distant ruminations

Ah well, the usual bureaucracy involved in renewing residence permits, transferring foreign expert certificates, and generally doing anything more complicated than breathing, is causing its usual round of headaches. I wouldn’t have noticed had the office fax machine hadn’t thrown a paddy (where in hell did that phrase come from?! I’d be surprised if it has any anti-Irish connotations considering how often my of-Irish-descent mother used it when I was a child, and yet I wouldn’t be surprised, because it was my of-Irish-descent mother who used it most). No big deal, though, after a bit of struggle, we convinced the fax machine to cooperate.

About the only thing I like about this part of town is that, despite the unusually large transient population, there is a real community here. I can hear it in the warmer months when the windows are open and various community activities are happening outside. Things as simple as brothers and sisters (yes, they exist in “one child” China) squabbling, husbands and wives arguing, or various song and dance sessions or gatherings of people just hanging out. It’s the kind of noise I want to hear in the background, the kind of noise that makes a place seem liveable, perhaps even home-like.

I remember the three months we lived in Songyu Xili, not far from BeiGongDa, when we had a primary school outside the back window. Every Monday morning at 8 am, if I wasn’t up already (which was most likely, seeing as that was one of the periods I had no steady employment) I’d be woken up by the National Anthem being blasted out the PA system of the primary school as they started their school assembly. When that noise died down, it was replaced with the clackclackclack of the Eternal Majiang Games played constantly by the laotaitai and a few laotou oustide our side window (our apartment was at the end of the block, giving us windows on three sides). Sure, we were only there for the summer, and the advent of cooler weather would’ve changed the community sounds, and I was really glad for the space and air and light that Tongzhou offered when we moved out there, but still, I have really fond memories of living down there, even if it was only for three months. It felt so much like the kind of place you could settle in to.

I mean, it only took me a day or two to find my beer-, water-, and other staples- suppliers, although I should admit that we were both already reasonably familiar with the area, considering that when we met, I was living at Shuanglong Xiaoqu, just around the corner, and we had many reasons to be passing through that area (the local branch of Jinbaiwan/金百万 being one of the bigger reasons- and damn! that was just 20 metres from our apartment there! What the hell were we thinking when we left?!), but still, it was a really easy place to settle in to.

Can you tell? I’m really, really looking forward to moving back down to that part of Beijing. Even if we’ll be closer to BeiGongDa, we’ll still be very much in the Songyu Li realm of existence, a half hour walk from Panjiayuan (a pleasant half hour walk, I should emphasize), and generally in an area both of us know and love.

Anyway, the point I was going to make was that it’s that feeling of actually living in a real community, even if, by virtue of your skin colour, native language or nationality you’ll never be accepted as a real member of the community, that can really make or break your China experience. Far too many of us foreigners in China find ourselves segregated into either foreign teachers’ accomodation (which is usually completely separate from anybody else’s accomodation; if not, then closer to students’ dorms than regular folks’ community) or those “expat-friendly” ridiculously expensive places common around Beijing’s CBD. Judging from my experience, living in an ordinary, average Beijing residential area both makes you feel much more at home and brings the experience so much closer to home than anything else. And I suspect the same would hold true for the rest of the country.

I hate having to go out to Yizhuang every Monday evening. It’s not just the awkward timing of it, nor is it just the mediocre students. It’s Yizhuang as a whole.

Now I’d be the first to admit that my experience of Yizhuang is extremely limited. Limited to a few rooms in one building, the views from that building, and the views from the car window as we arrive and leave. Certainly not enough to speak with any authority on the subject. But enough, perhaps, to get an impression.

And that impression is of overwhelming emptiness. I don’t know why. On the way in and back out everything is built up, there’s traffic, the roads, although some of them are undergoing repairs, have obviously been there a while. But still the place feels empty to me.

Maybe it’s because most of the buildings I see are commercial or industrial. Or maybe because it’s the view from the conference room where I give the lesson. Or maybe it’s the lack of pedestrian or cycle traffic.

The conference room is on the 13th floor Floor A. Small tangent on the subject of pandering to superstition: The building has a fourth floor, but floors 13 and 14 have been renamed A and B. No, I don’t understand that decision, either, and asking the students about it got only confused nonsense.

Right, back to that view. Looking out the conference room windows on the 13th floor Floor A, the streets are laid out in a regular grid pattern, only broken by a few odd roads here and there. To the left is a construction site. Immediately below is the car park, and in front of that is an empty field. In one corner of the field is a small yard filled with construction…. stuff. Materials, equipment, just stuff. To the right of the carpark is a similar yard, but this one with a few shacks in it, some like the kitset shantytown that is nearly finished just outside our gate here, others an older style, made out of what seems to be the same asbestos shingles Roubaozi and I helped put on the sheep pen back at May Day. Beyond that is a reasonably nice looking housing development. But the next couple of blocks, directly ahead and diagonally ahead to the left and right (in front of the construction site and the housing development) is all empty fields. Beyond the fields, in all directions, are the usual commercial and industrial buildings, construction sites, and a few housing developments. Most of the construction sites are for more commercial and industrial buildings.

So maybe the emptiness has something to do with the apparent lack of any real city life. There are a few residential areas, but not much, and I haven’t seen much in the way of the usual city life-level commerce, like restaurants and supermarkets and all the myriad little stores, to support those areas. A little, but not a hell of a lot. And what about children? I arrive in Yizhuang about five in the evening, and yet I never see the hordes of school children you’d expect to see about that time.

Anyway, so far as I know I only have one more trip to Yizhuang next Monday and then I’m free. Can’t say I’ll be sorry to see the back of the place.