We walked up a dark stairwell. The walls were bare, cold,
undusted by color or personality. It was as austere as a school marm with a
shrew’s soul.
My apartment was on the second floor, though it was really
the first floor on which anyone actually resided, which I later learned was a
sign of respect for my position – traditionally in China, the closer you lived
to the ground, the more important you were thought to be, for you could escape
the apartment more quickly and easily should it ever become engulfed in flames.
I’m sure it didn’t take long for them to wish I’d been on
the top floor.
The apartment was roomy, if spartanly furnished and somewhat
dank. The first room was a bright living room area extending to the right,
complete with television, coffee table, utilitarian sofa, and several
armchairs. Windows on the wall opened to the courtyard and let in plenty of
sun.
To the immediate left was a converted computer room. There
was a single bed in there, but the presence of a desk and desktop made it a
computer room. It, too, was bright due to a large window, which had a direct
view to an empty field adjacent the building and of the East Turkestan hills
and mountains far to the north.
Through the living room was a large main room that I suppose
would have been a dining area for a family. It was foreboding. Dark concrete
floor, dark walls, no windows. High ceiling. Through it at the far end on the
left was a kitchen, barely big enough for the full-size fridge, oven, stove,
and small table within. It, too, had a window view to the open field.
To the immediate left off the main room was the bathroom,
which was dominated by a large tub and a large water heater. There was a
concrete shower stall and a sink dating back to the time of Genghis Khan. A
small window showed the same field as did the kitchen and computer room.
Immediately to the right off the main room, directly across
from the bathroom, was the large master bedroom, flanked on both sides by
bedside tables with lamps as shaky as a meth-head with withdrawals. Against the
far wall was a large armoire, which is too fancy a word for it. But it’s better
than saying “poorly-crafted piece of furniture in which clothing is stored.” A
chest of drawers of similar craftsmanship was on the closer wall. A queen bed
dominated the room, but the best thing about the room was that it led out onto
a balcony, about which the best thing was… let me put it this way:
Stroh’s is shit beer, but when it’s free, it’s less shit.
Free beer beats beer that isn’t.
The balcony was like a Stroh’s. It was a shit balcony more
intended for hanging laundry or for fermenting vegetables – and it smelled
suspiciously like fermented feet. But having a shit balcony was better than not
having a balcony. It was clean, despite the ghosts of vegetables/clothes/feet
past. It had a view of the courtyard, though it’s akin to saying that a Yugo
was a car.
The apartment was like a warehouse-partitioned living space.
It could have been the cheap, drab furniture. It may have been the exposed
ceiling pipes in the kitchen and main room. Or it could have been the
unfashionable, seemingly uncleanable floors.
Regardless, it wouldn’t take much time for me to start longing
for the warehouse aura, as it would soon give way to one of a Chinese jail
cell.