https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/blog/life-notes/ Recent content in Life Notes on Reardon Hugo -- gohugo.io en-US Copyright © 2021, Reardon Yang. Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/aridity/ Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/aridity/ Desire flows on and on in the flood of time. And space, like grit in a shoe, keeps reminding me — on riverbanks where all sounds fall silent, on snowfields where the cold wind howls. Space cuts desire into small segment after small segment, utterly unrelated, yet seamlessly one whole. The freedom to speak and to be silent, the freedom to weep and to laugh. In this here and now where space has defeated time, freedom is neither in the body nor in the soul. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-5/ Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-5/ The era of feeling good about oneself is over. Care too much about yourself, and the end result is that even you will loathe yourself from the bottom of your heart. Lao Xiang knew very well that his era had already ended. Before, he had been unwilling to admit it; now he only wanted to wail. He was a superfluous man. This shelter from wind and rain that he had built with his own hands, this home he had maintained with such scheming care, this woman he loved. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/loss/ Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/loss/ In the end, it is loss. This may be the only pure land, clean enough that I am willing to sting and confuse myself here, enough for me to sink into incoherence and affectation. We are all losing. All hope, thought, answers, emptiness, burning heat — all are being lost. What is the anaesthetic effect of life? It makes you ever more clear-headed, and then ever more accepting of everything you bear. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-4/ Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-4/ Now I can easily bury the past, letting all its tears fall like rain, its hysterical cries silent and unheard; I feel myself, piece by small piece, beginning to crumble, to rise, to vanish. — Reardon May The year I met Wanyun, I was forty and Wanyun was nineteen. Wanyun loved to draw; with a few simple strokes she could always outline the most essential features of a person or a landscape. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-3/ Sun, 21 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-3/ I can feel some place in my body beginning to dry up, leaving behind a patch of salt stains; I can smell the odor of my hair, like the faint sorrow given off by a bowl of pork soup left overnight in winter. — Reardon May In summer, Grandfather would take me walking the night roads: a narrow path stretching to the edge of the sky, with endless rice fields on either side, cicadas chirping and frogs croaking, the fragrance of grass soaking into the heart. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-2/ Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-2/ Freedom — half of it lies in our own hearts. To be content living the life of an ordinary person, drifting along with the current, is also a kind of happiness. — Reardon May Stepping out the door, across a patch of open ground, there were two straight ridges of farmland stretching to another row of houses, a good 500 meters long. The nearer fields were planted full of tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-1/ Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/origin-1/ I once fancied myself a master of fate, able to beguile time and space and construct the ultimate future. I believed my days would not slip away in fleeting pleasures, and that the future would be utterly different from the present — graceful, and far out of reach. — Reardon May I remember how, as a child, in those hot summers, I would always go to the river to catch shrimp and play in the water, feeling a coolness that soaked into the heart beneath the blazing sun; I remember how every book I read had an enticing story and a shining summer, possessed of a profound meaning impossible to grasp; I remember, in the morning light of spring, between the ridges of the fields and beside the river channels, pool after pool of lush green water; I remember, after being scolded by a teacher, the affection of my elders and the talk of my companions. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/afterglow/ Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/afterglow/ Old Xiang had come to understand: time has always been held in the hands of the past. The present and the future merely depend upon it; as derivative things, they inherently lack independent reality and meaning. Only the past, inevitably formed through the passage of time, can refine the true content of every minute and every second of this moment, and only it can give direction to a future that may or may not exist. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-platform/ Sun, 10 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-platform/ That I recall the past does not mean I long for the past, nor that I resist the present. It means I am growing number and number, further and further from my own essence. Everywhere the eye falls, all is reason and method. And my essence, like most people’s, is low and base — a wine sack and a rice bucket. So, at moments this lucid and real, I can only recall the past held in memory: the winters and the mud in memory, the muggy heat and the rain in memory. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/wilderness/ Sun, 10 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/wilderness/ To have an anchor born from within, unrelated to the outside — that is the most ideal state. White, grey, yellow, all covered in dust, all seem to have shrunk a notch shorter, a circle thinner. On a rooftop, looking out in all four directions, you can instead see the true colours of the city: building upon building, high and low, standing there quietly — not so huge and bright as when you gaze up at them from below. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/mutual-destruction/ Sat, 02 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/mutual-destruction/ All along, I have maintained a very low degree of socialising — in fact, effectively no socialising at all. The result is that I can find no frame of reference, nor can I truly understand other people’s lives. My knowledge comes from books, from the ancients, from the many who flee real life. Amid the crowd, yet outside the crowd, I have always been like a maggot, coming and going, muddling through. