From Grits to Chopsticks

It’s been about ten days since we moved into our new apartment, so we’re finally getting around to posting a few photos of the place.  The apartment is 123 square meters (1324 square feet), so it’s big enough for you to come and visit.  Although the area seems pretty safe, the apartment complex is gated and guarded, and each building has its own automatic door system controlled by a residential intercom system:

We live on the third floor of building number 3, door number 6.  In China, the law requires all buildings over 6 stories to have an elevator, so you find a bunch of 6 story buildings.  We’re glad to be low enough that we don’t have to climb all the way to the top each time.

If you look to the left just before you enter the door to our stairwell, you’ll see our downstairs neighbor’s courtyard.  While many of the apartment courtyards have elegant fishponds or patio sets, our neighbor has … chickens!  Fortunately, they aren’t noisey at night and he doesn’t have a rooster.  If we get to know him, perhaps he’ll share some fresh eggs with us.

We have a new appreciation for why Chinese people remove their shoes when they enter their homes (if you walk on our sidewalks, you’ll understand too).  Our small refrigerator is in the entrance hallway, along with our bottled water supply:

We have a typical kitchen with two gas burners.  Very few kitchens here have genuine ovens, so we recently bought a toaster oven and will try to use it for baking regular (American) food.  You may hear more about that in a  future post.

Other than the close proximity to campus, one of the things that attracted us to this apartment was the spacious den and dining areas.  It seems like a good place for folks to gather, and we hope to use it effectively in the future.  The owner left some furniture for us which has saved a lot of shopping in the near term.

The master bedroom has a traditional Chinese bed (hard as a rock), so we are glad to have our Thermarest(r) pads under a duvet and mattress pad to make it soft enough for our American bodies.  It’s also good that the owner left an armoire for us so that we can finally have a place to hang our clothing.

The spare bedroom is pink and is pretty empty at this point:

Our “study” contains some of the owner’s old furniture.  We didn’t want it, but had to allow it to remain as a compromise.  We are hoping to get his permission to paint and repair it, making it more acceptable for use.  Susan found out (the hard way) that the left legs on the old desk are not attached.  She was moving it to clean the floor and it collapsed on her.  Fortunately, the large plate glass on the top didn’t break:

Our bathrooms both pose a challenge.  The master bath has a large tub with a hand-held shower arrangement that isn’t long enough for a tall American, and the water controls are very finicky (either hot or cold, rarely a mix).  If you take a shower, the water runs down the walls alongside the tub, supposedly to the floor drain beneath.  That would work really well if the floor drain was actually the low point on the floor.  Unfortunately, the water tends to run out from under the tub and puddle in various places.  If it were my house, I’d ditch the tub and put in a standard shower.  The good news is that it has a toilet you can sit on!

The second bathroom actually has a regular shower, but like many small bathrooms here (and in Europe), there is no shower stall so everything gets wet.  And like the master bath, the floor drains aren’t in the low points.   We put up a shower curtain and will try to install a floor ridge to keep the water on one side (it would be nice to step out onto a dry spot after a shower).  Of course, like many things Chinese, the previous owner’s daughter decorated it with cartoon characters:

Susan’s working hard to make the place comfortable: scrubbing floors, walls, and furniture, washing curtains, organizing our scant possessions, etc.  We bought some dishes, a toaster and a microwave oven today (yeah!), so things are starting to look like home.  Not the kind of home that we’re used to, but we’re thankful to have such a nice place to live in a part of the world where many folks have so little.