Friday, March 26, 2004
THE ORDINARY AND THE EXTRAORDINARY: DAILY LIVING ON QINGCHUNLU
See photos of the apartment.
It’s been a very long time since we’ve lived in an apartment. In fact, almost 40 years. When we were first married, we moved into a brand new apartment, where we lived for less than a year. Ken was not too fond of being on the 6th floor with access to the outdoors only by balcony. And we both wanted a house, and fortunately we were able to afford one in nearby Erindale Woodlands.
There are, of course, aspects of apartment life which are the same the world over. Always there are the people upstairs who walk too heavily, wear hobnailed boots and drop heavy things on the tile floors at odd hours during the day. They also have to pee in the middle of the night about the same time we do, and because the bathrooms are one above the other, we hear every tinkle in the toilet. There’s someone who plays popular Chinese songs at 6:30 am, singing along in a very off key voice, sort of a home version of the very popular karaoke. And during the Spring Festival, there were two would-be trumpet virtuosos practicing together around dinnertime each night. Thankfully they have gone somewhere else, because Quentin Marsalis they were not! And the overture to every meal is the staccato of chopping, chopping, chopping, a sound which echoes from floor to floor.
We have, however, been spared the prolonged wails of a crying baby, and as far as we can tell, have no pets in our building. However, we have been treated to many a night of cat howling - one of the rites of spring. The alcove outside our bathroom window seems to be the favorite feline gathering place for an evening of serenading. The residents here are very hard working, and there are no wild parties to keep us awake at night. We have recently realized that there’s another reason for the quiet which descends here around 9:30 pm. Ours is a gated building, and that gate is locked at 10:00 every night, not to be opened until 6:00 the next morning. So everyone is here before closing time! We think that late comers or early risers jump the fence, or else make special arrangements with the gate keeper who lives down the street, to have the gate opened for them.
Water has been our most ongoing source of entertainment here. The day we moved in there was water all over the kitchen floor, the result of an overflow from the drain which runs beside an underneath our kitchen cupboards. At the time we thought little of it, even though we spent some time in our bare feet mopping up the water which continued to come with each cycle of the washing machine somewhere on one of the five floors above us. Since then, flooding in our kitchen on washday has become a normal routine. We’ve had the maintenance men here several times, and each time they ream out the pipes, make a dreadful mess, work diligently for an hour or so, get the problem fixed and cheerfully leave, all smiles with their success. And for a few weeks things are fine. And then the water comes again. Now when we hear the familiar gurgle from the kitchen pipes, we groan in anticipation of yet another clean up. The ones that occur in the middle of making dinner are the most annoying - usually Ken mops while Judy continues to cook - quite a feat in our very small kitchen.
The bathroom also gives us much entertainment. One Sunday afternoon the connection between the main water pipe and the one leading to the sink burst. Great sprays of water in all directions. Ken was soaked by the time he got to the shut off tap, and the bathroom was awash in water. A call to maintenance netted us five men in the bathroom, as well as Keyan and Xiankui who came because our first frantic call was to them -- their Chinese explanation was much more effective than ours had been! And one morning the shower head gave up the ghost and shot water in every direction but through the little holes, which were plugged with who knows how much past usage.
And then there’s the toilet, whose flushing mechanism has never worked properly. And because ours is some kind of exotic style of toilet, no replacement parts are to be had anywhere. Ken has been most inventive in devising various flushing substitutes, many involving paper clips, string, metal chains and safety pins. Presently we have a chop stick which is the handle for flushing. It works remarkably well, and is, we think, suitable for China.
One evening in early December, as winter was setting in earnestly with blasts of cold coming all the way from Siberia, our Chinese teacher arrived with a special gift for us. We unwrapped a bright green tube with a plastic backing and a zipper running around 3 sides. When we finally gave up trying to guess what it was, Jerri told us it was for our toilet seat, and quickly zipped it on for us. All winter we’ve been spared the jolting cold of the first few seconds of contact between our bottoms and the seat. When we remove it at the end of March, we will officially begin spring. A new kind of landmark for us.