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/fireflies/ Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/fireflies/ Grievance It was summer vacation. My parents were quarreling at home over something or other again. I took my MP4 player, a few books, and a few simple changes of clothes, and left — off to my grandmother’s house. At that time I thought: why don’t they just get divorced, and spare us all this trouble? I played at my grandmother’s for a few days — reading e-books, sunbathing, doing a little farm work. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/sun-and-moon/ Sun, 01 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/sun-and-moon/ Daisies and gardenias, mountains and the sea, fireworks, the autumn moon, and winter days. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/night/ Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/night/ The night is cool: a flute plays, a moon over a thousand mountains; the road is dark, travelers are bewildered like a hundred kinds of flowers. The chess game ends, unnoticed that the world has changed hands; the wine is finished, and the guest can only, helpless, think of home. Night always makes me more real, brings me closer to my own essence. When everyone and everything around me is still, my thoughts begin to grow still as well. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/a-small-knife/ Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/a-small-knife/ I stand in a wilderness like a foreign land, on this gloomy, desolate, unending autumn night, while the wind howls again and again, tearing away, piece by piece, what little warmth my body has left. I crouch down and begin, with this yellow, red, blue, black mud, to try to piece together my grief. How blue-green the autumn rain, the mountain hues leaning on a clear sky. Sorrows north and south of the Yangtze, entrusted to the wine snail's red. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-path/ Mon, 21 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-path/ For the first time, I have this strong feeling: I want to change industries, to change the way I do things. It’s been this way for nearly two years — a feeling of being in a comfort zone. Of the things I spend most of my energy on each day, very few can be absorbed into my body as something new. Hmm, a copy-pasting copywriter — that roughly sums up my work in the years since I came back to Shenzhen. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/wishing-you-freedom/ Wed, 19 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/wishing-you-freedom/ https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/xinchou/ Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/xinchou/ No one can give you freedom, and no one can give you equality, justice, or anything else. If you are truly a man, then go and take it yourself. Not as heavy as I had imagined. No youth crisis, no sleepless nights, and no sense of mission either, as I had imagined. 2021 was very calm — it could even be called a little dull. This year, I moved from the Software Park to the Ecological Park, and then to Songpingshan, as if returning once more to the starting point. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/a-blade-of-grass/ Fri, 29 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/a-blade-of-grass/ Quoted below: “Actually, I don’t want to be a tree. I want to be a blade of grass beneath a great tree. I still have to bear the wind and rain, and I may be eaten, or burned — but after the wind and rain I can lift my head again, and with a root I can grow anew.” https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-years-end/ Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-years-end/ Night falls. Carrying things into the house, restocking what is “out of stock”: couplets, firecrackers, fruit, paste, chicken feet, pots and bowls and pans… The relatives have all come back. In the air you can smell cow dung, chicken droppings, and gunpowder mixed together. My parents bustle all year long, as if only for these few days. A humble and great dream. To be warmly dressed and well fed was the first goal of that era. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-north/ Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-north/ I woke a little after five, my mind turning over some things, and in the end I couldn’t get back to sleep. Shijiazhuang really does take getting used to — the food, the weather, the face of the city; there is nowhere that feels comfortable. The streets are full of northeastern food, Cangzhou food, donkey-meat sandwiches — hard to warm to. The weather is gray and hazy; from the start of September to the end of it, I always feel the clothes I have aren’t right, neither enough to take off nor enough to add. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/less/ Thu, 28 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/less/ Idle today, I pulled out some of the figures I loved in my youth and looked at them again. I still like them, but it all feels like something from the last century. These two years since I started working, my interests have changed enormously: I read less of literature and history, and more of tools and practical things. In the past, literature and history could always lift me out of myself, give me strength, nourishment, thought. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/beauty/ Thu, 29 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/beauty/ What cannot be completed is often beautiful. Like the book borrowed in youth and never finished, the old friend never met again, the journey that was not perfect enough, the words that cannot be taken back, the promise that cannot be completed. These uncompletable things become reefs in the flood of time, which cannot be washed away; they bear witness to all that once existed. They leave you with a bone stuck in your throat, with awns pricking your back. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/spring-rain/ Sun, 04 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/spring-rain/ Although the sky is overcast, the air smells crisp and neat. Without any warning, the rain began to fall — one drop, two drops, and then it came down pattering. Was it spring rain, or summer rain? At this time of year, it is easy to feel as though the sky and earth were ancient and endless. Soon, someone set two wooden buckets under the eaves. The rain struck the roof tiles, gathered, and poured down — drip-drip, dong-dong — into the buckets. