regret is its own kind of beauty.

“My Life in Beijing” was originally the name of an old-school single-player game.

There were no graphics — just a textbox, like a chat window.

You played as a virtual person trying to survive 40 days in the capital with just 2000 yuan.
You could either make a fortune or head home to get married when time ran out.

Weird things would happen in-game:
Graduates flipping phones in Zhongguancun for profit,
getting mocked by aunties for not having Beijing hukou (health -10),
selling pirated CDs (money +500),
or getting caught by police (money -800).

It wasn’t far from real life.
Hardly exaggerated.

Fourteen years ago, when I left Beijing, I wrote:

“This city is too big. Individual joys and sorrows are as light as dust.
No one cares about your emotions.
Wipe your tears. Endure, or leave.”

To live here without guilt, you must treat everyone as an NPC.
Use whatever money you have to buy what you need.
Sympathy?
Better save it for yourself.

Unless something unexpected happens, this will be the final piece in the series.

I said I’d write 15 chapters back in July — so I wrote 15.
The two extras were overachieving my personal KPI.

Thank you to everyone who’s been quietly reading without ever commenting.
And thank you, especially, to those who supported me with tips — 敬总, 闫总.

It’s freezing here in the capital. I can’t wait to return south and raise a cup with the brothers.

That’s a wrap.

First came the wind, stripping bare the last trembling leaves on the branches. Then came the snow, deep enough to cover the ankles.

Years later, while wandering the stacks of the Zhengzhou Library, I chanced upon a book titled Chronicle of Contemporary Beijing Events (2003–2013). I flipped directly to November 2009, and found this entry:

November 1: The “Beijing Blood Donation Management Measures” took effect. Donors who have contributed over 1000ml are entitled to lifetime unlimited free blood use.
On the same day, Beijing experienced the heaviest snow in a decade. In ten hours, the southern and central districts saw over 7mm of precipitation. The highest snowfall was in Shijingshan: 12mm.

That day, I was huddled in a freezing room in Shijingshan, shivering and bewildered.

Just the day before, I had wandered the Imperial Ancestral Temple, snapping selfies in a light shirt and sweating under the autumn sun. Back home, this time of year usually meant a jacket in the morning and evening — but now, Beijing felt like a giant ice cellar.

The quilt that had seemed thick enough the night before might as well have been a sheet of gauze.

The walk to work, normally a brisk half-hour, turned into a slow, stumbling trek through half-melted snow on the elevated roads. Behind me trailed a silent, staggered line of commuters, each step hesitant, stopping impossible.

As night fell, the slush refroze into sleek black ice.
A taxi skidded into a roadside barrier. The driver, steaming breath into one hand, shouted into his phone with the other:

“Damn it, it’s so slippery out here — what the fuck!”

That, it turned out, was just the prelude.

On November 9 and again on November 12, two more heavy snowfalls struck.

Eventually, the weather defeated me.
Burning with fever, trembling through the night, I dragged myself alone to the hospital — a grown man confronting adult life, and its cold, literal and figurative.

Then came the New Year, along with what was dubbed “the biggest snowfall in 40 years.”
I stopped pretending to be tough. Long johns under padded pants, no more bravado.
Beijing, skipping straight past any “northern capital” charm, turned directly into the Arctic.

But it was beautiful in its own desolate way.
Once the cold front passed and skies cleared, work units began organizing mass snow-shoveling efforts.
Mounds of snow were piled up around every tree base, every roadside shrub. They didn’t begin to melt until early April 2010.
The Chronicle notes: May 1, 2010: Beijing’s high temperature — 32.2°C.

On windy days, the sun always showed up.
Its light slanted low, bouncing into your eyes from streets far ahead.
Icicles hung from eaves, growing longer by the day.
The mist from people’s mouths — was it breath or smoke?

By 5 p.m., dusk began to fall.
A few minutes later, night.
The streets emptied quickly.
Restaurants offered the only human noise.
On the roads: quiet cars.
In the alleys: quiet moonlight.

“Beijing winters are inevitably desolate” — this, I once saw affirmed by an official Weibo post.

When central heating finally arrived, it created a world of fire and ice.
Inside, you roasted. Outside, you froze.
Dressing became a puzzle: either too hot indoors or too cold outside.
Eventually, I figured it out: wear almost nothing inside, and a massive coat outside.
Then and only then could you move between the two worlds with ease.
Only then did I understand the ancient wisdom of fox-fur cloaks and greatcoats.

Friends from the south envied Beijing winters — “At least you guys have heat.”
I asked, “Don’t you find it dry?”
“Actually,” one said, “I did get a few nosebleeds.”
My lips, meanwhile, were peeling like old posters.

That was the longest winter of my life.
And the one I remember most vividly.

It wasn’t just the weather.
Living alone in a strange city already felt bleak.
My work stalled — projects went nowhere.
Each day, I wasted hours on mindless tasks, occasionally caught “slacking off” by a watchful boss.

My long-distance relationship began to wither.
Our worries diverged, our conversations became polite.
The pauses on the phone grew longer.

My parents sensed my struggle and began forwarding links to civil servant exam applications back home.

In the middle of this freeze, I saw Gwei Lun-mei at 798 Art Zone, stumbled into Jonathan Lee’s “Life House Courtyard”, and discovered the poetic charm of Baihua Deep Alley.
I spent a surreal Christmas Eve wandering the city, unsure if it was magical or absurd.

One day at work, dozing off, I heard my manager call:

“Chen.”

I rushed over. He said:

“No need to come to the office tomorrow morning.”

I froze.
Then he added:

“Go to this hotel on Zhichun Road, meet this person. Her son-in-law is a foreigner. Show them around the city. Bring back receipts for reimbursement.”

Before I could ask, “Since when do we do foreign relations?”, he got a phone call and waved me away.

The next morning, I found myself face to face with a Portuguese man of mixed ancestry and his elderly mother, a Japanese Brazilian with difficulty walking.
In hindsight, I feel I wronged the old lady.

We took her to Qianmen, Tian’anmen, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace — all places that require serious walking.
She slipped once under a palace gate in the Western Six Palaces. My heart nearly stopped.

While sipping hot chocolate in the Imperial Garden, she mistook my rudimentary Japanese for fluency and began talking to me animatedly, pointing at the Forbidden City cats:

“Neko-chan! Neko-chan!”

I didn’t understand a word.
Her son had to step in and translate — from Japanese to English.

That year, the ice on Kunming Lake was at least a foot thick.
We walked across it to the Seventeen-Arch Bridge.
A few seasoned old-timers had cut holes in the surface and were ice-fishing with bare lines.

The sun was dazzling but offered no warmth.
Under that blue sky, the Tower of Buddhist Incense looked sublime.

Train tickets still didn’t require ID back then.
I made several trips to the Beijing West Railway Station ticket hall, but failed to secure a ticket home for Spring Festival.