We are so used to the cooking arrangements here that we hardly think to describe them. However, they are so different from our kitchen in Annan, that a few words here would probably be in order. All over this part of China, apartments are equipped with outdoor rooms which to North Americans look like glassed in balconies, but are in fact cooking areas. Blue ventilation pipes protruding from one of the windows are the clue. Food is prepared in the small kitchen beside and moved outside for cooking. This area can be closed off with a glass door, which is helpful in the winter, when this area is quite cold and often used as an extra fridge. On very cold nights, we bring our stored fruits and veggies into the kitchen to prevent them from freezing. We know how cold it’s been the night before when we find that the water in the kettle has frozen solid. Everyone has two ring gas burners which sit on top of a storage cupboard, with a ventilation hood above. The hood has been installed at Chinese height, which means we’re always bumping our foreheads on it when we lean forward to see how the food is coming along. It can be a very cold place in winter, although it quickly warms up when we put on the kettle to boil. Ovens are unheard of here. Thus foods are fried, steamed or microwaved. Baked foods are purchased at the local supermarket.
Utilities are handled in a very matter of fact manner here. The water lady rings our doorbell one evening in the first week of each month. In she comes, wishing us a good evening in Chinese, her clipboard and pen at the ready. She goes to the gauges in both the kitchen and bathroom, does some math and tells us how much we owe her. We have a card which she uses to record the present charges, we pay her, she gives us change, thanks us and is gone. Our monthly water bill is about 25Y. The gas lady does the same thing, but isn’t as punctual. We began to think that our cooking gas was free because we didn’t meet her until this past month. However, the charge from September to February was only 58Y, which we were able to pay her on the spot. Our biggest monthly expense is the phone, not because we make many phone calls but because we use this line for access to the web for the computer. And we spend a lot of time on line. Our monthly bill is about 200Y, which we pay at the phone company offices a few blocks away. This fact we learned the hard way, when our phone line was cut off in November because we hadn’t paid our bill. No one had told us the bill paying procedure, and without thinking much about it, we expected a bill to arrive at our door, like Ma Bell. However, there is no mail delivery to our apartment, and no mailboxes anywhere. Another detail we only realized much later! But, as one would expect, there was a re-hook-up charge added to our bill... like Ma Bell!
Electricity is another trip to a bank a few more blocks away. We have a plastic loadable card which we take with us. We give the clerk an amount of money and she loads it electronically on our card. We bring the card back and put it into the meter outside our apartment door, where it is read and the number of kwh are transferred to the meter. Again, we had no idea how the electricity worked until one dark evening as we fumbled for the keys to open our apartment door, we noticed bright red numbers on our meter indicating we had only 35 kwh remaining. The fact that the hallway was dark was the only reason we could see the numbers! Immediately we implemented an austerity program, using as little electricity as possible -- how much electricity is in a kilowatt anyway? Then we called Keyan to find out what to do. Now, of course, we’re old hands at all this - much less exciting.
Garbage goes out in whatever plastic bags are available from shopping, and is deposited in very beat up, grimy bins which sit just outside the gate (see above) to our compound. Garbage is collected once a day in a big blue truck with a special mechanism for lifting the bins to the truck’s hopper. There’s a driver and two workers wearing white facemasks who stand on top of the hopper and push the garbage into the hold. By the time they get to our place, the hold is pretty full and we’ve seen them using all their combined weight to force the garbage in. At all times of the day, garbage pickers go through the bins, mining plastic bags, usable dishes, light bulbs, bits of metal, clothing, cans and bottles -- anything they can sell. They have a very organized way of doing this, with special boxes and baskets on their bike carts in which they stow the treasures they’ve found. One day on our way to do some shopping, I put out a pretty red cardboard bag with string handles which had come with a sweater I had bought. When we returned from the store, we spied a woman with our bag swinging from her arm as she walked up the hill on her way home. Garbage is fair game for all!
