The Apartment

Way back when, in college, I went directly from the dorms to off-campus housing my freshman year and so I never had the pleasure of occupying the luxurious on-campus apartments.  I did visit them on occasion though and was reminded of those hard wood arms on the IKEA-type, standard-functional furniture when I moved into my new apartment in China.

 The couch is actually orange but it is stained just enough to remove the welcoming "come sit on me" personality that I think a couch should have....so I found this lovely blue and white flowered sheet in one of the drawers in the extra bedroom and it is surprising how (despite the atrocious pairing of this sheet with the striped pillows) such a thin shield can provide so much more comfort.  This 'furnished' apartment does just that... it furnishes the necessities of a moderately comfortable living.

The living room is complete with a couch, two chairs, a desk, a coffee table, tv, and............. refrigerator!  The kitchen is too small for the fridge... so, the living room it is.

The desk has become my library and stereo.  The electrical outlets are limited, hence the powerstrip/cord stretching in the middle of the room.  BTW it's very important (in order to avoid small fires) to choose the highest wattage/voltage when buying a power strip.  :) Anybody know how to say FIRE in Chinese? Me neither.

This is the entryway/open pantry/microwave room.  I haven't used a microwave for years.   Sadly, I have used the one provided on several occasions so far.  I'm a microwave whore!   With the ridiculous levels of air and water pollution and questionable food sources, a little electromagnetic radiation seems the least of my worries.  Anywhooooo... through the door is the kitchen and through the next door, the balcony/laundry room.

The sink and gas stove-top are fairly normal except that the lowest setting is about a medium heat... no simmer, which is a bummer, and one MUST WATCH CAREFULLY.  No oven... which means no banana bread... and no other things I'll miss making when I eventually get sick of eating dumplings.  I LOVE DUMPLINGS SO MUCH!  (I WILL get sick of eating dumplings, right??) 

The contraption above the sink is the gas heater... it provides heat for the radiators and the water (including the shower)... and I have developed a complicated relationship with this machine. (we are finally speaking after about 2 weeks of the silent treatment)

My washing machine (out on the balcony) can hold about 3pairs of socks, 2 underwear, and 1 towel in a load... but I'm very happy to have it. Many people here wash their clothes by hand... washboard style.  I know that this machine has a hot setting and a cold setting and I know where the start button is ...but that's about it.  It's worked so far!

This is my dryer.

 And this is my other dryer. 

Please, if you have a dryer.  Don't take it for granted.  As much as you hate doing laundry... remember how nice it is to take your load of clothes out of the washer and throw it into the dryer... and BOOM! in 1 hour ... dry clothes/sheets, etc.  Here, I remove items from the washer, and either carefully hang them from the radiator to dry within about 12 hours or hang them from clips on hangers that are strung  from a variety of doorknobs and millwork throughout the apartment.  The balcony has a drying rod... but in the winter... there's not a whole of drying going on there... just frozen underwear and honestly with the look (and smell) of the air... I don't want them out there.

My first bedroom upon arrival which is now the spare bedroom.  With TWO mattresses, one might think... ahhhh, comfy bed!  No.  Actually?  Rocks.  It was like sleeping on rocks piled on top of cement slabs. Luckily I moved into the other room after about a week.

The bathroom...  so much to say about the bathroom.  Let me preemptively say that I am grateful, incredibly grateful, for water.  Any water.  Hot, cold, filtered, unfiltered (preferably non toxic and/or polluted) but in general just showing gratitude for the water.  Aho.
I hate to follow that with a great big BUT... BUUUUUTTTTT there were some things to adjust to here with the toileting and the showering.  It's not the water's fault.   And please, if you don't care to read about the finer points of human waste, then PLEASE STOP READING!!!! I'LL SEE YOU NEXT TIME WHEN I'M SURE TO BE WRITING ABOUT SOMETHING MORE REFINED. (maybe?)