Luckily, I found one on a secondhand ticket website — an overnight sleeper for New Year’s Eve.
The handoff took place in Niujie, at a residential compound.
I paid 10 yuan extra.
Even now, living near Niujie, I sometimes pass those queues outside the food shops and remember that winter night.

(I think I already wrote about waiting all night at Tian’anmen Square for the New Year’s flag-raising ceremony in another chapter. If not, I’ll circle back.)

On the Little New Year’s Eve, which happened to fall on a weekend, a few of us recent grads shared a hot pot dinner in Xidan, then walked east through wind and snow along Chang’an Avenue, past Tian’anmen, finally parting ways at Wangfujing.

I was left alone, walking west again through the very heart of the nation.

Near Baoyuelou, I saw a motorcade approach — led by police cars, headed toward the Great Hall of the People.

In one of the Audis, I caught a glimpse of a man in gold-rimmed glasses, in a suit and white gloves, his face lit by streetlamps — expressionless, tired, lonely.

I guessed he might be one of the nine top leaders of the nation at the time.

And so what?
Even he had to work overtime.

That night, it finally dawned on me:
We like to believe we make our own choices,
but in truth, we drift like flotsam on waves.
Wherever fate carries us, we go.
We read whichever page the wind flips open.

Cherish the present.
Don’t worry too much about what’s next.

(Not that I haven’t worried plenty since then.)

On May 5, 1912 — the first year of the Republic of China — a 32-year-old man still called Zhou Shuren, not yet Lu Xun, arrived in Beijing from Nanjing via Tianjin. That evening, he visited a friend at what was then still known as the Shanhui Guild, and the next day he officially moved in.

Pure coincidence or strange fate — on May 5, 2018, I found myself standing beneath the same signboard. At that time, the site hadn’t yet been cleared for preservation. A chaotic mess of cars clogged the entrance; the adjacent public restroom stank; an old woman muttered to herself, leaning on her cane; overhead, tangled TV antennas formed a spiderweb against the sky. A sheet of paper pasted on the gate read “No Visitors.” Inside, it was little more than a jerry-rigged warren of illegal lean-tos.

It wasn’t much better back in 1912 either. Zhou had just emerged from years of personal turmoil: after returning from Japan on a government scholarship that obligated him to teach for five years, he’d fought with school authorities in Hangzhou, quit his post, and returned to his hometown of Shaoxing in near destitution. He had to sell ancestral farmland to support his family. Though married, the relationship was a traditional arrangement — a daughter-in-law chosen by his mother, not a partner in any meaningful sense.

At a dead end, history turned quietly. After the 1911 Revolution, Zhou’s Shaoxing compatriot Cai Yuanpei became Minister of Education in the new Nanjing government and strongly supported Zhou’s appointment. When the government relocated to Beijing, Cai went first to scout ahead, while Deputy Minister Jing Yaoyue, who disliked Zhou, removed him from the staffing list. Fortunately, Cai returned in time to reverse the decision. And that’s how this story begins.

Did life improve in the capital? Not exactly.

On his fourth day in Beijing, Zhou wrote in his diary:

“From 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Ministry of Education. Sat idle all day. Utterly bored.”

The work was dull. The politics, disillusioning.

“Before the revolution,” he later said, “I was a slave. Soon after the revolution, I was tricked by slaves and became a slave to them.”

Being a civil servant back then wasn’t glamorous.
His office was “filled with tobacco smoke,” with “spittoons chipped” and “chairs missing legs.”
He was seen by others as a former Qing official who’d merely cut off his queue and continued drawing a salary.
He tried to hide his occupation. It didn’t help. When he later feuded with intellectual opponents, they would smear him as a government lackey who had “enjoyed peace and salary under Yuan Shikai.”
For a man with no political ambition, this was slander. He made no secret of it:

“I just wanted a bit of money. My ancestors left no inheritance, my wife brought no dowry, and my writing didn’t pay. This was just to survive.”

At least Beijing provided abundant cultural nourishment.
He loved collecting rubbings of ancient stone inscriptions — this hobby even appeared in the TV drama The Age of Awakening.
He frequented Liulichang, Beijing’s antiquarian street.
Despite frequent salary delays, the occasional windfall allowed him to grow a long wish list of rare and classic books.

He strolled with friends through Taoranting, the Bell and Drum Towers, and went alone to Fayuan Temple when stood up.
He often wandered around Shichahai and outside Xuanwumen.
As an official in the education ministry, he worked in places like the Imperial College and the Forbidden City.

From this seemingly humdrum life, the great fighter Lu Xun was born.
That suffocating loneliness — “like a venomous snake, coiling around my soul” — eventually exploded into creative fury.
After the now-famous “iron house” dialogue with his brother, Diary of a Madman emerged.
The Lu Xun we know — who cried out with Call to Arms — was forged in the Shaoxing Guild Hall.

In early 1919, he sold the last of his property in Shaoxing, severing ties with his hometown.
His mother and wife moved to Beijing to join him, along with his brother Zhou Zuoren and his wife.
The cramped quarters of the Guild Hall couldn’t accommodate the entire family.

If you examine his search for housing in Beijing, you’ll feel a sharp kinship with the rental struggles of urbanites today.
Over four or five months, he scoured more than a dozen places before settling at №11 Badaowan inside Xizhimen.
He borrowed money, bought the property, renovated it — and lived there for four years, until a bitter falling out with his brother forced him to move again, this time renting a place in Zhuanta Hutong in Xisi.

The breakup devastated him. As the eldest son of a once-prominent but now fallen family, his sense of familial duty ran deep.
Bedridden for a month, Lu Xun struggled to recover.
His mother wanted to live with him. His wife refused to return to Shaoxing.
These petty, mundane disputes loomed larger than any grand mission to rescue the national soul.

Today, if you visit the Lu Xun Museum near Fuchengmen, you’ll surely walk westward to see his residence at №21 Xisan Tiao.
Though it now appears clean and quiet, back then it was miserable — right against the city wall, low-lying, prone to flooding, muddy when it rained, and home to the city’s poorest laborers.
He bought it for a quarter of what Badaowan cost and personally designed the layout.
The result was what we see now: a modest three-room courtyard, with an “old tiger’s tail” extension in the rear where he built a private study to avoid sharing space with his nominal wife.

The great literary giant lived with only: A bed, a desk, a wooden trunk, two chairs, a few writing tools.

On the wall hung a photo of Fujino-sensei.
Outside the window stood the now-iconic two jujube trees.

Here, he shifted from Call to Arms to Wandering.

A time of historical upheaval. A family in disharmony. A marriage in name only.
Lu Xun’s mental structure was built from pain, and from that pain came the force of thought and fire of language.

