Mermen on the Shore

by SALLY ZHANG

& illustrated by ANOUSHKA GULI

It was in 1921, a er the May Fourth Movement, that a Chinese poet studying abroad pondered the dark reality of his homeland at that time. Looking at the moon, he wrote these lines: “Will there be Jiao Ren on the shore, weeping pearls at the moon?” e Jiao Ren, translated as Merman, is a supernatural creature in Chinese mythology. Recorded for the rst time in the book In Search of the Supernatural in AD 350, this mythical creature is thought to exist in between the sea and land. More precisely, the story goes: “Beyond the Southern Sea there are mermen who live in the water and resemble sh, but they can weave and spin, and when they weep, their tears turn into pearls.” and I think a lot about the world and my trivial spot in it, I sleep every day with its breath against my spine how all of this is cosmo politically mundane, how the world has bigger sorrows than me, I remember and it matters i’ve learnt that i don’t have to be the best to be happy i’m practising returning to the family i’d half forgotten When I think about my mom I think about how much love the world holds and how so much of it is in my palms I can even talk to my dad without my gut dropping it feels like leaping over barbed wires because all my life I placed myself on the other side of the border and him in the battle eld

I wonder if the poet writing these lines long ago imagined himself in a foreign land as a merman sitting alone on the shore at night, weeping? At home, there are young people like him ghting bravely against the corruption of the government authorities, and while he knows that they will lose in the end, he is unsure of his next action. e poet is not brave enough to leap recklessly into the ocean, swim to the bottom of the sea and join the revolution. Instead, he is on the shore, weeping. Nonetheless, when he wanders through mainland society during the day, he whispers angrily about the injustices at the bottom of the sea. He must have felt alone. the people on land have their own a airs to tend to. Not many of them care. And even if they did, what could they possibly do? Even the mermen are just whispering complaints and stare at the sea but do not dare to leap into it.

I have seen videos online of Russian activists shouting anti-war declarations in squares and being taken away by the police before they can even nish their sentences. I shed very “kitsch” tears when I saw it - as Kundera would say - and in the end, it was probably just a contrived performance. I wonder if the tears of the mermen and the poet are like that.

I feel gleeful many times a day now, i smile and i mean it, i hug and it heals me, i sleep and i’m happy it takes me back to when I was seven and cradled in my nanu’s lap

I love the way I make my eggs and sometimes I see cats around that remind me of how mine sleeps in the cup of my chest

I saw my favourite artist the other day with my best friend and I stopped to notice that i was so alive with adrenaline gushing in my veins I didn’t know healing could feel so explicit but I promise you something in my chest is so ening My shoulders are relaxed more o en now and my hands don’t shake when I do my hair

I know now that for every day I have forgotten to live ere are still more where I have remembered my body is nally warm enough to feel like home and my heart healed enough to stop aching

Do mermen on the shore - like the poet a hundred years ago - not know where they can nd peace of mind? ey might nd themselves surrounded by exotic lands and the sea. But they still dream of home. A home which is enveloped by thick black mist that takes away the voices of the mermen who lived there.” Now mermen on the shore are either forced to speak a language they are unfamiliar with, live in exile in a strange human society, adapt in silence to the new darkness at the bottom of the sea, or to engage in fruitless rebellion. None of these options will bring the mermen inner peace. ey do not know which is more important. Is it the voice of a mermaid sold to a witch, or the landscape of home that is sorely missed? To be continued ...

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