We have a huge clock in our living room, which ticks the seconds off as a background sound to living here. One morning it was silent, and when Ken investigated he found that it needed three batteries, two of which were quite corroded in their mounts. When he put in the new batteries, the ticking commenced and life went on...until later that evening when we heard someone speaking Chinese in our living room. At the time, we were sitting with one of our students and our Chinese teacher in the dining room. They told us that someone was telling us the time. We thought we were hearing things until it happened again an hour later. When we investigated, we realized that the clock was speaking to us. Those two corroded batteries had obviously not worked for a long time, but when replaced with fresh batteries resumed their job. Agreeing this was a distraction we did not need, we removed the batteries and thus silenced the clock.
The neighborhood is still a constant source of entertainment for us. The pool table down the street has remained in place all winter and now that the sun warms up the area, it’s very much in use again. The noodle guys across the street were closed down in November for health reasons and have been replaced by an ice cream and polar bar franchise. A new air conditioning business is in the process of moving in further up the street, and the small variety store on the next corner is under renovation. Bike carts with fresh pineapples and strawberries have been on the street since late January. Truckloads of last fall’s apples regularly appear from neighboring farms. There are even a few of last fall’s cabbages available, but at an outrageous price - 10 Y each.
Our biggest find has been the tailor who has a small cubbyhole up the street and a mannequin outside to let people know he’s there. We’ve been bringing him lengths of fabric for months now, and he’s made us suits and vests and pants and jackets and shirts. He’s very fast and careful, and we enjoy working with him. He says his business has improved since we started coming to him, and Ken swears that his mannequin is much better dressed these days. We take a Chinese speaker with us, and draw pictures of what we want, or bring photos from magazines. We have a jolly time with him, squeezing our way into his space, past the treadle sewing machine with all the fancy gold designs on it. He’s originally from Suzhou, near Shanghai, a famous silk making region of China, so he knows how to work with this wonderful fabric.
We both have visited the Huairou Number 1 Hospital which is a few blocks south of the school. It’s a well-equipped place with heated rooms and very cold drafty corridors, especially in the winter months. The staff members are quite curious about us, asking whoever comes with us many questions about where we’re from and what we’re doing here. Ken visited a dentist there last week, and was once again compared to Dr. Norman Bethune because of his appearance – a very prestigious comparison, indeed! It’s interesting to note that this legendary Canadian doctor is still uppermost in the minds of so many Chinese. When we arrived for the first time, we registered (4Y) and then went to the proper floor for treatment. Fourth floor for dentists, first floor for lab work. These departments work like walk-in clinics. Ken’s dentist bill was 50Y, which he paid on the main floor and returned to the dentist with the receipt. The hospital also fills prescriptions, which we pay for first before we move on to the dispensing line with our receipt. One must never lose a receipt in China! They are always stamped with an official emblem in red ink. Dr. Liu, who tests Judy’s blood, is very interested in improving her English. The two of them have long conversations while the centrifuge does its job, Dr. Liu ‘s words overcoming the filter of her white medical mask. This hospital is one of only 3 in the Beijing area which has this particular equipment. She is very genial and caring, taking great pains to explain the computer read-out which lists the various blood test levels measured. (Judy sends these results by email to her family doctor in Owen Sound, who then adjusts medication if necessary.) All in all, we are very confident and comfortable with the medical facilities we have experienced here.
One of Ken’s students lives upstairs in our building and comes down every once in a while to practice his English pronunciation. His Mom made us dumplings for Spring Festival. We exchange greetings with all the residents here, and admire the children and grandchildren introduced to us. The fruit man on the corner always slips some extra apples into our shopping bag when we stop at his stall. We still attract curious stares, as much for our white hair as for our western looks, but we feel we belong and people have been most gracious in making us welcome.
