Can anyone identify where the sea is from a picture of the sea? There are no obvious buildings in the picture, no clear people, it is only composed of seawater, sand, vegetation on the shore, and sunlight, the difference is the color of the sea, the roughness or beauty of the island, the lush or barren vegetation. Is it in Barcelona, or Phuket? Is it southern Italy, or the Seto Inland Sea of Japan? Or from the narrow and wide window of a high-rise building, the gray flat sea surface is like a huge silver silk, decorated with white flowers. This could be Istanbul or Xiamen. But for me, I have an image of such a sea in my mind, the sea of Xiamen. When I inadvertently looked up from the hotel lobby in the sky, through the tens of meters wide but narrow window, I could see the layers of air pressure clouds after or before the rain, the sea was an endless two-dimensional flat gray splash, and the islands within reach (I suddenly realized that it was actually Gulangyu Island) were like stranded ships, and I seemed to "observe" the moment on the eve of the storm at sea from the perspective of an alien observer. There is an indescribable cruelty and tenderness.
I didn't want to go to the beach to write about the sea. Maybe the opposite. What does the sea mean? I. We. People in our cities who long to escape from the everyday. Oh, landscapes, some kind of "landscape" traps and illusions. Why not? And then what. The landscape becomes nihilistic in the selfie. It makes sense just why the sea is a landscape? How did the sea become a "landscape"?
In a hotel in Mauritius, I spend morning, noon, afternoon, evening and late at night on the beach. I walked out the back door of my room, and there was a cobblestone path lined with tropical ferns and flowers, the beach was almost falsely white, the morning dew was heavy, and the sand under my feet was slightly cool. I landed in the dark of night and arrived at the hotel before dawn, a huge island with sugarcane fields that could not be seen except for the common woods of the tropics. I read a quote from Mark Twain in my guidebook: God first created Mauritius and then Heaven. I don't take this kind of celebrity praise seriously. Yet I saw in the morning glow of dawn the lush trees, the green lakes hidden in the green shadows of the trees, the bends at the end of the roads, the fjords of the sea, the fjords of the sea, the frank and bright royal blue, and the countless small towns that passed, with colonial-style bungalows, simple plank bungalows, the noise and frolicking of black boys and girls, even if I was in between, it was only a glimpse of light. I was drowsy from the long flight and jet lag, and excited to come to a distant island, although it was Africa, its "African flavor" was not very obvious, more like an African country only geographically, I tried to appreciate it, although I did not have any travel plans. Like most seaside trips, arrive at the seaside, to be exact, arrive at a luxurious seaside hotel, pass through the magnificent lobby, zigzagging eaves, artificial water rockery, pass by trained receptionists, porters, and finally, check into a small two-story bungalow by the sea, with slightly outdated furniture and furnishings, with a faint smell of dampness. Opening the door to the sea, the morning sun shines, and this moment reaches the peak of pleasure in travel.
There is an artificial pond in front of the hotel full of Japanese koi, which is a strange sight considering that this is an African island. I sat in front of the small pier waiting for the boat, and in the turquoise waters of the coast, colorful little fish swimming, no matter how you look at it, it is more natural and reasonable than koi. Take a boat to a nearby island belonging to the hotel, about the size of a football field, there is nothing on the island, and ordering a Coke also needs to be delivered by boat from the hotel on the other side, although they are tired of it, because there are no guests, but I feel tedious. At that time (or always have) I often had some kind of escape from the world, going to hidden corners alone, but strangely, the more secret the place, the more forced to communicate with strangers, because there was no choice. I read a book on a deck chair on the beach, looked at the hotel on the opposite bank, walked in the woods of the island, there were fallen pine cones on the ground, there were lizards, very small lizards, although it was African, but this was more like an ordinary tropical island.