Ok, so for those of you that like to read about poo... ... ... ... ;o)  First, the toilet.  NO PAPER IN THE TOILET!  If you MUST, then 4-6 squares MAX! But that doesn't go for every toilet, everywhere. At my apartment the plumbing can handle 4-6 squares. But, for instance... at work, if 2 squares of paper are flushed, it will cause a backup and believe me you don't want to be responsible for that.  One of my 'favorite' memories from my 3rd day here is from one of the administrators at the school yelling, "new teacher?! No paper in the toilet!!!"  So unless you want to deal with or be responsible for a clogged toilet, you will put your toilet paper in the garbage can.  That's right.  #1 paper... #2 paper... #3 paper (chics you know what paper this is) (dudes... so do you if you've lived here for any amount of time and shared bathrooms) it all goes in... the garbage can.  This was actually not unfamiliar to me.  I spent a few glorious weeks in Peru and it was the same (except that my memory tells me that they had garbage cans with flippy doors on them so you didn't have to SEE the paper.)  The plumbing simply cannot tolerate a lot of or sometimes ANY paper ... which brings me back to one of the many things being taken for granted in the US... fairly decent plumbing ... and never needing to have a "wiping and discarding strategy."  In the US you can flush a good amount of paper down the tubes if necessary...I mean it really has to be excessive in order to cause a back up.  Being an environmentally conscious individual... it bothers me to be excessive with water AND paper... and in the bathroom scenarios HERE... I am forced to either leave my paper exposed in the bin, do my best to wrap it with MORE paper before tossing in the garbage, OR flush a little paper TWICE... but that wastes water!  AAAAGGGGHHH!!!

All of this also means that when you walk into a public restroom you learn to NOT look at the garbage can!!  Much like when using a "Biffy," you KNOW to NOT LOOK in the hole!  At this point I've gotten used to it, but it was disturbing upon arrival.

Ok, so you see the shower in the corner there?  (once again, big picture, grateful for water of any kind, yes, and being able to take a shower at all, yes!) BUT coming from America where we have separate shower units... there is no shower 'stall' or even a lip on the ground to capture the water... only the shower curtain that leaves about a 3 inch gap to the ground.  As you can imagine... the bathroom is a wet mess after every shower and so the mop leaning in the right corner is used to clean up after ever shower.  Fun, huh?  One of my favorite times of the day is naked mopping time. :-D  The bathroom floor is probably the cleanest in the house so I suppose it's not all bad.  I really don't give this a second thought anymore though... because I finally have hot water again!!! YAHOOO!!! 

Backstory... 

I had lived in this apartment for about 3 weeks, taking nice, hot showers daily, when suddenly there was no hot water... and there was also no heat.  Now, one would think that as a landlord or property manager that when a new tenant (especially a foreigner) moves into your space it would be ideal (really for everyone) to cover the finer points of the functional elements of the place.  Right?  Even though I'd seen the latest Karate Kid movie I still didn't know how, where, or when to refill my gas card.  Well, it was out of credits don'tchya know?  Consequently, no gas... and no hot water.  I inquired and was shown where and how to refill the card.  So, now I had gas... but still no heat and intermittent hot water.  Remember the contraption in the kitchen?  Apparently it had reset itself.  Normally, I'm adept and mechanically inclined enough to figure out how a machine like this works, but the additional language barrier prevented that from happening for awhile.  I will spare you the rest of the boring details and share the short story of how I had the landlord and lady over twice to help me understand how to set the machine... but instead when they would show up it would work just fine and so they would assume the American was either crazy or stupid and maybe have a good laugh but would never actually show me how to SET THE DAMN THING PROPERLY!  Eventually through a series of trials and errors and cold showers by candlelight (oh yeah, the light in the bathroom also has episodic tantrums and doesn't work) and insights from friends of friends like Mark I figured it out.

Since we're in the bathroom... I thought I'd show you the bathroom heater.  It's totally safe with all the electric cords hanging there near the sink, right?  I've only seen sparks from my hairdryer once and that was due to the wrong adapter.  It hasn't worked properly since, though.  :-/

This is my new bedroom with a bigger, much softer and more comfortable bed.