Now, if we could just figure out how to silence the cats…!
See photos of the apartment.
It’s been a very long time since we’ve lived in an apartment. In fact, almost 40 years. When we were first married, we moved into a brand new apartment, where we lived for less than a year. Ken was not too fond of being on the 6th floor with access to the outdoors only by balcony. And we both wanted a house, and fortunately we were able to afford one in nearby Erindale Woodlands.
There are, of course, aspects of apartment life which are the same the world over. Always there are the people upstairs who walk too heavily, wear hobnailed boots and drop heavy things on the tile floors at odd hours during the day. They also have to pee in the middle of the night about the same time we do, and because the bathrooms are one above the other, we hear every tinkle in the toilet. There’s someone who plays popular Chinese songs at 6:30 am, singing along in a very off key voice, sort of a home version of the very popular karaoke. And during the Spring Festival, there were two would-be trumpet virtuosos practicing together around dinnertime each night. Thankfully they have gone somewhere else, because Quentin Marsalis they were not! And the overture to every meal is the staccato of chopping, chopping, chopping, a sound which echoes from floor to floor.
We have, however, been spared the prolonged wails of a crying baby, and as far as we can tell, have no pets in our building. However, we have been treated to many a night of cat howling - one of the rites of spring. The alcove outside our bathroom window seems to be the favorite feline gathering place for an evening of serenading. The residents here are very hard working, and there are no wild parties to keep us awake at night. We have recently realized that there’s another reason for the quiet which descends here around 9:30 pm. Ours is a gated building, and that gate is locked at 10:00 every night, not to be opened until 6:00 the next morning. So everyone is here before closing time! We think that late comers or early risers jump the fence, or else make special arrangements with the gate keeper who lives down the street, to have the gate opened for them.
Water has been our most ongoing source of entertainment here. The day we moved in there was water all over the kitchen floor, the result of an overflow from the drain which runs beside an underneath our kitchen cupboards. At the time we thought little of it, even though we spent some time in our bare feet mopping up the water which continued to come with each cycle of the washing machine somewhere on one of the five floors above us. Since then, flooding in our kitchen on washday has become a normal routine. We’ve had the maintenance men here several times, and each time they ream out the pipes, make a dreadful mess, work diligently for an hour or so, get the problem fixed and cheerfully leave, all smiles with their success. And for a few weeks things are fine. And then the water comes again. Now when we hear the familiar gurgle from the kitchen pipes, we groan in anticipation of yet another clean up. The ones that occur in the middle of making dinner are the most annoying - usually Ken mops while Judy continues to cook - quite a feat in our very small kitchen.
The bathroom also gives us much entertainment. One Sunday afternoon the connection between the main water pipe and the one leading to the sink burst. Great sprays of water in all directions. Ken was soaked by the time he got to the shut off tap, and the bathroom was awash in water. A call to maintenance netted us five men in the bathroom, as well as Keyan and Xiankui who came because our first frantic call was to them -- their Chinese explanation was much more effective than ours had been! And one morning the shower head gave up the ghost and shot water in every direction but through the little holes, which were plugged with who knows how much past usage.
And then there’s the toilet, whose flushing mechanism has never worked properly. And because ours is some kind of exotic style of toilet, no replacement parts are to be had anywhere. Ken has been most inventive in devising various flushing substitutes, many involving paper clips, string, metal chains and safety pins. Presently we have a chop stick which is the handle for flushing. It works remarkably well, and is, we think, suitable for China.
One evening in early December, as winter was setting in earnestly with blasts of cold coming all the way from Siberia, our Chinese teacher arrived with a special gift for us. We unwrapped a bright green tube with a plastic backing and a zipper running around 3 sides. When we finally gave up trying to guess what it was, Jerri told us it was for our toilet seat, and quickly zipped it on for us. All winter we’ve been spared the jolting cold of the first few seconds of contact between our bottoms and the seat. When we remove it at the end of March, we will officially begin spring. A new kind of landmark for us.