In 1925, when Xu Guangping first wrote to Lu Xun, she was 27; he was 45.
Within four months, they exchanged 41 letters, quickly evolving from student-teacher to lovers.
From today’s perspective, Lu Xun would be canceled in a heartbeat:
Emotionally absent husband, inappropriate relationship with a student, clear violation of professional boundaries.
Even if it had been a loveless arranged marriage and true love had finally come, the morally correct path would have been to divorce first.
That he continued teaching at Peking University and the Women’s Normal College is enough to make any modern feminist dig up dirt and demand his literary demotion.

Yet in 1926, Lu Xun was already broken.
Sick. In and out of the hospital.
Stripped of his job at the Ministry.
Living with a woman he couldn’t explain to his traditionalist mother.
Outspoken in print, increasingly vilified.
After fourteen years, Beijing had worn him out.

On August 25 and 26, 1926, his diary reads:

“Packing. Night breeze. … [People] came to see us off. 4:25 departure from Beijing. Guangping accompanied.”

In the last decade of his life, Lu Xun lived in Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai.
He returned to Beijing only once — to visit his mother.
Nothing else could have drawn him back.
(Read that again. That’s where my tribute truly begins.)

Because what he fled was hopelessness.
A new road, however uncertain, always holds the possibility of change.

Whenever I revisit his life, I’m struck by how painful his supposedly “glorious” biography really was.
From family ruin and career shifts to political battles and near-poverty, every choice was made at great personal cost.

Beijing, in the end, made Lu Xun the great fighter — but he left it with neither longing nor hatred.

Just look up at the White Pagoda of Miaoying Temple not far from the Lu Xun Museum.
It’s stood there through seven centuries of rain, snow, fire, and war.
Kublai Khan saw it.
Wang Yangming saw it.
Cao Xueqin saw it.
Lu Xun saw it.
And after leaving the Lu Xun Museum, I turned east and saw it, too.

P.S.
I ended up marrying someone who shares Lu Xun’s birthday.
Our second alma mater also celebrates its founding on the same day.
Happy birthday to them both.

P.P.S.
As a child, I read in a magazine that Yu Dafu recalled how Lu Xun wore single-layer trousers in winter — to suppress sexual desire.
I didn’t understand what that meant back then. When I did, I was deeply impressed.
So I tried it myself one winter in Beijing. It worked.
Not only did it kill my libido — it nearly killed me.

P.P.P.S.
In my home study in Luoyang, to the left of my desk hangs Lu Xun’s photo from his final year in Shanghai.
Below it is one of his last quotes:

“The road ahead is long and dark. But don’t be afraid. Only those who do not fear will find their way.”
On long, quiet nights, one glance at that photo gives me strength.

References:
The Complete Works of Lu Xun, Vol. 15: Diaries — People’s Literature Press
Lu Xun as a Civil Servant by Wu Haiyong — Guangxi Normal University Press
The Lu Xun Chronology

“Faith is like a ghost. It will inevitably cross your path at some point. Because on a spiritual level, human beings must eventually confront two profound challenges: death and desire.”

Death is inevitable. Desire is endless. These are the two ultimate questions of existence.

I began contemplating death seriously after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and in the spring of 2009, just before graduation, I plunged into the dazzling bustle of Beijing — directly confronting my own desires. Those two years marked the peak of my personal spiritual crisis.

Even before that, I had started struggling with religious doubt. Reading the Old Testament, I couldn’t make sense of God’s actions in the story of Noah’s Ark — clearly, I was not among the chosen.
Daoism promised me I could ascend to immortality with enough cultivation, but said little about what comes after death.
Confucius avoided both issues entirely, saying “Restrain yourself and return to propriety — this is Ren,” and beyond the Four Seas, he would not speak. In other words, he dodged the question.

Once I started working in Beijing, the five aggregates — form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness — burned even more fiercely within me.
If Bai Juyi, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shi all believed in Buddhism, I thought, maybe it was time for me to spend some time in the temples too. After all, Zhu Yuanzhang began his life as a novice monk, and apart from the alchemy-obsessed Jiajing Emperor, most Ming emperors were devout Buddhists. The Yongzheng Emperor took the Dharma name Yuanming and passed that reverence to Qianlong, who built and rebuilt many temples. And if there’s one thing Beijing doesn’t lack, it’s temples.

The Fayuan Temple, home of the Chinese Buddhist Academy today, traces its history back to the Tang dynasty. Emperor Taizong built it in Youzhou after his Korean campaign to commemorate fallen soldiers. When the Yuan dynasty built Dadu, the area was preserved, and later reconstructed repeatedly by the Ming and Qing courts.

Fayuan Temple is close to Caishikou, historically a place of execution — no wonder it’s linked with death. Generals like Yuan Chonghuan and reformers like Tan Sitong lay in repose here before burial.
Li Ao’s Fayuan Temple in Beijing was written with a rare restraint, not quite like the rest of his bold prose.
Outside the dining hall hangs a couplet I’ve memorized:

“Rice gone, porridge comes — don’t let time obscure your face.
When the bell chimes and the board strikes, think often of life and death.”

Guangji Temple in Xisi, headquarters of the Buddhist Association of China, sits right at the edge of a main road. In most other parts of the country, temples require ascending a stairway; not here. Years of roadwork and urban expansion have elevated the street level so much that now you must descend to enter. The same is true for Miaoying Temple, the famed White Pagoda Temple. I can’t imagine what happens when it rains hard.

Guanghua Temple, near Houhai, is the seat of the Beijing Buddhist Association but only opens to the public on the 1st and 15th of each lunar month. There used to be a fantastic Buddhist bookstore by the entrance — now closed, it seems.

Changchun Temple, near Xuanwu Hospital, has been converted into the Xuan Nan Cultural Museum. Since the old Xuanwu District was merged into Xicheng, the local government has made great efforts to preserve and promote “Xuanwu culture.” Sadly, when a temple turns into a museum, the incense burners disappear, and so do the crowds. But that just made it a peaceful retreat for me.
I’d sit beneath a 500-year-old tree in the rear courtyard or at the “Book-Drying Pavilion,” watching the play of sunlight and leaves, listening to birdsong — a rare moment of serenity.

Wanshou Temple, located along the West Third Ring Road, was built by Qianlong to honor his mother. After five years of restoration, it reopened in 2022 as the Beijing Art Museum. The “Mini-Forbidden City of the West” nickname may be exaggerated, but the bat-cloud motifs on the gate and the two Baroque-style “Western Gates” are certainly worth a look.

Tianning Temple’s Liao-dynasty relic pagoda is the oldest structure above ground in central Beijing. You can see it from the West Second Ring. Unfortunately, it closes at 4 p.m. Once I arrived too late and could only peer through the gate.

Yonghegong, Baita Temple, and Xihuang Temple are all Tibetan Buddhist temples. Since their inception, their political and heritage value has far exceeded their religious significance.
Young people flock to Yonghegong to pray for romantic luck. There’s even a popular saying:

“Men go to Yonghegong, women go to Hongluo Temple.”
If the Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors knew this in the afterlife, they’d surely be pleased: “Our family still has value!”

