AMWF love stories | Speaking of China

Chapter 73: Finding Friends in Unfriendly Shanghai

Typing on a black computer keyboard — When my computer needed fixing in Shanghai, I discovered a helpful -- and friendly -- face from the most unlikely person: a computer-chat addicted, shy Shanghai college kid.

In the city of Shanghai, undulating with more than 17 million people, you still can feel lonely. After being here for over five months, I still didn’t feel like I had the same reliable, warm friendships that I remembered from Hangzhou. I had the company of John, my Chinese boyfriend, but I wanted other people, new friends, to share my life with. Some say that’s the flavor of Shanghai — a snobbish city that brands any non-Shanghainese as outsiders.

But not everyone in Shanghai snubbed John and I, as we discovered a kindly soul in the son of our downstairs neighbors, born and raised in Shanghai.

We didn’t know much about this young man, at first. He spent his evenings on the computer, using a popular Chinese chat application called QQ — the arrhythmic chirp like a vital signs monitor, reminding us, begrudgingly, that he was still around. If anything, it was an annoying reminder. He often stayed up late, blaring the television downstairs and disturbing our sleep.

But then we discovered another disturbance — internet spam. Continue reading “Chapter 73: Finding Friends in Unfriendly Shanghai”

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Chapter 72: Private Parts in China

Jeans zippered down — When I need a doctor to look at my private parts in China, I am reminded just how elusive privacy really is.

To a foreigner, the most precious resource in China might just be privacy. If you start out as an English teacher, like I did, you learn to roll with untimely knocks at your door, appearing before your students in pajamas, or well-intentioned Chinese forcing medicine after medicine on your poor weary foreign self that you wouldn’t even let your best friend see. Some moments and circumstances demand a privacy that China just can’t give us.

I desperately needed privacy this one weekend in early August when I sought help for what every woman likes to refer to as her “female problems.”

Chinese hospitals work like this. You go to the information/check-in desk at the front, usually mobbed by people, and shove yourself in as you announce your symptoms, in front of everyone there. Easy enough if you have a cough or headache. But what do you do when it’s a little more, well, personal?

“I need to see the gynecological department,” I told them. Surely, this was the perfect solution — by naming the department, the nurse would know I needed a little help under the hood, and get me registered to see a doctor. Continue reading “Chapter 72: Private Parts in China”

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Chapter 71: Migrant Workers in Our Staircase

Chinese migrants — When a noisy Shanghai city works project brings migrant workers into our home -- literally -- I begin to wonder: just whose life is being disturbed?

Our neighborhood still echoes with a sour symphony of drills and hammers as the city of Shanghai makes water line repairs and fire extinguisher replacements.

The project finally reached our house in mid July, 2003, with work starting at the convenient hour of 6am (convenient, that is, from the point of view of Shanghai, which would never have its workforce toil in the heat of the day). The swarthy-faced men descended on our home like an invading army, with the grimaced, sweaty brows of exhausted soldiers in a foreign land. The truth is, Shanghai probably was a foreign place to them, because they had the look of migrant workers, perhaps from Anhui Province (which supplied many of the Shanghai migrants). I should know, because I walked over them, napping on the wooden staircase leading up to my apartment — the entire house oozed with grimy, slumbering men, as if they had just magically grown out of the cracks after I left for work that morning. Continue reading “Chapter 71: Migrant Workers in Our Staircase”

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Chapter 70: Tested Under the Shanghai Heat

oriental pearl tower — Under the fierce July heat in Shanghai, I was tested when the neighborhood filled with the din of a city works project.

Shanghai’s July heat has a way of testing you. Barely a month ago, you were still in that delightful Shanghai Spring — with its warm breezes perfumed in osmanthus and peach blossoms. But suddenly, the romance is over, and you discover you’re locked in a pressurized sauna. You almost have to part the humid-heavy air aside as you walk down the streets, now weighed down with moisture beading all over your face and body. It’s a public penance, where everyone must pay for those golden Springs and Autumns with molten, unbearable summers.

As July began to strangle Shanghai in searing heat and humidity, I felt strangled once again in my neighborhood as yet another source of noise and confusion marched through our lane. Continue reading “Chapter 70: Tested Under the Shanghai Heat”

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Chapter 69: The Bad Luck Kittens

Newborn kitten in someone's hands — Someone in Shanghai dumped newborn kittens into a garbage can near my office -- all over superstition. I wonder when luck was more important than life.

Black kittens with soft white paws don’t belong in the garbage can. But that’s where they were, carelessly tossed into a dumpster near my office in Shanghai. Only days old, these tiny, partially blind bundles of fur were saved by what nature gave them — plaintive mewing that drew the attention of a cleaning attendant. Somehow, the cleaning attendants must have known that a couple of the trade show girls in our company had a soft spot for animals — because there they were, in front of the womens bathroom on my floor, trying to nurse them back to health with eye-dropper filled with milk.

