New Apartment

Yesterday was a full and exhausting day. The morning was devoted to gathering up a large sum of cash. I guess that even in the U.S. it would have been troublesome to manage so much, about $1800. Here it was complicated by several factors: ATM machines themselves have a daily limit, the bank where I have the most money also has a daily limit, and not all machines accept all cards. Fortunately, I have three ATM cards and by ingenious combination over the course of two days managed to get all the money. It was down to the wire, though, as far as time was concerned, and I also feel bad for Shenzhen Development Bank, which had a very reliable ATM in a private room. They shelled out something like $750 for me, all told! Though I suppose it can't really hurt them to do that. All these banks though--they feel kind of dinky and tenuous. You kind of worry about them as you would about a fragile child.

I got to the apartment to meet the landlady and there she was, much to my pleasure and relief. She had drawn up a contract for us both to sign, something like a lease but home-made. I cast my eye over it while she explained it point by point. (If I had taken the time to read through every word it would have taken about half an hour, but by looking at it while she explained it I got the gist.) So we signed that and each got a copy. Then she explained to me a lot of things, for example how the electricity and water work.

The apartment comes with two cards, an electricity card and a water card. The way to get electricity is go to the bank and buy a certain number of units, which they record on the card. Then you take the card and stick it into the electricity meter down the hall (each apartment has its own). The meter registers the new balance, and you have electricity until it runs down to zero. Water works the same way, but you buy the units at that apartment complex management office rather than the bank.

I think it interesting how everything here seems to work on the declining balance principle. Really it's a good idea I suppose. In a society as quick-changing and fast-moving as this one, with a notable lack of government control over most transactions, I think a credit system would leave people much more likely to skip out untraceably.

After all these explanations, we set off to find the police station. It is required for any foreigner renting an apartment to go with the landlord to the police station and register, and if this sounds weird, it is, but at least the more knowing landlords expect to do this. Finding the police station was an ordeal in itself, but a boring one (mostly a lot of walking about and asking directions) so I shall skip over it. We found it at last, and the lady behind the window scrutinized my passport, the landlady's ID card, and her "landlord permit," a kind of triple-sized red passport showing that she is legally allowed to rent to place out. They then gave me a little form, which I have to take to some other office, then go back again to the police station.

Chatting with the landlady as we walked back from the station, I learned something interesting, the answer to the riddle of why some landlords are willing to go the police station and some aren't (this the FB people sternly caution us to ask first before committing to renting a place). The landlady explained that if you buy the apartment with a loan or mortgage type thing, you don't get the landlord permit. That you only get when you have bought the place outright, as she apparently did. So I was very lucky to find her. She said she is one of the only people in the whole building who has one. She also mentioned that the builidng is brand new, put up only last year. I was surprised, because although the apartment is quite spotless, the lobby and elevators have a very lived-in feeling. Many of the numbers are worn off the elevator buttons from constant pressing. Well, a whole lot of people do live here. Although it seems like the place is mostly studios, I think living one to a room is the exception, rather than the rule.

Anyway, our next errand was to go buy the electricity at the bank, which she explained very carefully how to do. There was a long wait at the bank, take-a-number like the DMV. I talked some more with the landlady and she asked me about my family (five children! she seemed a tiny bit shocked) and what I want to do when I grow up. She said she is a professor also, teaches something to do with management at another university, I forgot what it was if she even told me. But it was interesting. I debated asking her if being a female professor in China has any extra associated difficulties, but I wasn’t sure if that was polite.

After we got the electricity, I made the short trek back to my hotel. I say short but the day was hot and I was really exhausted and thirsty, so it seemed quite a long way. But I did take a picture of this funny sign on the way: no horses and carts on the freeway!

When I got back to campus, there were mobs of students on it, all moving in. I realized that I had thought of the campus as a dead and quiet sort of place, peaceful, boring. But this was clearly its true state, absolutely packed with excited, chattering kids. I drank a bottle of water, a bottle of "bloom-ade" (which tastes like gatorade but is actually "green orange" juice; there a lot of green orange here), packed up my computer, and set off back down the road to the apartment. The landlady had suggested that if I weren't busy I should try bringing my computer and hooking it up to the internet, as the process might be a little complicated.

It was, rather. Apparently all DSL modems here require a user-name and password. But first I had to figure out how to put it in. We tried installing the software that came with the modem, but it was all in Chinese and that didn't come out on my computer--just a lot of question-marks. After a lot of fiddling, I finally figured out how to switch my computer over to Chinese, and tried it again. Now the password didn't work. The landlady called the former tenant to see if he had changed the password (he had!) and got a new password. This still didn't work. Then the landlady called her daughter and had her explain to me how to do it through Windows XP. Yeah, I guess I should have thought of the whole built-in make a new connection thing, but I had never done this for myself. Someone else had already done it for me. So I did that and it finally worked. But it was all pretty stressful, and my computer still addresses me in Chinese!

Then we waited for the locksmith. The landlady wanted to change the lock just in case the previous tenant had his own copy of the key. "It's just because you are a girl living alone," she said. "I want to make especially sure that you are safe." She is a very nice person, and several times mentioned that if I had any trouble I should make sure to call her. This is a tremendous improvement from my landlord in Taiwan, who WAS the trouble.

While we waited we watched a little TV. She said if I practice watching TV my Chinese would improve tremendously. I have heard this from other people too. People who have the habit of watching TV, I think, find something soothing in the very act of watching so it's a painless way of practicing listening comprehension. But I usually find TV fairly boring at the best of times, and when I don't understand half the words…. Well, that being said, I did find an archeology program that caught my interest for a while. Then we got started talking about history, and the landlady told me many stories from Chinese history. Some I knew, some I had heard of only vaguely, but it was fun to hear someone tell them with such animation. Do Americans tell the biographical details of this or that president hundreds of years ago with such enthusiasm and flourish? Of course, American history doesn't even have enough hundreds to be comparable. In any case, I enjoyed it a lot. This talk of history led to the landlady enumerating for me the five "must-see" sights of Beijing. The first was the Great Wall. The Ming tombs. The Forbidden City. The Summer Palace. And the Alter to Heaven. But, she enjoined, you have to first read up on these places before you go see them, because if you don't then they won't be as meaningful. I agreed to do so.

Now time was stretching pretty long and we were both pretty tired. She asked if I eat dinner at school, because she wanted to make sure I didn't miss the open time? It seemed easy to go along with this excuse, so I did that. She said she would call when the locksmith had come, and then drop them off at the Beida west gate on her way out. (She actually lives far away in a northern suburb. I had asked.) In due time, she did this, and the apartment was mine.

Here are some pictures I took of it. It is hard to get a whole sense of the place, which is just one big long room and a little bathroom off to the side, but I hope you can.