Memo of Summer Respite in Sha Xi: Slowly Becoming a Pot Under the Eaves

On the fourth morning of staying in the ancient town of Shaxi, do you still need a bell tower to confirm that time is still moving?—Here, there is nothing but light.

People who live in Shaxi for a long time first don't look at the rooms, but at the eaves. I rented a two-hundred-year-old wooden house on the south side of Siding Street. As I stepped in, the wooden floor echoed a low, resonant sound, as if someone had cleared their throat inside. The blue brick courtyard had been soaked by rain into a deep墨green, with a clump of green moss climbing up the wall roots, like the frayed edges of old pages. The manager handed me a brass key and said that the beams of this house are made of cedar, which is the most resistant to summer heat. Indeed, in the afternoon, the sun was scorching, but the house felt like it was sitting by a deep pool, with coolness seeping out from the wall roots, floorboards, and every grain of wood. Unintentionally, the wind swept through the bamboo curtains, and the shadows danced like scattered silver on the table.

At 7:30 in the morning, the market is the most sonorous moment of Shaxi's day. An elderly woman in an indigo blue skirt squatted at the edge of the steps, her bamboo basket filled with mint, green beans, bamboo shoots, purple potatoes, and a handful of freshly picked apricots. I bought a freshly baked bitter buckwheat cake, stood in the morning light, and dipped it in coarse sugar to eat. The aroma of the buckwheat was toasted with a hint of charcoal, with no unnecessary embellishments, yet it was incredibly sincere. The food stalls under the ancient theater made tofu rice noodles, the rim of the bowl was chipped, and the boss said the bowl had been used for twenty years and he couldn't bear to replace it. The tofu was nestled in a clear broth, it didn't taste like eating anything, but more like drinking a stretch of mountain spring. In the evening, walking to Yujin Bridge, the sound of the stream under the bridge was very low, like a forgotten melody; occasionally, the sound of horse bells echoed from the valley, entwined with the stream, indistinguishable which part was stone and which part was distant.

At three in the afternoon, in the tea room that used to be the old post office, only one light was lit from the ground window. Dark brown earthenware bowls held the local sun-dried tea, with shallow grinding marks on the rim, as if they had been wiped by countless dusks. I sat by the bamboo curtain, watching the light inch by inch crawl across the table, neither hurrying nor being hurried. You said this was to avoid the summer heat, but it was more like avoiding the world: wearing cotton long robes, a wide-brimmed straw hat, and a pair of thin-bottomed cloth shoes, even the strongest ultraviolet rays couldn't harm you. Living in an old wooden house on the old street, you need to guard against dampness; place a container of grass ash by the window, which can absorb the moist air during the rainy season; add an old bamboo mat to the bed, and the wind passing through the wooden gaps is stronger than anything else. Buy a handful of mint, two slices of milk curd, and a few chickpeas at the market, boil a pot of clear soup, and eat it under the eaves of the light, which is more comfortable than going to a restaurant.

At nine in the evening, the lights in Shaxi go out one by one, and only a lantern hangs under the eaves of the inn, like an orange floating in the sea of night. The droplets of water from the eaves fell onto the bluestone, clear and crisp, one after another, like an ancient language counting for all things. The wind swept down from the mountain ridge, through the tiles and bamboo gaps, and placed the entire town in the moonlight. I sat on the threshold and couldn't imagine how this summer would pass, or as if it had never come, so I sat my shadow down when the cool wind started, and in my heart, there was a small patch of warmth.

On the day of departure, you need to take nothing away; that earthenware cup, the light of the tofu rice noodles, and the rhythm of the dripping water from the eaves have already been kept for you. The coolness of Shaxi is not measured by a thermometer; it is slowly cultivated by mountain spring and cedar; here, you finally have time to listen to the sound of a piece of wood from old to silent.