East of Baita Temple, a narrow alley is now more Instagrammable than the temple itself.
Back in 2018, you could buy an extra ticket to climb to the base of the White Pagoda. Not anymore.

Xihuang Temple’s stone Vajra Pagoda is its real treasure — other than that, not much to see.
Biyun Temple, nestled within Fragrant Hills Park, was where Sun Yat-sen’s coffin lay in state before being moved to Nanjing. The location is remote and off-season, wonderfully quiet.

Tanzhe Temple is famous but far. I went once with a friend’s family. What stuck with me most was the view from its entrance — facing peaks aligned like nine lotus petals. The ancients truly knew how to choose their sites.

Zhizhu Temple, near Jingshan Park, has been turned into a private club. Though preservation is commendable, it’s not without controversy.

Zhihua Temple, in Dongcheng, is best known for its ancient court music.

And as I mentioned in the previous chapter, I used to live near a place called Dinghuisi, which indeed exists but has been converted into a retirement center. I tried visiting once — they wouldn’t let me in. Nearby lies Cishousi, where only the pagoda remains. The surrounding park feels desolate. (See image below.)

You might think I’ve strayed from the topic. But I haven’t.

All these places I visited — and in doing so, I developed the habit of seeking out temples first, wherever I went in China. And yet, I’ve never come close to answering those two questions at the beginning of this piece.

My attachment (raga), pride (mana), and ego-clinging (asmita) remain. Greed, anger, and ignorance — the three poisons — may have softened with age, but never left.
Chanting “all things are impermanent” does not, in fact, free one from suffering.

Besides, even in these temples, the devotees’ offerings and prostrations are often transactional. But the sutras clearly say:

“If you see me in form or hear me in sound, you are on the wrong path.”

Beyond the “No Tourists Beyond This Point” signs often lies a lavish VIP hall.
And somehow, there’s always a car that gets past the locked gates to drive straight to the main entrance.
Whatever happened to “no distinction among all sentient beings”?

The day after the former head of the Buddhist Association was arrested, I happened to visit Guangji Temple. His books were still sitting on the shelf in the gift shop.
That was when I made up my mind: apart from the sutras transmitted by Xuanzang and Kumārajīva, I would place my faith in no one.

Since then, I’ve entered temples with no psychological burden.
If I want to copy couplets, I copy them.
If I want to read inscriptions, I read them.
If I want to sit quietly, I sit.

After all, we all go through the four cosmic cycles: formation, existence, destruction, and emptiness.
Desires — whether fulfilled or repressed — always come in waves.

In this chaotic, dusty world, if I can live out the rest of my days as an ordinary mortal in relative peace, that’s already more than enough.

What else am I hoping for — instant enlightenment?

As I watched the ride unfold on screen, my eyes welled up.

The first rule of settling in a new place is to quickly build a working daily routine. After the subway incident mentioned in an earlier chapter — the one where I exploded in anger during rush hour — I realized that squeezing onto Line 10 at peak times was far from ideal. The crowds were overwhelming, and even getting to the station required a bit of a walk. By the time I had cleared security and entered the subway, half my energy bar was already drained. I’d arrive at the office too tired to speak.

Riding a Mobike (yes, that once-dominant brand is now a relic) wasn’t much better — too many of them were broken, and it wasn’t worth the hassle for such a short distance.

Then, one morning when I’d woken unusually early, I strolled to the bus stop just outside the community gate. The stop was named almost identically to the complex itself: Dinghuisi East. That’s when I discovered Bus 653.

It was a double-decker. I’d climb to the upper level and pick a seat in one of the four corners — plenty of space and no one to offer my seat to. It meant 40 uninterrupted minutes of peace. And thanks to dedicated bus lanes during rush hour, the bus flew past the gridlock with ease. For someone like me who lacks the “snooze” gene, this schedule worked perfectly.

My Kindle just fit into my coat pocket. My earphones weren’t noise-canceling, but a pair of 3M foam earplugs gave me the silence I needed. Whether it was the white noise or the lack of stimulation, I could read incredibly efficiently on public transport — and I remembered it all.

Even without checking my Douban history, I can still list the books I finished commuting on 653:
Paulson’s Dealing with China; Guo Jianlong’s The Fiscal Code of the Central Empire and The Philosophy Code of the Central Empire; Miyazaki Ichisada’s Emperor Yongzheng; Schopenhauer’s The Wisdom of Life; Kitano Takeshi’s Little Tavern; Fifty Years of the Fairbank Center; and Clash — The Third Intellectual Emancipation in Contemporary China, to name just a few.

Without a doubt, 2018 remains the year I read the most.
Not to mention all the podcasts I listened to, or the WeChat essays I managed to write thanks to that relatively relaxed creative window.

Even when I wasn’t reading, I would gaze out the window — observing buildings and passersby, constructing little dramas of joy and sorrow in my head.

To this day, I can still trace the route of 653 with my eyes closed:
Past Xidiaoyutai, heading east; left at Hangtianqiao to go north along the West Third Ring service road; right at Huayuanqiao onto Chegongzhuang Street; left again at Zhongguancun South Street past the National Library; right again at Haidian Huangzhuang; two more stops, and I’d get off at Zhichunli.

Right beside the stop was a 7-Eleven. Breakfast options included multigrain buns, red bean buns, purple yam buns, pork buns, brown sugar mantou, tea eggs, shumai, and soy milk — more than enough to fill a stomach. If time allowed, I’d enter Beihang through the south gate where the cafeteria had even more variety.

In the evenings, I’d grab dinner at Beihang, take a relaxed walk in the opposite direction, and board 653 back home, reading all the way.

The only downside was occasionally missing my stop. But even that was fine — I’d just take it as a chance to unlock more of the map, explore a bit farther, then head back.

Our experiences are always limited by time and space. If it weren’t for one particular Saturday when I had to work overtime, I might have gone on thinking 653 would always have a seat waiting just for me.

That day, I boarded the bus thinking how wonderfully empty it still was — no different from weekdays. I opened my e-reader, but something felt off. The bus grew louder. I looked around. It was packed.

All around me were grandparent–grandchild pairs. The kids got all the seats. The grandparents stood, trembling slightly. As a relatively young, strong, and somewhat kindhearted man, I couldn’t bear it. I gave up my seat.

The ceiling was low on the upper deck. I tried to go downstairs but couldn’t squeeze through. I ended up awkwardly wedged into a step, wondering where this mob of kids and elders were headed. Purple Bamboo Park? Beijing Zoo?

Then the bus stopped, and the crowd emptied all at once.
The announcement rang out: “Haidian Huangzhuang.”

It hit me. Of course — the cradle of all cram schools in the universe.

Since then, whenever someone talks about Beijing’s abundant educational resources or how lucky kids are not to be forced into competition, I just smile and say nothing.

