SmokeLong Quarterly

Every morning Liu goes to the wharf to swim. Wearing swim trunks under his work coat and toting a jerry can of fresh water for rinsing off afterward, he takes the bus south. It is October; the high season for tourism has passed. At the wharf, Liu walks past fishmongers displaying urchins bubbling in foam boxes, past wooden racks of stingrays stretched out to dry in the sun, to reach the narrow path toward the lighthouse. He passes a woman grilling whole starfish over open coals every day. He has never tasted starfish.

Once on the path, Liu can see the other swimmers dotting the water already in the sun’s hard glint. About halfway to the lighthouse, he veers off to the left and picks his way among rocks before finding a spot to set his jerry can down. Boots, pants, work coat; off. Then he dives in.

The water only hurts for the first few minutes. By October the sea around Dalian begins to drop in temperature down to 15°C, making Liu’s ritual a 冬游 (winter swim). Liu likes the sensation of the cold on different parts of his body. As he begins to swim in slow, long strokes, he starts to feel the cold tighten around his feet and ankles where the water receives less sun. It feels like putting on prickly socks.

Liu’s wife worries about his winter swimming.

You’re not getting younger, she’ll say. Remember how second uncle went in the water once and never came back? Heart disease runs in his family. Liu dips his head into the green-blue sea. Below the surface, he can hear the taut hum of fishing boats entering the marina.

When he was younger, Liu dove in these same waters for sea cucumber, pulling up the stout logs studded with gelatinous spikes. He knew how to braise them in a stone pot to eat with cold vinegar. The crunch was like nothing else. This bay stopped having sea cucumbers some time ago.

Liu’s daughter doesn’t like the sea. She finds the feeling of salt on her hair disgusting, despite his encouragement for her to bring along her own jerry can for rinsing. Really she thinks it unfashionable to swim. When she does come home, she prefers to take her mother to the bathhouse while Liu swims. The two women get full-body exfoliation with fruit vinegar and watch the dirt roll off their bodies in long strips while a woman scrubs them roughly with a hand towel. They return home bright-cheeked, their entire bodies slightly pink.

Liu never goes to the bath; he finds it redundant. In this sea, the cold is constantly touching his entire body with its million tiny hands. If the sea had hands, Liu thinks, they would look like the giant starfish on the woman’s grill. Prickled with endless gold legs within the smoke.

Liu doesn’t need any human hand to revive him. Each day, in the brief moment after he steps out of the water but before he rinses the sea away, balanced on a rock, already feeling the cold salt begin to dry, Liu feels as if his whole body has been replaced with tight, new skin. He imagines this is what it feels like to be kissed.