Every time before leaving my city for the mountain studio, I perform a small ritual of my own: a quick cup of coffee and a meal at McDonald's. It is a necessary transition, for my destination is a tiny county tucked away in the mountains. Stripping away the government's cosmetic facade, it is a deeply impoverished place with a per capita annual income of less than $1,000. The souls anchored there are mostly the elderly and the young—known in China by that hauntingly specific phrase, “the left-behind.” It includes the women too, bound to the soil, tending to the old, the small, and the fields. The young and able-bodied have long fled to wealthy provinces like Guangdong or my own hometown for work. They are labeled with the derogatory term, "migrant workers" (Nongmin-gong). It is a concept so frequently weaponized by artists that one can no longer tell if it is born of inadvertent malice or hypocritical romanticization.
Yet, this very place cradles a 5A-level scenic area, the nation’s highest tourist rating. Defined by its sweeping Karst landscapes and cascading waterfalls, it bleeds out 90% of the local government's revenue. At its peak, daily crowds swell to 70,000—a distinctly Chinese phenomenon, where people flock to the dense crush of humanity at the absolute hottest time of the year. Back in 2016, a collective impulse for public welfare brought me and a group of artisan friends to these mountains. We adopted a crumbling, traditional ethnic-minority house of brick and wood, envisioning it as a boutique guesthouse and a sanctuary for our artisans' alliance. I was the primary benefactor. But the grueling conditions eventually broke everyone’s resolve. One by one, they retreated, until I was left utterly alone.
Three years of quiet renovation followed. Beyond restoring the main house and carving out guest rooms, I erected a reading room and a secluded wooden cabin within the courtyard. Before the pandemic froze the world, it had blossomed into a locally renowned, bohemian retreat, welcoming travelers from across the globe and hosting Western clients who journeyed far to see me. I usually spend my summers there, running the guesthouse while crafting my wooden spectacles. In my spare hours, the wilderness calls; the Karst geography keeps its secrets in countless limestone caves waiting to be explored.
Yet, it is the winter that holds my heart. My primary labor then is splitting and curing timber for the glasses—the winter dryness lends the wood an exquisite stability. Those moments, curled up beside the roaring fireplace to ward off the chill, are my absolute favorites. Compared to the lush, suffocating abundance of spring and summer, I find myself deeply attuned to the bleakness, the restraint, and the quiet forbearance of autumn and winter. Perhaps this is the ghost of the ancient Chinese scholar-literati, stirring deep in my bones.
The city I leave behind is the fifth-largest metropolis in China, eclipsed only by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Economically, its GDP soared past the one-trillion-RMB mark long ago, dressing the city in a sleek, hyper-luxurious armor. But it is a hollow skin. All of this grandeur is bought with the sweat and blood of millions of migrant laborers who poured into this city from other provinces. As a local, I am technically a beneficiary of this system. Yet even we, the so-called privileged, are constantly being siphoned off; above us sits the true, untouchable ruling class, broadly divided into three tribes: civil servants, teachers, and doctors. There is a saying that a civil servant or a teacher is a highly profitable small enterprise unto themselves; they need never lose a night's sleep over survival (no matter how much they whine about their own trivial grievances).
Though I recoil from these harsh truths, my soul remains fiercely tethered to this city. If Europe claims Florence, then China claims this place. Throughout Chinese history, perhaps half of our most brilliant painters, novelists, poets, and dramatists have left their fingerprints here. Many governed as its mayors; others studied and taught at the China Academy of Art. Even the "Xiling Seal Engravers' Society," the oldest guild for Chinese calligraphy and seal carving, trace its roots to this soil. Interestingly enough, out of the four most famous romantic tragedies in ancient Chinese lore—our own equivalents to Romeo and Juliet—two unfolded right within these city walls.
So, the city endures: a tapestry of beauty, history, and convenience, interwoven with cruelty and exhaustion. But what of the countryside? Especially one starved by poverty? There is a profound irony here: the county of my studio is desperately poor, yet over the years, it has undergone massive face-lifts funded by forced extractions from wealthier sister cities. On the surface, it looks as polished as any metropolis. But the moment you cross the threshold into a local's home, the true grim face of poverty stares back at you. Yet, if I strip all human politics away, there remains an incomparably breathtaking wilderness—azure skies, air heavy with oxygen, a riot of insects and wild flora. Even if the human warmth here is rationed and sparse, I still count the days until I can vanish once more into my mountain exile.