Before China’s “Double Reduction” policy came into force, I saw the truth with my own eyes. Gao Xiaosong once wrote that some kids are “born and raised on the battlefield.” He wasn’t exaggerating.

Not a single child on that bus wore a smile. They all looked utterly drained. Grandparents carried their bags, clutched water bottles, tried to comfort them — but were met with indifference.

Where were their parents?
It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. They weren’t unwilling to take the kids — they were busy with work, overtime, running businesses. If they had time to accompany their children, they wouldn’t need cram schools in the first place. In Haidian, with elite universities at every corner, it’s easy to hire a tutor.

The policy’s been in place for a few years now.
I wonder — has anything really changed?

Further reading: The Haidian Huangzhuang Transformation — A Place Once Called “The Cradle of Cosmic Cram Schools”

Looking back now, the year 2018 to 2019 feels like the last golden glow before the pre-COVID twilight. On the first day of my new job, I woke up early, carefully washed and groomed, stopping just short of applying makeup or penciling my brows. I polished my shoes twice, adjusted the cuffs of my shirt repeatedly, checked the crease on my trousers, and — just in case — slipped a tie into the pocket of my outer trench coat.

I stepped out of the subway at Xitucheng Station before 8:00 a.m. and walked north at a leisurely pace, mistakenly assuming the office tower was connected to the nearby university campus. I ended up circling around Beihang University. That was when I finally understood how Lin Daiyu must have felt entering the Jia Mansion for the first time — except Lin Daiyu was, after all, at least a relative. I, a nobody from a small city, had just stepped into a major central-level institution, completely out of my depth.

I spent that first day seated quietly in the corner, observing everything closely, calling everyone “Teacher” out of caution, moving gently and speaking softly. Fortunately, the leadership and colleagues were warm and welcoming. Within a week, I had relaxed back into my usual self — jeans and T-shirts, throwing in my usual banter and humor, which made for an easygoing and pleasant daily atmosphere.

The smooth start was largely thanks to one person: Mr. Dou from Nanjing.

We were born in the same year, took the college entrance exam the same year, got married the same year, each had a son around the same age — and he had arrived at the institute six months earlier than I had, making him the de facto veteran.

Mr. Dou had formidable depth of knowledge. Within just a few questions on our first meeting, he had easily uncovered all my background. Our desks were near each other, and during working hours, he would occasionally lob questions across the divider, catching me off guard. I’d nervously reply, then frantically double-check online to make sure I hadn’t said anything wrong.

Our first shared topic was sparked by a public lecture by Professor Mo from Nanjing University. From there, we found shared interests in classical literature and traditional Chinese culture. Finally, one day just before the end of the workday, he casually asked: “JX-jun, any plans after work? Want to take a walk?”

I was flattered and quickly replied, “There’s a place inside the Second Ring I haven’t been to in years. If you’re free, would you join me?”

He readily agreed. So we took Line 10 and transferred to Line 8 to Gulou Dajie Station, then walked south toward the Bell and Drum Towers, strolled through Yandai Xiejie to Houhai, and parted ways at the bus stop by Beihai North Gate. That route, in fact, was the first half of the answer I once posted on Zhihu that got the most upvotes.

We hit it off and quickly became close friends.

And that was just the beginning. From that point until his term ended, unless he was out of town visiting family, we spent nearly every weekend together. We climbed Fragrant Hills and Jingshan Park, strolled through Ditan and Beihai, explored the National Museum, Capital Museum, and Lu Xun Museum, visited Liulichang, Panjiayuan, and Dongyue Temple. We walked the Marco Polo Bridge, Changchun Temple, Fayuan Temple, toured the Grand View Garden, Prince Gong’s Mansion, the Imperial College — and of course, weekday bookstore runs and lunch breaks were just par for the course.

At the office, he was also the best at keeping the mood light. He compiled amusing workplace anecdotes into a document reminiscent of A New Account of the Tales of the World — a collective treasure of memories.

I often felt ashamed of my own shallowness of learning, always afraid of revealing my lack of substance in front of a true intellectual. Thankfully, Mr. Dou was always “backward-compatible” — patient and gracious — attentive even to my occasional moments of smugness. To this day, thinking of it still warms my heart.

Years have passed, and though I’ve met many impressive people since, I have yet to encounter someone with such deep reading, agile intellect, casual mastery of military history, or ease in quoting classical poetry and idioms.

The phrase “literati belittle each other” only applies when you’re peers. For someone truly far beyond reach, all you can feel is admiration.

Autumn came soon after, with falling leaves and the time for farewells. Mr. Dou’s term ended before mine, and he returned to Nanjing to be reunited with his wife and child. At the farewell dinner, we each signed a memory card. I wrote a poem, which the department head later asked me to read aloud.

The following May, we met again in Jinan, snapped a selfie and posted it in the group chat — earning teasing from our coworkers: “Look at these bromantic lovebirds, eyes all red.”

Sadly, after that trip — sharing a room, an evening stroll around Daming Lake, and a candid photo I took of him napping under a tree — the next three years were overtaken by the pandemic. Add to that his PhD studies, work, and family responsibilities, and the “reunion” I had wished for in that farewell poem has yet to come true.

Still, we’re fortunate to live in an age of easy communication. We exchange book recommendations and check in on each other regularly.

Some say, “After thirty, it’s hard to make new friends.” It’s true — life paths solidify, social circles shrink, and it gets harder to find kindred spirits. That year in Beijing was a brief departure from routine, and meeting someone like Mr. Dou was a rare and fortunate event.

In my annual report, I wrote:
“As for the teachers who joined the program with me — needless to say, we worked and studied together, stayed up late preparing, arranged meeting rooms, ate and shopped together, and explored every corner of the city on weekends… To become real friends through work was the unexpected reward of the exchange program — a cherry on top after the tasks were complete. Even now, after returning to our home institutions, we still stay in touch, exchanging reflections, sharing books and ideas. These colleagues and friends have become, like everything else I gained from the program, a lifelong treasure.”

Truth be told, I was talking about Mr. Dou.

On this recent trip back to Beijing, my greatest regret was not being able to work with him again. So I offer this piece as a record of our friendship.

When I don’t feel like squeezing into the subway after work, I take the bus instead — one where I can always find a seat. From the gate of Beihang University, I board Bus 331. In less than twenty minutes, I arrive beneath the archway of Xiaoxitian, or I stay on for one more stop until the end of the line.

Between these two stops lies a patch of land that, before 1971, used to be a vast body of water thick with reeds, once connected to the nearby Jishuitan. After being dredged in 1958, it was renamed “Taiping Lake.” Today, it houses a metro train maintenance depot — rows of brightly lit workshops, with “Taiping Lake Base” boldly displayed at the gate.

It was here, on this very day in 1966, that Mr. Lao She left his home in Dongcheng District’s Fengfu Hutong and walked to the lake, where he drowned himself.

This past Sunday afternoon, I pushed through the throngs of student tour groups at the northern end of Wangfujing Street and walked a few hundred meters west to find the former residence of Lao She, now a memorial museum tucked within a modest courtyard.