I’ve raised kittens all my life, and this miniature feline nativity drew me in instantly — but not without drama. Continue reading “Chapter 69: The Bad Luck Kittens”

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Chapter 68: The Soliciting Shanghai Peddlers

three-wheeled bicycle in China piled with junk — Riding a loaded down, rickety, three-wheeled bicycle (like this one), peddlers infiltrated my community, with its "no solicitor" signs posted at every gate.

“No soliciting.”

These words, written in black Chinese characters on a rusting white sign hung at each gate into my new community — a traditional Long Tang — read more like a dare than a warning. The one guard station, at the southern gate, stood empty more than half the time. The other two gates never locked, even though each one had a rusty red loop that could have easily held a lock of some kind — but it never did. Nothing about the setup suggested security, or even the attempt to stop solicitors. It might as well been a prison with all of its doors open, with a sign hanging at the door that said “no escaping.”

John and I escaped here, to Luwan District, after post-midnight garbage runs disturbed our sleep night after night. The nighttime here lay as dark and still as the streets, with their garage-door-like storefronts shuttered tight, the only sound a stray taxi here or a drunkard hobbling there. It was the night we hoped for, after a wrenching departure from our old apartment. “It’s very quiet here,” the real estate agent assured John with nodding confidence. For once, the agent was right.

But he forgot to tell John about one thing — the days and, especially, the daytime peddlers, crooning their wares as they bicycled in and out of the lanes of our community. Continue reading “Chapter 68: The Soliciting Shanghai Peddlers”

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Chapter 67: One Landlord, One Less Deposit

faucet on a bathtub — When John and I decide to move in Shanghai -- before our lease is up -- all understanding gets flushed down the drain by a not-so-understanding landlord.

Changning — the long peace — was never meant to last. That’s what I discover when we asked the landlord, a Shanghai native, for permission to move. He was sympathetic about the garbage problem, even understanding. Or so we thought.

“You ruined the tub, and I need to deduct the costs from your deposit,” accused the landlord.

John, my Chinese boyfriend, and I were stunned. The tub was a scratched-up hull of its former self when we moved in. How could the landlord — a man John once described as “reasonable” — suddenly turn against us? Continue reading “Chapter 67: One Landlord, One Less Deposit”

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Chapter 66: Garbage in the Long Peace

Garbage dumpster — John and I may have lived in a Shanghai district called "Long Peace" -- but nighttime was anything but peaceful once we discovered the nighttime garbage collection.

Changning, the district where I live, may be called “long peace” — but there’s nothing peaceful about evenings in our community.

Every night at 3am, 4am or 5am, so, a garbage truck growls outside of our window, its grrrrrrrrrrrr like the overture to this reckless opera outdoors. Then comes the clang, clang, clang signaling the swift climax, as the garbage lands into its final resting place. This nightly drama has John and I restless — literally.

No one else really notices. Continue reading “Chapter 66: Garbage in the Long Peace”

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Chapter 65: SARS Propaganda and False Security

People's militia — While SARS plagued China in May 2003, SARS propaganda plagued the TV reels on the bus I took to work (image of 1958 China propaganda from Wikimedia Commons).

The slogan of Oriental Pearl Moving Television — broadcasted on LCD TVs installed in the buses I rode downtown — was this: “you can learn about all of the news under the sun without stepping foot off the bus”.

But during SARS, it was more like: “you can hear all of the SARS propaganda under the sun, without stepping foot off the bus.”

In the thirty minutes or so I spent on the bus, I saw five different spots — repeated at least three times:

1. Moments from real people “on the front lines” fighting against SARS. A woman passes out propaganda sheets about SARS. A public servant examines travelers at the railway station. A factory worker sews up masks. A cleaning lady disinfects subway cars. A little girl washes her hands. A doctor appears in a mask. The ending message? “This is our battlefield. Fight to the end, we’ll certainly be successful.” Continue reading “Chapter 65: SARS Propaganda and False Security”

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Chapter 64: Living in the Face of SARS

Doctor in a surgical mask — As a friend goes into quarantine, and the virus closes in on John's hometown in the countryside, I had to learn how to live with the threat of SARS, everyday.

I could have been quarantined.

One of the employees at Alibaba — the Internet company I interviewed at in Hangzhou — contracted SARS while attending the Canton Fair. On her second visit to the hospital, she discovered her illness was no typical flu. And just like that, everyone who worked in Alibaba — and other companies sharing the office building — was put under quarantine in early May, 2003, including John’s high school classmate, Douglas.

I wanted so much to stay in Hangzhou only months before, and work for Alibaba. Weeks after I moved to Shanghai and began work for the global media company, Alibaba even called to offer me the job — which of course I turned down. I came so close to this company. I could have been another casualty of SARS.

As SARS continued to spread, before long it began to touch the people you know and care about. Continue reading “Chapter 64: Living in the Face of SARS”

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