What to Do Back Home When the Internet Is Bad

Ten-plus years ago, the cell signal in my hometown wasn't great, and ten-plus years later it still isn't. When I was little, there was winter break homework. Every time we came back, my parents would nag me to do my homework and practice my calligraphy workbooks. There was also the old TV. A bit of homework, a bit of TV, and the time went by.

There are lots of little hills near our old house. After lunch, my cousin and I would go roaming the hills, finishing one and moving on to the next, stopping here and there along the way to set off the firecrackers kids play with. And just like that, the time went by.

Now I'm grown up. When I come home, there's no homework to do, the old TV has been taken out, and I don't have the energy to roam the hills anymore. The days start to drag.

So what is there to do back home now? To be honest, I hadn't been back in almost four years, and I figured my hometown would be fully covered by 5G by now. Reality turned out to be just as harsh. My iPhone can't even get full bars of 4G here. The connection is barely good enough for messages. Gaming is definitely out of the question.

The first thing is watching K-dramas.

Before coming home, I'd guessed the internet would be bad, so I downloaded the last 9 episodes of the K-drama I've been watching, Crash Landing on You. Right now that feels like the smartest decision I've made. Right before writing this, I finished an episode. It has the longest episodes of any K-drama I've seen so far. Almost every one runs over an hour and a half, and the finale is a full two hours.

The second thing is cracking sunflower seeds.

Cracking sunflower seeds, peanuts, all kinds of nuts, eating mandarins, sitting in the courtyard in the sun, drinking tea, chatting. That's pretty much standard for New Year back home.

Since I got home yesterday afternoon, my mouth has hardly stopped. I've been munching nonstop, which keeps making me thirsty. But I have to admit, when there's nothing to do, doing these things is like running a preset program.

The third thing is reading.

Lately I've been reading Steve Jobs and Dream of the Red Chamber. The first is the biography of Apple's founder, and the second is a classical Chinese novel, one of the Four Great Classical Novels. These days I don't stick to just one book. I usually read two or three at once, and when I get tired of one, I switch to another with a different style. I like it that way.

And in a place with bad internet like my hometown, reading e-books seems like the perfect pastime. The sun is up by eight or nine in the morning. I carry a chair out into the courtyard and sit in the gentle, soft sunlight, with the wind and birdsong in my ears, completely absorbed in reading. It's really nice.

The fourth thing is exercise.

This morning I got up at seven thirty, went downstairs, opened the front door, and did thirty push-ups in the courtyard. That's my exercise for the day. Better than nothing, right?

The fifth thing is visiting relatives and feasting.

It isn't New Year's Eve yet. Once it is, we'll start going from one relative's house to the next, visiting and feasting. That's a big reason everyone's weight shoots up over the New Year. This morning I ate a lot of nuts, then at lunch I drank baijiu and ate a huge amount of meat. It feels like way too much protein and fat. Even though I've drunk a lot of water, I'm still thirsty.

Honestly, apart from these, there's not much to do. It looks like five things, but most of the time I'm still bored stiff.

But boredom over the New Year is different from boredom at any other time. I think only the quiet of these few New Year days is pure quiet. Even if I do nothing at all, I don't feel any burden.

Maybe that's what having no deadline feels like.

Sometimes I wonder what I'll do over the New Year when I'm in my forties or fifties.

I don't smoke, I don't play cards, I don't play mahjong, and I'm not that into games either. I seem like a pretty boring person. So when I'm middle-aged and bored, what should I do?

Let me dream big for a second. Maybe even then I'll still spend a little time writing an article? Who knows if WeChat Official Accounts will still be around by then.