In the center of the yard stood two flourishing persimmon trees, their green fruits already hanging heavy on the branches. In front of a sign that read “Watch for falling persimmons,” the statue of Lao She stared ahead expressionlessly, his gaze seemingly unfocused, paying no mind to the visitors walking through.

The exhibit experience was rather underwhelming. Perhaps because parents, eager to help their children finish summer homework before school resumed, were staging performative scenes of learning — guiding their kids to pose thoughtfully in front of the display cases or recite excerpts aloud.

The layout in the side rooms was sparse, and the final panel detailing his life ended abruptly — as I’d expected, I still didn’t see what I had come for.

On the morning of August 25, 1966, Lao She’s body was found in Taiping Lake, along with several scattered pages of handwritten manuscript floating on the surface. They were reportedly poems by the Chairman, perhaps also a suicide note.

The final humiliation of Lao She’s life took place just a few streets away on Chengxian Street, near Yonghe Temple. In front of the Confucius Temple, a pile of “Four Olds” opera costumes burned. Scholars and cultural figures bowed their heads in shame. That image appeared in the film Farewell My Concubine, but in real life, it was a reenactment of what actually happened on August 23, 1966.

In later oral histories, Lao She’s death has often been described as an accident of fate.

On August 23, Red Guards stormed the Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles, originally intending to “struggle” the writer Xiao Jun. A driver pointed to Lao She and said, “That’s him.” And so he was dragged into it too.

During the public shaming, a wooden placard was hung around his neck. When it was removed, he accidentally bumped into one of the Red Guards, prompting cries of “Lao She hit someone!” A copper belt buckle smashed his head, and a theatrical sleeve was used to haphazardly stop the bleeding.

Supposedly, in an effort to “protect” him from being beaten to death by the crowd, the Red Guard leader declared, “This is a current counterrevolutionary! Take him to the police station!” He was detained at the Liubukou precinct on West Chang’an Avenue until the early hours of the next day, when his wife came to retrieve him.

He killed himself just because of one beating? I don’t believe it.

For several days, I crossed under the North Second Ring Road bridge and followed the outer wall of the Guo Shoujing Memorial to Xihai — another reed-fringed body of water — trying to reconstruct what must have been going through his mind.

He was the son of a fallen Manchu bannerman, orphaned at age three, always deeply sympathetic toward the poor. Every act of resistance he made stemmed from the hope for a new society. In 1949, he returned from the U.S. to join the new regime, wrote countless eulogies with his pen, and was honored as a “People’s Artist.” He held a string of prestigious positions: Vice Chairman of the National Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Writers’ Association, Standing Committee Member of the CPPCC, Chairman of the Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

And yet that day, he wasn’t even the main target of criticism.

One theory is that the prior political campaigns had already extinguished whatever hope he once held. No matter how earnestly he participated in “study sessions,” he was marginalized. His passion was met with rejection. The political “label” slapped on him was monstrous, leaving him nowhere to retreat, his outlook utterly bleak.

Another theory suggests that his wife no longer offered any emotional refuge. She had reportedly posted a big-character poster denouncing his moral behavior in earlier years.

Reading her later oral accounts, I found myself suspicious too: upon seeing her husband’s recovered corpse, she displayed little sadness, almost as if it had been expected. She handed the body off to someone else and walked away. That’s not how a wife of over thirty years typically reacts.

With no political future, his name in ruins, and little warmth left at home — perhaps he sat by the lake all day, reading the Chairman’s poetry, searching desperately for a path forward?

Before entering the water, he might have thought of Jinan, the city he called his second home for seven years. He might have thought of the writer Zhao Qingge. He might have thought of the works he had yet to complete. But none of that was enough to keep him going.

The summer heat had begun to wane; the most beautiful season in Beijing was about to arrive. But he never got to see the autumn of Beiping he had so lovingly described.

Over drinks or cups of tea, I’ve discussed this with my writer friend.

“If you were a writer back then,” I asked, “with your love of ghosts and gods and your reputation on the internet, you’d be an obvious target. How would you have saved yourself?”

He paused for a moment, then replied:
“There would be no way out. I’d just have to disappear — flee back home, hide my name, live off the land.”

Everyone laughed — 
Then silence fell for a few seconds.

The place where I’ve bought the most books in Beijing is Panjiayuan. You could also say that it’s where I cultivated the habit of buying used books.

Sure, bookstores have good environments — well-organized shelves, beautifully designed covers, and a shy soul hiding behind the layer of shrink wrap. You must tiptoe in with reverence and buy the book at full price as printed on the back cover.

But Panjiayuan? It’s bustling and loud. The used books are piled at random. Haggling with the stall owner is an exercise in negotiation art. There’s also the thrill of hunting for hidden treasures. Selection and collection are instincts humans evolved in the jungles millions of years ago, and my genes keep me lingering there, finding joy in discovery.

When I lived in Beijing in earlier years, the used book section at Panjiayuan was much larger than it is now. Back then, the East Gate entrance led straight to the book stalls — outdoors, packed, and covering everything from the Ming and Qing dynasties to modern publications.

Each stall was a metal cabinet; at day’s end, they just turned around and packed it up. On weekends or early mornings, vendors would open them up again, waiting for buyers to come. Walk to the end and turn right — there were still several more rows of stalls under the shed.

Now, only a narrow corridor on the south side remains. Even the entrance has been partially taken over by embroidered gift box sellers (presumably for customers to carry away their “treasures”).

The hierarchy of goods is clearly reflected in the canopies overhead.

The used book area is now covered in plastic sheeting.

The antique section has shade netting.

The newer, trendier zones — selling walnut shells, beeswax beads, and Buddhist prayer bracelets — boast reinforced tin roofs that have pushed the antique vendors into a corner.

As for the storefront dealers? Their solemn setups are intimidating. If you’re not a true connoisseur, you’re better off not going in.

The world of antiques is deep and murky. I grew up hearing stories from my hometown — like that one village where counterfeit Tang Sancai ceramics were passed off as real in Panjiayuan and fooled a whole bunch of experts.

So I never ask, never buy, and rarely linger in the antique section.
The few ancient coins I’ve bought were just to appease my son’s curiosity.

Though I’m now middle-aged, I’ve never been interested in bead bracelets. They strike me as an extension of childhood oral fixation — something to fidget with when your mind can’t be still.

I come here for one thing: books.

In the past, your chances of finding a real treasure among the used books were far higher.

There were no bold red banners warning “No sale of obscene, classified, political, pirated or unregistered publications.”

No staff with ID badges patrolling the aisles, barking at stall owners just as I was about to reach for a book: “Put that one away! If I see it again, I’m confiscating it!”

Nor did stalls get shut down for violating vague regulations (see photo below for evidence).

Everything in its wild, early stage of development is somehow more alluring.

