Only the Distant Waters and Endless Mountains Remain

On a warm spring night, I sat awake for a long time, unsure how to begin describing these tangled days. Too many scenes flickered in my mind, shifting like an old reel of film played too fast. Returning hometown always brings gatherings with childhood friends. Last night I drank more than I should have; even at dawn, the alcohol still lingered. In truth, it was not that much—compared with my old friends urging toast after toast, I barely drank.

But it has been years since I last felt that familiar haze. A little discomfort, yes, but the flavours of hometown dishes mixed with the dialect of my childhood loosened my tongue. A few cups in, my face warmed, the memories swelled, and joy—half bright, half wounded—came rushing back.

I returned to my hometown this time to sweep my father’s grave for Qingming. Three years ago, I watched as a red cloth was placed over his head, saw his body pushed into the furnace, saw the column of black smoke rise from the crematorium chimney. Then I fled. I left so quickly it was as if I feared the gravity of home itself. Perhaps drifting elsewhere would give me some illusion of hope. I still don’t understand why.

For three years, I never visited his grave during Qingming. By traditional standards, I am no filial son. I am careless with rituals and the obligations of kinship. I mourn in my own way—sometimes he appears in my dreams, bent and fading. I try to call out, but he slips away. I always wake with an ache.

This morning, I set out for the cemetery. As is customary, I gathered incense, candles, firecrackers, paper offerings, and flowers. In the old days, Chinese funerary rites needed only incense and paper money. Flowers came later—Western influence creeping into Chinese grief.

Stalls lined the road near the cemetery, bursting with colour: green lanterns, gold paper houses, red firecrackers, white chrysanthemums. Vendors called out eagerly; mourners bargained and laughed. The place felt like a festival market—lively, crowded, and bright. No visible sorrow, no soul-stirring grief. Only the soft drizzle of Qingming rain carried the proper mood.

Inside the gates, firecrackers were already exploding across the grounds. The air reeked of sulfur. People threaded between the rows of graves—some weeping, some joking, some begging ancestors for blessing, others scolding them for leaving too soon.

It was a carnival of the living. Westerners find God in church and prayer. In Chinese culture, on a day like this, what one sees—so vividly, so unfiltered—is people. Nothing but people.

I have lived in Beijing for decades, far from my parents, far from my childhood companions. Friendships thin out over time; affections fade, revive, then fade again. If not for this journey home, I might never have seen those from the last century of my life again.

My hometown is a small fourth-tier city split by a river. Families along the old embankment have lived out generation after generation there, weathering China’s endless transformations. Every day, the stories of ordinary people unfold—children racing on the riverbank, teenagers fighting and loving with hormonal recklessness, adults scrambling through the grind of survival, the elderly shuffling through moss-covered alleys waiting for the end.

The city is always a half-step behind the times, dragged forward reluctantly by the country’s momentum. Yet within this half-step lag lies a warmth that is almost frightening—like last night’s drunken reunion.

Word spreads quickly when an old friend returns. Soon someone arranges a gathering. Men who once drank together or brawled together now embrace loudly, brag shamelessly, or brood quietly in corners, smoking as they listen. Women, beautifully dressed, drink, sing, flirt, and tease; some smash their glasses playfully while urging another round.

In the dim chaos of the bar, a singer crooned ballads from the ’80s and ’90s. In the half-darkness one could almost believe we had never left—that a lifetime might simply drift by inside those tender old melodies.

Wrapped in that warmth, everything felt right. And yet underneath, a faint panic stirred: the fear of sinking into nostalgia and growing old within it. Such feelings are like a drug—addictive and suffocating all at once.

My childhood friends hadn’t aged much, but their children now stood grown and luminous. A beautiful young girl laughed and cried over her latest romance with the intensity of someone who believes love is life or death. Watching her was like seeing my own reckless youth resurrected.

Youth, I realized again, is the most expensive currency of all.

Part of me wanted to tell them: Fall in love more. Don’t cling to one person too tightly. If you don’t love several men, how will you ever learn what delicious wrecks they can be?

The stories of this small city unfold one day at a time: a wedding today, a funeral tomorrow. A man whose business is rising hosts banquets day and night. A woman with a new lover fuels gossip from alley to stall.

Those who left chase their bright futures elsewhere; those who return wander through town covered in the dust of the world, unsure where to begin again. Old days or new days, everything starts with a bowl of chopped-chili rice noodles at the morning market. I see vegetable vendors pushing their carts slowly down the street; young housewives in small boutiques drifting between racks of spring clothes.

It is April. The azaleas on the distant hills are blazing. Qingming soon becomes Grain Rain; the air fills with the scent of new growth. Evergreen shrubs sprout tender leaves.

And I feel only this:

the waters stretch far,

the mountains stretch long,

and human life carries on between them—small, bright, and unbearably transient.