One day I had afternoon tea with the general manager of this hotel. It was a tall, skinny young man—white man, speaking perfect English without an accent. But we obviously don't share the same aura. Our meeting is purely polite socialization, because work must meet the intersection of politeness. Then I inadvertently asked, where are you from? Europe? I quickly realized that this statement upset and even irritated him, because he immediately said coldly that he was a "Mauritian". I immediately apologized. I think I'm probably touching on some ethnographic topics, about native land, immigration, the dark history of the slave trade, and so on, which are not as simple as Mark Twain's pleasure in "heaven." But I have no intention of exploring topics that I don't know much about, and what does it matter to me whether the Caucasian is a "native" of Mauritius? Isn't coming to Mauritius to leave the complex "organizational structure" of the crowd and temporarily free from the constraints and interference of "history"?
I was finally ready to go somewhere other than the hotel. However, this is no small plan, and the island is a long journey wherever it goes. There was an elderly female overseas Chinese who Chinese came to the hotel to introduce the tourist attractions, and I hesitated for a while because nothing attracted me, but I still bought a day trip. The next day an Indian driver came to pick me up, who was also the tour guide, and he did everything he could to get me excited, like a normal tourist, seeing everything was a miracle, and his efforts had no positive effect except to make me nervous, anxious and embarrassed. He insisted that I sit in the passenger seat "like a friend", and then the car drove all the way, for a long time, to a silk and carpet store owned by an Indian, these are the "stipulated" items of the trip, but the trip I bought is not cheap, and it is possible that because it is not cheap, I feel that I am more willing to spend. But who would buy a featureless, thousand-dollar Indian rug here? After I repeatedly said I didn't want to buy anything, we hit the road again, and then we drove for a long time and came to a souvenir shop, where I finally generously bought a sailing boat ornament in an attempt to get the driver to leave early. Then I drove a very long way to a rum factory, a very modern factory, and the reception was like the decoration of a Napa winery in California, and I drank a free tasting and bought two bottles. Ten years later, I was still in my cupboard, I had never drunk it, and some things, including rum, seemed to have left the environment and atmosphere, and some of its aura snapped away. We ended up in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, and went to a dark castle, whose history and appearance I completely forgot about and remembered only the heat. I ate face to face with my Indian driver in a "planned" restaurant, staring at each other as if I didn't want to say a thousand words or a word. I decided to walk around the city alone after dinner. The steaming, sometimes lush and sometimes barren streets, the hustle and bustle of the small commodity market, the tranquility of the street garden, I often forget that I am an island country in Africa, tropical plants, crazy vitality, some European-style houses, like somewhere in the Philippines. I always had an anxious passion for the tropical sea, damp, warm, throbbing, and sentimental. On the way back, I insisted on sitting in the back seat of the car, three hours on the road, silently looking out the window, endless forests, endless islands, endless sugar cane fields, endless low-hanging blue sky, in this undisturbed place, I suddenly understood Mark Twain's meaning of heaven, feeling the breath of the sea in silence, from the fragments of the waves, to the flourishing green and crimson leaves of sugar cane, all filled with the breath of tropical desolation and surging lust, this is the beautiful and rich sea. Returning to the hotel in the depths of the night, the Indian driver and his car disappeared into the darkness, his life, his family, his children, the Indian food on the table, his ancestors, his lust, the words he was forced to hear during the day, and I was at the beach at night, thinking about what I had passed, seen, stopped and touched during the day. The sea, the same sea, is a different sea.
How did the sea become a "landscape"? I grew up inland and I couldn't swim. I have no interest and ability in sea sports. The sea, like a great temptation, based on remoteness, vastness, unpredictability, it makes me melancholy, the world has no end, time never ends, and I stand on the seashore, becoming the opposite of insignificance. I didn't see the sea until the summer vacation when I was eighteen years old, and on the train, through the crowded people, I saw the blue sea glimpsed through the window, and my heart was turbulent, this is the sea. In the night of excitement and sleeplessness, we walked and walked by the sea, tirelessly. How could I have imagined that after that, I would go to so many seasides and I would experience my life like this. The seaside landscape is blurring day by day. It consists of beaches, hotels on the coast, plants, a certain smell, some rhythm, scattered, randomly combined into a picture. I remembered the yacht approaching Capri, the saber rattling cliffs opposite, the busyness of the port, the leisurely and refined years on the yacht, the smooth wooden floors, the modern furniture, and the large plates of salads, pasta and small pieces of pizza served by the cook at lunch. Endless sea, waves of the sea, passing an island, a fishing village, another small yacht, a yacht that once belonged to Mrs. Kennedy, everyone went to visit this yacht, it was not large, the interior was decorated with sea blue, and then we ended the tour and it was restarted. How vast and grand the sea is, characters, time, stories, dissolved in the sea, only fiction and memories remain.