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/shadow/ Sun, 21 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/shadow/ And someday In the mist of time When they asked me if I knew you I’d smile and say you were a friend of mine And the sadness would be lifted from my eyes Oh when I’m old and wise As far as my eyes can see.. There are shadows surrounding me.. And to those I leave behind I want you all to know You’ve always shared my darkest hours https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/perpetual-peace/ Wed, 30 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/perpetual-peace/ Having passed through life’s strange rises and falls, after silence without a sound, Old Xiang is still like a child, a virgin, an assassin. As if that absurd, destitute, broken, vanished first half of his life had nothing much to do with him, and had left not the slightest scar on him. He is like a knife just drawn from its sheath, its cold air pressing, cutting iron as if it were mud. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/year-end/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/year-end/ 2018 has passed. A year ago today I was in Bangkok, on Sukhumvit, on the street, wandering, with nothing to do; today I am at a train station, in Zhangjiafan, pacing, cold, weary in body and mind. This year I went to so many places. Flipping through my photo album: Changsha, Shenzhen, Shunde, Urumqi, Turpan, the Kumtag Desert, Zhengzhou, Taiyuan, Qingyuan, Yunfu, Zhuhai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Jinan, Heyuan, Chaozhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, Kunshan, Yancheng. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/quiet/ Fri, 13 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/quiet/ Of course, I too am ill at ease with this society in all sorts of ways, yet I am calm, and I accept it. I have realised that many things happen in connection with a person’s values at a particular period. Values are of course not something stable and unchanging; things change and develop, people are swept along by things, and values get split down the middle. Here and now. What you believe and what you do not believe; what you accept and what you do not accept; what you show and what you do not show… https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/beyond-cure/ Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/beyond-cure/ This man often likens himself to Mr. Shenlong, taster of a hundred herbs, who swallowed many virulent poisons by mistake; by the physician’s account he has no more than five days left, and lingers on in a lingering breath, a walking corpse. What he says and records day to day is likewise nothing but a repeated account of his own symptoms. A few are specially excerpted below: Symptom One — Babbling: All day he repeats two or three short phrases; the phrases are mostly jocular and vulgar. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/time/ Sat, 14 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/time/ The age surges and rushes on, and I am blurred of face. I open Xiami Music, and by chance it is Lo Ta-yu — “The Story of Time.” The flowers of spring blooming, the wind of autumn And the setting sun of winter Melancholy, the youthful me Once so innocently thought this way The windmill, in the song of the four seasons turning, Revolves day after day In verses of wind, flower, snow and moon https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/a-food-diary/ Sun, 18 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/a-food-diary/ If you only touch the surface like a dragonfly skimming the water, you can only be a consumer of life; live with effort and earnestness, and you have a chance to become a producer. 😋 ——April 23, 2021: Yang Jingwu’s 30th birthday — Qiaoqiao bought a cake, cooked longevity noodles, and there were delicious dishes too 😋😋 ——May 1, 2021 😋😋 ——May 31, 2021 😋😋 ——June 12, 2021 😋😋 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/no-time-to-worry/ Wed, 07 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/no-time-to-worry/ Walking is my goal The goal I believe in Walking on the road — rocks, weeds, branches Being with myself, no friends, no entertainment, no work This is all of time, my own time No time left to worry. – Do not rush about toiling, do not speak in clichés Enjoy the feeling of walking The feeling of being with myself Not full of suspicion, not hurrying along This is all of time, my own time https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/fragment/ Thu, 19 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/fragment/ I drove, then took a boat, and came here again. Once there was no road to be found here; dense greenery crowded around rippling water. Now a two-lane asphalt road stands alone by the shore. I know everything is different now. He waved his hand, signalling that we had no time, and so we went on, and did not linger. Overhead the clouds were thick; sunlight struck down through the cloud layer in pillars of light, and lit the clouds as if they were burning. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-worst-of-times/ Sun, 30 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/the-worst-of-times/ Life has shown its true face: non-negotiable, leaving no room. Everything around is illusory, yet presses right up before your eyes, leaving you nowhere to hide. This is the worst of times: knowing what you want, but unable to get it; knowing you are drawing closer, but needing time. Giving up was never an option. The only option is to move forward. You are right here in the present, in the petty scramble for gain — no poetry and no faraway places, to hell with poetry and faraway places; I no longer believe in any of that. https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/tears/ Fri, 12 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://reardon.torrdex.com/en/tears/ It has been a long time since I wrote anything — two years, by my count. Every time I picked up the keyboard, wanting to tap out something, I would rarely get past a hundred characters before hastily deleting it. It felt affected; I thought, if it’s in my heart, that’s enough — why set it down in words? Words are pressure, a constraint. Reality is already in turmoil; why add to the trouble?