A surprising number of vendors were fellow townspeople.
I’d often be squatting down to browse when a deep voice behind me shouted, “Coming through!”

Then I’d hear a Central Plains accent from the stall owner in front of me. Surrounded by my dialect, I’d feel like I’d returned home.

After many chats, I concluded that most stall operators came from the southwestern part of Henan Province, while the suppliers — middlemen — were mostly from eastern or southern Henan.
(A quick Baidu search for “Beijing waste collection workers by origin” confirms it — over 90% come from Gushi County. That fits my observation perfectly.)

The first time I visited, I was stunned by the sheer variety of original foreign-language books.

Many had handwritten notes in English, French, or other scripts on the flyleaf.

It made sense — Beijing hosts embassies from around the world. Family members of diplomats needed something to read to pass the time. Add to that the international students drawn to Beijing’s elite universities — especially the ones known for language studies — and you get a perfect supply pipeline. Books that once crossed oceans now found themselves too cheap or too heavy to bring home, naturally ending up here.

A glance at my bookshelf shows the bounty I’ve gathered:
Biographies of both Clintons and Donald Trump.
Original editions of The Devil Wears Prada, Slumdog Millionaire, The Last of the Mohicans, and Dear Me.
Japanese paperbacks like 中国人と日本人 (Chinese and Japanese).

In Chinese, I’ve bought first edition Zhang Ailing novels from the early Reform era, 1980s classics on literary appreciation, and even Zhi Hu Zhe Ye Luo Dayou — a book I once borrowed from the university library in my freshman year. I also bought a paper copy of Defying the Gods after finishing the e-book version on a flight.

My visits to Panjiayuan’s book stalls are ultimately limited.
So any book that managed to be chosen by me from this ocean of forgotten volumes is the product of a rare fate — a happy coincidence.

If its previous owner had decided to keep it, I wouldn’t have seen it.
If someone else had come before me, I would’ve missed it.
If it arrived right after I left, I would’ve missed it.
If the seller didn’t put it out that day, I wouldn’t have seen it.
If too many people were crowding the stall, I might’ve skipped it.
If the price was too high and bargaining failed, I wouldn’t have bought it.
If I hesitated and came back too late, someone else might’ve already taken it.
If I didn’t have enough money on me, I couldn’t buy it.

So many things have to align for one used book to part ways with its original owner, grow old and dusty, sit there waiting.
Then one day, I — adrift in Beijing — happen to step out of Exit C of Line 10 and wander in.
Suddenly I stop in the crowd, spot that book in a heap, pick it up, brush off the dust, flip through a few pages.
The seller names a price. I counter, just a little. We both agree.
And then the book comes home with me — leaving Beijing, resting quietly in a corner of my shelf, always ready to be opened again.
And it will stay with me, for a very long, foreseeable future.

So, I’m not really talking just about books.

All things in life are more or less like this — Even when everything else is ready, you still need the right moment of serendipity.

Written on August 6th,2024.

After leaving Beijing West Railway Station due to a change in my job, I stayed in Dawang Road for about a month — from June to July of 2009.

Every morning as I waited for the elevator, the towering silhouettes of China World Trade Center Tower 3 and the CCTV “Big Pants” building meant nothing to me. What mattered most was whether I could get a seat on Line 1 during the morning rush hour from East Fourth Ring to West Fifth Ring.

Some days, when the subway felt unbearable after work, I’d take Bus №1 instead. But by the time we reached Tiananmen Square, it often coincided with the evening flag-lowering ceremony, and traffic would grind to a halt. I’d have no choice but to get off, sit by the red wall, and listen to the mournful caws of crows while waiting for the honor guards to pass and traffic to resume.
I’d then walk to Wangfujing to transfer again, grabbing a quick bite at a noodle shop run by someone from my hometown. By then, it would be close to midnight.

This kind of commute was simply unbearable.

(A reminder for myself and anyone reading this: at that time, the following things had either not been invented or weren’t yet common: smartphones, shared bikes, ride-hailing apps, rental apps, food delivery, video calls, high-speed “G” trains, and Beijing Subway lines 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, etc., etc.)

To shorten my commute, I started browsing rental listings during work hours on sites like Ganji.com. I also tried my luck in the Douban Beijing group. Sadly, every post — regardless of who posted it — ended with the note: “Females only.” And on Ganji, all listings were controlled by agencies.

Dealing with “black market” real estate agents quickly became a required course in living in Beijing.

I ended up at Dazhongsi, paid a deposit I knew I’d likely never get back, signed a contract, and prepaid three months’ rent. The new place was somewhere between West Fourth Ring and West Fifth Ring. The name of the area? Complicated. The nearest subway stop was Babao Mountain on Line 1 (sometimes when the last train arrived at midnight, I’d be the only one getting off; everyone on the train would stare at me). The road nearby was called Lugu Street. The complex itself was something like “Zhongx Garden.” To this day, I still don’t know how to explain the location to others. So let’s just go with the name on the nearest bus stop sign downstairs — Wuzhuang.

I’ve always had a strange connection with trains.
Behind my college dorm were railway tracks; I couldn’t fall asleep until the 11:30 train blew its whistle.
My first job in Beijing was right next to the West Station — our dorm window faced the tracks, and the bed would vibrate when trains passed.
Years later, I bought an apartment in my hometown, again beside the Longhai railway line — my study window looked out onto the tracks and locomotives preparing for departure.

The studio I rented on the 11th floor in Wuzhuang had a bay window that looked out over the Jingguang railway, running parallel to Lianshi East Road.
When I was bored, I would pull out a train schedule and try to match each passing train to its number and destination, wondering if anyone onboard felt the way I did.

To this day, whenever I pass in or out of Beijing by rail, I can still glimpse that old window in the blur of motion.

That window mattered — it marked the true beginning of my independent, solitary life.

To use the water vending machine downstairs, I had to go to the nearby convenience store to top up a card. The water bottle deposit was 15 yuan. If you topped up 100 yuan at once, they gave you a free bottle.
Across the street was a Yonghui supermarket that closed at 9 PM. The first floor had a Daoxiangcun counter. The second floor sold toiletries and household items.

It took me 20 minutes to walk to work. By bus, with traffic, it also took 20 minutes.
On the way, I crossed a pedestrian bridge, went through an underpass, and passed a fairly large market that doubled as a flower-and-pet market.
There, I once bought a huge yellow-fleshed sweet potato for just over 2 yuan.
I also bought a blooming jasmine plant that died within two weeks, and a soulful Chinese pond turtle that used to sway its head when I played guitar.
It lasted for half a year. On the day the central heating was shut off, the temperature dropped sharply. I had gone to visit relatives in Tongzhou, and when I came back, the turtle had frozen to death.

To retrace that year more truthfully, I dug through my old journals and surviving blog posts — and found, almost inevitably, that memory is wildly unreliable.