Swipe left and right to see the scenery of the sea
This sea landscape, if you think about it, is so varied, one superimposed on another photograph. In a short time, with a mysterious feeling, I would guess where this sea was. This is the seaside of southern Italy, and the features I caught may be a towering pine tree, a rugged boulder, a pool on the shore in a simple rectangular box, and an umbrella with blue-white stripes. But this is often wrong. On the uninhabited shores of Rio de Janeiro, its gentle green and slightly white-gray mudflats remind me of the coast of the Okinawa island from the window when the plane landed, and the sea seemed to be still, and the white sand dunes crashed into small lakes. In the crowded photos of the beach crowd, I often couldn't guess where the dense crowd of people was, familiar but unspeakable for a while, tanned into oily black flames. Is this in Barcelona or in the seaside baths of Marseille? I was there, all in a hurry for a few days, or even just an afternoon. And the seaside of the city, with music, beer, fried chicken and chips, the waves are dirty blue, under the scorching sun, people are tanned into charcoal, and only a few people are good-looking.
In Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story", the old couple visits their children in Tokyo, but because their children are busy, they come up with a "good idea" to send the old couple to Atami. The mahjong tourists playing next door to the hotel were noisy all night, and the old couple had to hide out of the hotel and sit by the sea in the early hours of the morning. Ozu's black-and-white shots don't see much of the sea, the plane of the sea, and the comfort that the sea brings. The scenery of the sea is always a small piece in Ozu's films, never stretched enough, unlike the original vast sea, it is a restrained and rapid sea. By the time I got to Atami, Atami was so filled with countless renovated Japanese luxury hotels that you could hardly hear the people next door, and you hardly saw anyone else. Every day in the evening, I have a drink on the viewing terrace, and then quietly admire the moment the sun sets, falling in the depths of Sagami Bay, the red sun, casually sliding down, passing through the tops of palm trees and camphor trees, it is sensitive, slender, soft, and the sea surface is also like this, it is a silk of countless blues, and then the sun suddenly disappears, and the night ends in the blink of an eye.
This is the scenery of the sea, and I see its gentle scene, gentle, just a small point in the properties of the sea. A year after the tsunami in Southeast Asia, I went to stay at a hotel in Phuket, and if I didn't look closely, it didn't seem to be unusual, but there was always a heavy and slight unease. The waves were rolling and a little dirty, the night was eerily quiet, there were almost no travelers, and it was impossible to sleep at all. I didn't dare to think about the scene at that time, and many people were swallowed by the sea in an instant. However, the sea is still rippling calmly, entertaining people with the appearance of scenery. People do not know the shallowness and insignificance of life and death. —One year I had emotional problems, I was recuperating on a mini island near Koh Samui, there was only one hotel on the island, I tried to get up early and go to bed early every day, do some simple exercises, try to learn to swim in the pool. One day a friend organized a diving trip and I was just snorkeling. However, as soon as I arrived at sea, I felt an extreme panic that I was about to be submerged, shouting, and I quickly returned to shore by speedboat. The waves hit me hard, and my whole body was shaking, aching, nervous. Torrential rain suddenly fell on the island, the sky and the earth were white and flooded, trees fell one after another, and the sea was no longer a scenery.
When I left, I was refreshed, and the gentleness of the sea and the roughness of the sea are things that heal people. Why should people like the sea? Because we are all from the sea? Land was born in the sea, and organisms were born in the sea and evolved over a long period of time. Standing by the sea and looking at the sea is like looking at an eternal place.