I brought several pairs of earplugs with me and have been using them every night since Chinese New Year (which I'll leave for another post).  Not only did they work wonders through that, but I've also found that I get much better, uninterrupted, dream-inducing sleep when using them. :) Because above my apartment is a family that likes to make noise.  Stomping noise, tapping noise,  toddler-running-across-the-floor-noise, parental-yelling noise, dropping-heavy-objects noise, hammering noise, chair-scraping-across-the-floor-every-5-GD-minutes noise and the newborn baby up there obviously has the same genes and so this all starts at about 5am noise.  Yay for earplugs!

The last thing I will mention about the apartment and the water (for now) is that the water that comes out of the tap... YOU DO NOT DRINK.  I have been advised to not even brush my teeth, cook, or wash my vegetables with it and SO...THIS is the clean-water refilling station in my apartment community. 

You must buy a special card because it does not take coins or bills (which I was originally told and spent several minutes trying to find the coin slot :-/ ).  It's quite inexpensive, but still requires the hauling of water every 3 to 4 days.  There is a delivery service if I really need it. But for now... this is just fine.  It brings me back to simpler times... and reminds me once again to be grateful for the water... after all... it is the source of life.

Many, many thanks for clean water! Aho!

Staring, Spitting, and Slurping

 My immune system was being seriously challenged after the first week…. what with swapping hot pot spit, lack of sleep, and sharing polluted air with about 22 million new people (many of them snotty nosed kids).  I ended up with an illness of sorts a few days after arrival.  I was turned on to some good Chinese herbs that cleared up the body aches, stuffy/runny nose, and fever within a couple of days. But the peak of feeling really crappy was on New Years Eve and so I ended up staying home and watching movies.  This was actually just fine with me as I’ve never been a big fan of going out on that particular night no matter what country I’m in.  I was, however, presented with the ethical dilemmas of intellectual property rights and obscene amounts of packaging all with the seemingly simple act of watching movies.  DVD ‘rental’ is not really an option here as far as I can see.  (I kept my Netflix streaming account but the selection is limited.) BUYING pirated movies is the norm.  Some are sold in the street but even the DVD stores carry mostly pirated material.  And then there’s the packaging… ugh.  See this photo of The King’s Speech?  

 There is the plastic bag the actual DVD goes in, then the plastic bag slides into that smiley-faced cardboard envelope, that envelope is tucked into the shiny paper sleeve which is then stuffed into the bigger cardboard envelope… all of which then slides into the covering plastic case.  It’s unfathomably excessive.  I struggle with both the pirating and the packaging… but until I find an alternative, as this is my main source of entertainment down here, I will stay off of my soap-box to avoid being a hypocrite.

Ok, on to a few irksome idiosyncrasies that have taken some acclimatizing:

The suburb that I live in, Daxing, is about an hour South of Beijing by subway.  It is pretty removed from the international scene that IS Beijing.  This is both good and bad.  On the positive side, I enjoy a much lower cost of living and get to experience a little more of ‘real’ China.  On the negative side, next to no one here speaks English.  In the heart of Beijing, most everyone, if they do not speak English with some fluency, has at least been educated or exposed to it and can understand and/or speak some common phrases.  To be clear, I didn’t come to China expecting people to speak “my” language.  However, when choosing a teaching job in the Beijing area, it can be much easier to get along on your own without the assistance of a translator if you do actually live in the city, and not out in, what many consider to be, the boondocks.

Most of the people that live in this suburb have rarely see a ‘foreigner’ in person and some of them have never in their lifetime seen any other race but their own… and it shows.  This area, not too long ago, was quite rural.  The development and construction over the past decade or so has transformed the place,  but not necessarily the people.  The stares I get from them are consistent and constant.  It took a little getting used to. If they were looking with kind curiosity, it would be fine… but very few of them are.  The people that I pass on the street that do a double take, and then smile at me… those are the minority.  Even though I’m doing my best to be friendly and keep a smile on my face…it’s like they’re literally jarred out of their world when they see me.  The majority will see me, do a double take and then gawk at me as if I was literally from outer space… or like they’ve seen me on t.v. but not in real life… I really can’t put my finger on the facial expression yet… it’s a mixture of looking surprised, dumbfounded, curious, but (oddly) pissed off and/or frightened.  I’m describing the majority, but not ALL.  Some could care less (or at least act like it) and some are actually friendly.  It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced.  At first it was sort of fun… having hundreds of people giving me that much attention can definitely feed the ego!  But it didn’t take long for it to become annoying.  Especially now after having been here for about 6weeks… I sort of feel like, “Oh come on! Get over it!”  But I quickly remind myself that I’m seeing new people every day.  Even though I’m a ways out of the big city, Daxing still has a population of about 672,000. And it may be THIS person’s very first time seeing a white woman in their town… and this may never go away... at least not during my tenure.  I do my best to be polite and smile, but have learned to just go about my business…….. and let them stare.

