Before classes, but not yet inside

The start of term arrived in its usual drifting way, and the campus I had been thinking about for so long was suddenly right there, yet still closed to me. Because of the entry policy, I had to remain off campus for seven days and wait until my recent Shenzhen travel record no longer mattered. Looked at one way, even after getting in, going back out would not be easy either. It had the feel of a besieged city, so I tried to accept it calmly.

Still, staying alone in an apartment while watching group chats fill up with check-in photos and the noise of arrival made me strangely uneasy. It felt a little like being left behind. I paced around, stared at the wall, got tired of gaming away the days, and grew sick of the late-night, late-morning routine that had become too easy. I wanted to step into unfamiliar streets, to see what this new place looked like, and to begin meeting the life attached to a new school.

The evening wind is always much the same, yet it still reaches every corner that turns out to be different. If you keep walking, stopping, then walking again, you always find something that helps.

So I went out.

Learning how to look at Shunde

I often wonder what it takes for writing to feel both graceful and meaningful. Some say it comes from accumulation, some say it depends on a lucky flash, and some say it is simply fate. Fine then—it is hard not to admit that my own foundations are thin and my methods clumsy. Still, writing is writing. Sometimes you put down a few lines and something unexpectedly alive appears.

Before coming here, Shunde was just a name I had heard on television. I had long assumed it was a prefecture-level city, only to find out later that it had once been a county-level city and was eventually folded into Foshan as a district. It still feels far from Foshan’s urban center, and that distance has a curious quality to it—close enough to belong together, far enough to remain distinct. You can sense that separation in everyday life, even in the license plates all over the streets: Guangdong E and Guangdong X are everywhere.

When I first arrived, everything was unfamiliar. For the first few days, with epidemic-control requirements still hanging over me, I did not dare wander far. At most I would circle downstairs and hurry back upstairs again. Only after three days of quarantine did I start walking properly—east side, west side, city center, eating and seeing what I could, doing all the obvious things in one sweep.

After several days, I began to feel that Shunde was beautiful in a proud kind of way. Not a showy beauty, not something eager to announce itself, but a reserved one, almost shy, as if it preferred to stay hidden like a well-bred daughter from an old household.

I have been to many cities in Guangdong, but usually only for a day or two. Aside from Shenzhen, this was the first time I had stayed long enough to move beyond first impressions and begin tasting a place slowly.

Mornings without skyscrapers

I would wake up early, pull back the curtains, and see no forest of high-rises—just a yellowish mass of cloud pressing down over rows of low, colorful buildings. Down below were elderly women heading out for morning tea, elderly men doing tai chi, and a yellow dog with the kind of face that looks as though it has lived through several lifetimes.

I would go downstairs for a plate of cheung fun. At the next table sat a couple speaking softly to each other. Near the entrance was an old woman muttering away to herself. In front of me sat the rice noodle rolls, slick and soft and slightly sticky. One chopstick down, and they too seemed affectionate in their own way.

Walking the streets, I kept wanting to find stories. Old ones, if possible, but immediate ones would do too. People moved past in a rush, never stopping, and I would think: perhaps in one of these buildings I am passing, someone once said a final goodbye; perhaps the stranger at the edge of my vision is just about to rise effortlessly into a brighter future. None of this was grounded in evidence, of course. It was imagination for its own sake. But it satisfied that instinct to search for stories, and before long the streets of Shunde began to feel storied to me.

Maybe that kind of inward, idealist way of seeing a place is not how most writing likes to operate. It does not matter much. If it makes the walk richer, that is enough.

Days that gradually softened

As I walked farther and farther, life also became easier. I helped a roommate trapped inside the campus “island” check out washing machines at RT-Mart. I spent six hours over morning tea with a friend of my mother’s. At night I listened to my father drinking and boasting in that familiar, harmless way. Little by little, the days settled into comfort.

There was no particular impatience in them, and no deep pressure either. Once I realized that this kind of life—well fed, well supplied, with little difficulty in the daily details—would not last forever, I stopped resisting it and let myself drift along.

What the streets reveal

One thing that stood out in Shunde was just how many health and wellness businesses there were. Large formal hospitals were one thing, but even small beauty and wellness shops on random street corners seemed to appear one after another.

Another thing I noticed was that restaurants from other regions actually seemed more numerous than local ones. Hunan cuisine, in particular, felt almost as common as Shunde restaurants themselves. Maybe that is partly because local people do not need to advertise their own food identity to one another. In any case, apart from a handful of widely praised places, some of the Shunde restaurants here did not even strike me as better than the Shunde eateries near my home in Shenzhen.

Of course, the local snacks and desserts are still one of the city’s unmistakable signatures. I had heard plenty about double-skin milk, ginger milk curd, fish skin dumplings, fried fish cakes, and similar specialties. Near Qinghui Garden, in the old street, I ate several times at Renxin Lao Pu. The flavors really did feel fresh; put simply, it was delicious.

After eating well, it was enough just to keep wandering—looking at the sky, at the clouds, at pedestrians moving along without hurry. It felt right. Life ought to have room for that.

Only a beginning

Seven days is neither long nor short, but it is nowhere near enough to understand all of Shunde. Still, I will be here for at least two years, so there will be more time later to keep walking and keep writing.