Those records were filled with the word “bitterness,” but thinking back: I never went truly hungry, never froze through a single night.
Bus rides cost 0.4 yuan, subways 2 yuan.
Weekends meant either feasting with a gang of friends or aimlessly wandering inside the Second Ring Road (nowadays we call it a “city walk”).
On lazy days, I’d go through the Douban TOP 250 movies one by one, or record songs on my guitar and send them to a girl far away.
I even watched the first half of the South Africa World Cup while sipping chilled beer.

Was that really so bitter?

Looking back now, the so-called “bitterness” was likely nothing more than the pain of unfulfilled desire.
A young man in his early twenties, dreaming of overnight success, hoping to stand out, hating the world yet powerless to change it.

Had I possessed a shred more foresight, I wouldn’t have ignored the for-sale poster in the elevator that stayed up for over half a year.
It read:
“Sincerely selling: Three-bedroom, two-living room apartment in this complex. 115 square meters. Asking price: 2.6 million yuan.”
No way I didn’t notice. I probably clicked my tongue and muttered, “That’s fucking expensive.”

Postscript
At the end of June 2010, I quit my job and suddenly had lots of free time.
I’d often pop into Nanluoguxiang or the movie theater on weekdays, enjoying a rare pocket of peace.
One day, out of boredom, I went to the headquarters of that shady rental agency (I still remember the name of the building) to see if I could recover my deposit.
The same young agent who had shown me the apartment seemed to think I was at least polite and advised me not to fight it too hard — just go home and wait.
A month later, as I sat beneath an umbrella at Starbucks on Chunxi Road in Chengdu, trapped by heavy rain and watching beautiful women pass by, I got a text:
The deposit was refunded — half of it.

Written on July 26, 2024. Originally in Chinese.

In Beijing, you can find nearly every kind of bookstore the world has to offer.

On Chengfu Road sits a little place called Douban Bookstore — barely 60 square meters in size, with bookshelves so tightly packed that you can only squeeze sideways between them. On the wall hangs a handwritten notice: “Books with plastic wrapping can be opened. If you don’t buy them, that’s fine too.” A testament to the owner’s open-mindedness and generosity of spirit.
This shop, which proudly claims to sell only “poorly-selling books,” is nestled between two of China’s top universities and frequented by both students and professors.

Not far away used to be another favorite among academics: the All Sages Bookstore (Wan Sheng Shu Yuan). When I first visited in early June 2018, I was struck not only by the bold slogan “Liberation Through Reading” but also by the sheer variety of titles on the shelves.
Near the entrance, there was a thick book like a brick, a giant red “M” on the cover, and the title: The Whisperers: Stalin Something Something. I flipped through it, debating whether to buy it. It was 108 yuan — not discounted — which felt a bit steep, so I left it.
Two years later, once I had become familiar with the “Soviet gulag calendar,” I decided to finally order it — only to discover it had gone out of print. The secondhand price on Kongfuzi.com had surged nearly 1,000 yuan.

In 2022, All Sages moved to the Wudaokou Shopping Center — closer to where I worked — expanded to two floors, and became even more of a labyrinth. It might take days just to scan the titles on the spines.
It’s also the quietest corner of the mall. I’d stop by after work to “rinse off the workday,” so to speak. A small pleasure.

Just outside the side entrance of the mall, a towering glass wall reveals the massive new Page One bookstore, lit up at night, open 24/7 — a shelter for countless lonely souls.
But in terms of atmosphere, it can’t beat the Page One near Qianmen. On my last evening in Beijing, I read through Imperial Portraits from the Forbidden City: Court Figures Through Western Lenses there while tourists around me posed in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows with Zhengyangmen Gate as their backdrop. I was lost in the faces of Cixi, Longyu, and the Xuantong Emperor.

After I left Beijing, the old Anglican Church on Tonglingge Road was transformed into a bookstore. On my first weekend back in the city, I made a pilgrimage. The Gothic architecture mixed with traditional Chinese elements was indeed stunning, but as a bookstore, the place fell short — it felt more like a café, or perhaps a pub with books attached.
Not that a bookstore can’t have a café (even Xinhua Bookstore has added drink counters), since everyone knows the physical book business nowadays runs on love alone.
I do admire the branding and atmosphere of Sisyphe’s in-store café, Vector Coffee.
I just wish it wasn’t always packed with influencers taking endless selfies for Xiaohongshu.

The second location of ZuoShu (做書) at Xidan’s Gengxin Mall has no café — no doors, even. They focus on “slightly damaged” books and sell them at 40–50% off. It’s a clever niche, but unfortunately, the selection leans heavily toward fiction and how-to guides, with very little in humanities and social sciences.

Nearby stands the famed Beijing Book Building, often called “China’s Number One Bookstore.”
Weekends see it swarming with visitors: toddlers and elderly alike, sitting, lying down, or wandering aimlessly — a perfect spot to cool off in summer or stay warm in winter.
Sorry, I prefer the National Library. At least there’s a proper seat.

Both the Di’anmen and Liulichang branches of China Bookstore have special antique sections. Thread-bound books stack upon one another, with price tags fluttering in the air-conditioning breeze — each one shockingly high.
Personally, I believe such fragile cultural relics belong in libraries, not homes where people wouldn’t dare open them.

Another classic is Hanfenlou on Wangfujing North Street. I once stumbled in years ago — two whole floors and I was the only customer.
The middle-aged store clerk stared at me so coldly that I made a quick, embarrassed exit.

Zhengyang Bookstore at the entrance of Banzha Hutong in Xisi is themed around Beijing culture. It surrounds the Wansong Elder Pagoda and always draws me in for a loop when I pass by. Recently, they’ve focused more on selling creative cultural merchandise and illustrated maps. In the courtyard, a fat calico cat draws flocks of girls for photo ops.

Even more specific is the Central Literature Bookstore, located across from Beijing №4 High School near Maojiawan. Its storefront screams symbolism more than sales.
Let’s be honest — this store isn’t open to make money. It’s a display of institutional strength.
But if you want to study Party history or the founding of the PRC, you won’t find a more complete resource.

I once joined classmates for the Ditan Book Market on a windy autumn day.
Back then, our pockets were shallow, so we could only buy a few. I remember one: Chronicles of Eastern Zhou Kingdoms. It kept me company by the bed for a year. Now, its color faded, it gathers dust on my hometown bookshelf.

The Foreign Languages Bookstore on Wangfujing holds fond memories of friendship. During a conference at Beijing Normal University, I stumbled upon a clearance sale by Shengshiqing.
Sanlitun’s Sanlian Taofen Bookstore glows late into the night.
There are countless other nameless bookstores I’ve wandered into along the way.
Each one, in its own way, offered comfort to a stranger in a strange city.
They helped pull me — if only for a while — out of the haze of uncertainty about the future.
And though I’ve leveled critiques above, they are not meant unkindly. I remain full of gratitude.

As for the place where I’ve bought the most books — that deserves a story of its own.