We are so used to the cooking arrangements here that we hardly think to describe them. However, they are so different from our kitchen in Annan, that a few words here would probably be in order. All over this part of China, apartments are equipped with outdoor rooms which to North Americans look like glassed in balconies, but are in fact cooking areas. Blue ventilation pipes protruding from one of the windows are the clue. Food is prepared in the small kitchen beside and moved outside for cooking. This area can be closed off with a glass door, which is helpful in the winter, when this area is quite cold and often used as an extra fridge. On very cold nights, we bring our stored fruits and veggies into the kitchen to prevent them from freezing. We know how cold it’s been the night before when we find that the water in the kettle has frozen solid. Everyone has two ring gas burners which sit on top of a storage cupboard, with a ventilation hood above. The hood has been installed at Chinese height, which means we’re always bumping our foreheads on it when we lean forward to see how the food is coming along. It can be a very cold place in winter, although it quickly warms up when we put on the kettle to boil. Ovens are unheard of here. Thus foods are fried, steamed or microwaved. Baked foods are purchased at the local supermarket.
Utilities are handled in a very matter of fact manner here. The water lady rings our doorbell one evening in the first week of each month. In she comes, wishing us a good evening in Chinese, her clipboard and pen at the ready. She goes to the gauges in both the kitchen and bathroom, does some math and tells us how much we owe her. We have a card which she uses to record the present charges, we pay her, she gives us change, thanks us and is gone. Our monthly water bill is about 25Y. The gas lady does the same thing, but isn’t as punctual. We began to think that our cooking gas was free because we didn’t meet her until this past month. However, the charge from September to February was only 58Y, which we were able to pay her on the spot. Our biggest monthly expense is the phone, not because we make many phone calls but because we use this line for access to the web for the computer. And we spend a lot of time on line. Our monthly bill is about 200Y, which we pay at the phone company offices a few blocks away. This fact we learned the hard way, when our phone line was cut off in November because we hadn’t paid our bill. No one had told us the bill paying procedure, and without thinking much about it, we expected a bill to arrive at our door, like Ma Bell. However, there is no mail delivery to our apartment, and no mailboxes anywhere. Another detail we only realized much later! But, as one would expect, there was a re-hook-up charge added to our bill... like Ma Bell!
Electricity is another trip to a bank a few more blocks away. We have a plastic loadable card which we take with us. We give the clerk an amount of money and she loads it electronically on our card. We bring the card back and put it into the meter outside our apartment door, where it is read and the number of kwh are transferred to the meter. Again, we had no idea how the electricity worked until one dark evening as we fumbled for the keys to open our apartment door, we noticed bright red numbers on our meter indicating we had only 35 kwh remaining. The fact that the hallway was dark was the only reason we could see the numbers! Immediately we implemented an austerity program, using as little electricity as possible -- how much electricity is in a kilowatt anyway? Then we called Keyan to find out what to do. Now, of course, we’re old hands at all this - much less exciting.
Garbage goes out in whatever plastic bags are available from shopping, and is deposited in very beat up, grimy bins which sit just outside the gate (see above) to our compound. Garbage is collected once a day in a big blue truck with a special mechanism for lifting the bins to the truck’s hopper. There’s a driver and two workers wearing white facemasks who stand on top of the hopper and push the garbage into the hold. By the time they get to our place, the hold is pretty full and we’ve seen them using all their combined weight to force the garbage in. At all times of the day, garbage pickers go through the bins, mining plastic bags, usable dishes, light bulbs, bits of metal, clothing, cans and bottles -- anything they can sell. They have a very organized way of doing this, with special boxes and baskets on their bike carts in which they stow the treasures they’ve found. One day on our way to do some shopping, I put out a pretty red cardboard bag with string handles which had come with a sweater I had bought. When we returned from the store, we spied a woman with our bag swinging from her arm as she walked up the hill on her way home. Garbage is fair game for all!
