It Begins with Zijingang Bus Terminal

I should have written this while the feeling was still fresh, but I kept putting it off. By the time I finally sat down, much of its original intensity had faded. It had not vanished altogether, though. Fragments remained, tugging at me now and then. Today, at last, I have time to put them into words.

The story begins with a return to Hangzhou a few months ago.

Two bus terminals in Hangzhou stand out in my memory. One is Jiangcun Bus Terminal. When I first arrived in the city, I walked there to pay a 200-yuan deposit for a transit card that could also unlock Hangzhou’s free public bicycles—the little red bikes, as everyone called them. The other is Zijingang Bus Terminal.

I first noticed Zijingang in 2016, when I traveled from Beijing to take the doctoral entrance exam at Zhejiang University’s Zijingang Campus. I stayed at a Home Inn nearby. Back then, this was still where the city gave way to the countryside. Apart from the food street near the university, the area was far quieter than it is now.

After settling in Hangzhou, I lived nearby in Sanba, and many bus routes started at Zijingang. I was always happy to walk a little farther to the terminus if it meant getting a seat.

A proper bus terminal needs to be substantial, and this one had every amenity you could expect. Each route had its own boarding lane, much like at an intercity bus station. There was a drivers’ cafeteria, a dispatch office, a staff lounge, public restrooms, and vending machines. What I remember most was the powerful air conditioning in summer. When I had to wait for an infrequent bus, it offered welcome relief from the heat.

Zijingang Bus Terminal therefore became one of the anchors of my memory of Hangzhou.

But when I happened to pass it a few months ago, I found the building closed off behind construction barriers. I could not tell whether it was being expanded, demolished or given another purpose. I suspect the last of those is most likely. Land in a location like this is unlikely to remain solely for people waiting for buses.

Zhejiang University next door has also begun to resemble a property developer. Yuquan, Xixi, Zhijiang and Huajiachi, together with a Zijingang Campus now more than twice the size it was when I first saw it in 2016, already cover a broad sweep of the Hangzhou map. Now the university is expanding farther into Liangzhu. Its motto is “Seeking Truth,” or Qiushi, but I cannot help hearing it as “seeking to be everywhere.”

And speaking of Liangzhu, it is impossible not to mention the farmland around it. The broad fields between Liangzhu and Cangqian have been eaten away piece by piece until little remains intact. They were once among the most beautiful green spaces I had seen—quiet, peaceful, and full of everyday life. As a child raised in a northern city, I associated rice paddies with southern China and the countryside. Until then, I had known them only from books and songs.

“In the fragrance of rice blossoms, they speak of a good harvest; a chorus of frogs fills the night.” This line from Xin Qiji’s Moon over the West River formed my earliest image of a rice field. A paddy should carry a fragrance. It should feel inhabited and alive, and it should ring with frogs. Only when I found the fields of Liangzhu and Cangqian did I know that Xin Qiji had told the truth.

In my early days in Hangzhou, when I was still relying on Ant Jiebei loans to cover my daily expenses, I splurged on a bicycle to get around. Under the summer sun, I rode from Sanba to Tangqi, Banshan, Meijiawu, Longjing, Binjiang, and anywhere else that caught my interest. Some of those places no longer allow bicycles, including Su Causeway and Bai Causeway, where cycling was permitted at the time.

What stayed with me most, however, was the great stretch of farmland around Cangqian and Liangzhu. Nothing there felt deliberate or staged. There was no neon and no noise, only quiet. Stone bridges in the villages, ponds, and children playing in the water became some of my fondest memories of rural Hangzhou. When I tired during the day, I would buy a cold drink from a village shop and rest in the shade. After dark, I would ride home through the cool air between the fields with the frogs calling around me.

But Hangzhou is expanding. She grows larger and broader by the year. The advancing edge of the city has swallowed Cangqian and Liangzhu. Rice no longer rises from the good earth; towers do. The air no longer smells of grain but of exhaust. Instead of frogs, one hears arguments about corporate values and software architecture. The sun still sets as it always did, but now its light falls not on people returning home, but on people still working late inside high-rises. Yangguo Village became Future Sci-Tech City. It is a well-chosen name, as though its rustic past had never belonged there in the first place.

The atmosphere, objects, landmarks and buildings I knew have disappeared one after another—slowly, yet somehow all at once. Return to a shop after some time away and it has changed hands. Walk a road you have not taken for a while and its course has shifted. Glance again at a reception desk you stopped noticing and someone else is sitting there.

There is no announcement and no farewell. One thing after another simply disappears. Hangzhou, a Ship of Theseus, sails slowly onward. Roads, shops, trees and bus stops are replaced plank by plank. While I lived within it, I had time to absorb each change as it came. Returning after an absence compresses all that unseen time into a single reunion, and the unfamiliarity arrives at once.

“If West Lake were the great beauty Xizi, she would look beautiful with either light or heavy makeup.” But when the camphor trees that once shaded Tianmushan Road were uprooted, I felt for the first time that Hangzhou’s makeup had grown so heavy that I could no longer make out her face.

Of course, Hangzhou is not the only thing that has changed. I too am a Ship of Theseus, my hull repaired and replaced piece by piece. Given enough time, I may one day look at myself and realize that I am no longer the person I once was.