Those that are actually friendly will often approach me with a “Hello!” It’s the most common (and obvious) thing people know how to say in English, so they will test it out to make sure they’ve got it right.  The women will inevitably tell me I’m “very beautiful” within about 30 seconds of meeting me, which is also a nice ego boost, but I’ve learned that it doesn’t mean beautiful the way most Americans understand beautiful, it actually means something like, “I like your white skin” or “I envy your whiteness.”   I have been reminded of one of the absurd incongruities of the human experience (or maybe just the female human experience) and it goes back to a basic ‘grass is greener’ symptom of dissatisfaction with our physical selves.  In America, the majority of the white population wants to be darker.  Being tan is more attractive.  Many people will PAY MONEY to subject themselves to cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation to make their skin darker.  But in China, the women don’t want the dark skin they have, they want to be light-skinned because they see THAT as being more attractive.  They will AVOID the sun because it will make them darker. And it is hard to find a skin cream or moisturizer here that does not have a “whitening” agent in it.  I haven’t done the research but I would bet they are cancer-causing concoctions as well.  

If the people here aren’t staring at me, then they’re spitting… not AT me… just anywhere.  I am not intending this to be a “rip-on-the-Chinese-people” section, it is just MY perspective of my acculturating experience.  I was warned about the spitting before coming… but that forewarning did nothing to lessen the disgusting and crude nature of it.  I know that it isn’t intended to be offensive, but it is.  Anyone that knows me knows that I’m far from an uppity, hoity-toity, etiquette-stricken, person… but there are some things… that, well… require significant forbearance.  To not make a disgusted face, or look incredulously at a lot of what goes on, is a daily practice.

I understand some of it.  The air is thick with pollution.  The pollution causes a thickening of the mucus linings as a protection mechanism for the immune system and the people are taught that it’s best to GET IT OUT!  I don’t disagree.  It’s the ‘where and how’ that I take issue with.  Their plan??  Anywhere and anyhow.  You know the sound that accompanies a real good loogie-hocking??  That is a recurrent sound when walking anywhere outdoors.  It is normal practice for men AND women, so not only do I have to WATCH where I walk, I have to LISTEN for where to best walk to avoid stepping in a fresh gob or being caught in the expectorate crossfire.  Grossed out yet??  Yeah, me too.  It’s a whole different way of defensive walking, for sure!  I love to use my iPod on my walk to work because not only do I get to hear some podcasts in English but it also blocks out the disgusting sounds.  It’s quite risky though because I feel partially handicapped in my defense against the projectile spewing with my earbuds blocking the aural clues. 

Maybe I should leave the slurping for another time… but it fits in so nicely here.  I’ll keep it short.  Another shared public experience is eating, and one good part of this (if it's indoors) is that there is no (or very little) throat and nasal clearing. HOWEVER, the spitting is replaced by slurping!  MAJOR slurping!  If you order noodles... it is not considered impolite to slurp them... with great force... in fact, once again it's the norm. Whether it's a casual or very formal dining experience... if there are noodles or soup... there will be slurping.  Compared to the spitting though I feel that this is one that I can tolerate.  After awhile it's really quite amusing.  In fact, I even caught myself slurping a little bit the other day while eating a bowl of noodles.  In the privacy of my own home though, of course.  I'm not ready to take my slurping into public.
If I report that I’ve started spitting… someone please send a plane for me, ok?