We have a huge clock in our living room, which ticks the seconds off as a background sound to living here. One morning it was silent, and when Ken investigated he found that it needed three batteries, two of which were quite corroded in their mounts. When he put in the new batteries, the ticking commenced and life went on...until later that evening when we heard someone speaking Chinese in our living room. At the time, we were sitting with one of our students and our Chinese teacher in the dining room. They told us that someone was telling us the time. We thought we were hearing things until it happened again an hour later. When we investigated, we realized that the clock was speaking to us. Those two corroded batteries had obviously not worked for a long time, but when replaced with fresh batteries resumed their job. Agreeing this was a distraction we did not need, we removed the batteries and thus silenced the clock.
The neighborhood is still a constant source of entertainment for us. The pool table down the street has remained in place all winter and now that the sun warms up the area, it’s very much in use again. The noodle guys across the street were closed down in November for health reasons and have been replaced by an ice cream and polar bar franchise. A new air conditioning business is in the process of moving in further up the street, and the small variety store on the next corner is under renovation. Bike carts with fresh pineapples and strawberries have been on the street since late January. Truckloads of last fall’s apples regularly appear from neighboring farms. There are even a few of last fall’s cabbages available, but at an outrageous price - 10 Y each.
Our biggest find has been the tailor who has a small cubbyhole up the street and a mannequin outside to let people know he’s there. We’ve been bringing him lengths of fabric for months now, and he’s made us suits and vests and pants and jackets and shirts. He’s very fast and careful, and we enjoy working with him. He says his business has improved since we started coming to him, and Ken swears that his mannequin is much better dressed these days. We take a Chinese speaker with us, and draw pictures of what we want, or bring photos from magazines. We have a jolly time with him, squeezing our way into his space, past the treadle sewing machine with all the fancy gold designs on it. He’s originally from Suzhou, near Shanghai, a famous silk making region of China, so he knows how to work with this wonderful fabric.
We both have visited the Huairou Number 1 Hospital which is a few blocks south of the school. It’s a well-equipped place with heated rooms and very cold drafty corridors, especially in the winter months. The staff members are quite curious about us, asking whoever comes with us many questions about where we’re from and what we’re doing here. Ken visited a dentist there last week, and was once again compared to Dr. Norman Bethune because of his appearance – a very prestigious comparison, indeed! It’s interesting to note that this legendary Canadian doctor is still uppermost in the minds of so many Chinese. When we arrived for the first time, we registered (4Y) and then went to the proper floor for treatment. Fourth floor for dentists, first floor for lab work. These departments work like walk-in clinics. Ken’s dentist bill was 50Y, which he paid on the main floor and returned to the dentist with the receipt. The hospital also fills prescriptions, which we pay for first before we move on to the dispensing line with our receipt. One must never lose a receipt in China! They are always stamped with an official emblem in red ink. Dr. Liu, who tests Judy’s blood, is very interested in improving her English. The two of them have long conversations while the centrifuge does its job, Dr. Liu ‘s words overcoming the filter of her white medical mask. This hospital is one of only 3 in the Beijing area which has this particular equipment. She is very genial and caring, taking great pains to explain the computer read-out which lists the various blood test levels measured. (Judy sends these results by email to her family doctor in Owen Sound, who then adjusts medication if necessary.) All in all, we are very confident and comfortable with the medical facilities we have experienced here.
One of Ken’s students lives upstairs in our building and comes down every once in a while to practice his English pronunciation. His Mom made us dumplings for Spring Festival. We exchange greetings with all the residents here, and admire the children and grandchildren introduced to us. The fruit man on the corner always slips some extra apples into our shopping bag when we stop at his stall. We still attract curious stares, as much for our white hair as for our western looks, but we feel we belong and people have been most gracious in making us welcome.
Now, if we could just figure out how to silence the cats…!
All text and photography © copyright Harkaway, 2003 - 2004
