From Grits to Chopsticks

As a follow-up to the previous post about our fully furnished apartment, it seems appropriate to mention a few things that that we find to be different in our China apartment vs. our house in America.  Starting in the main bathroom, it’s not unusual to hang the water heater above the toilet:

While it provides rapidly available hot water, you should be careful when standing up fast.  Since all of the walls in the house are concrete or tile, we use a lot of suction cup racks and sticky hooks.  Thankfully, some work really well, like this towel rack in our shower:

Our shower also has a “convenient” metal door for access to the water shutoff valve.  I ended up caulking it in order to keep it closed and reduce the flow of rusty water down the tile:

Although I do not like to drill into the landlord’s tile walls, I made an exception to install this heat lamp to take the chill off those cool mornings:

Of course, our guest bathroom toilet is a bit shorter than many in the west:

The solid walls prevent the installation of closets, so here is our “coat closet”:

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, we sacrificed some of the precious counter space for our “oven” and microwave.  Note that the rechargeable gas meter is located inside instead of outside:

Since there aren’t any drawers in the kitchen, Susan assembled this rack to hold the utensil trays:

Outside, China has a parking problem, with cars squeezed into every available space.  These cars are actually in a no-parking zone, and the officers can often be seen sticking tickets on the windows:

Ironically, the huge parking garages in the basement of our apartment buildings are practically empty:

A friend told us that these spaces are actually sold to individual owners for about $5000 USD.  With that in mind, people are more than willing to take the risk of getting a lot of $10 parking tickets.

Finally, we often get a chuckle out of the titles of our neighborhood bulletin boards:

As always, it looks like we have a lot more “propaganda” than just plain “notices.”

In this part of the world, construction crews work around the clock to build massive apartment buildings in record time.  But getting an apartment furnished happens at a completely different pace.  It’s been almost two months since we moved in and we’re finally done getting our house in order.  Here are some photos of the completed project, starting in the living room:

The dining room:

And the shoe cabinet in our entrance way (essential in every Chinese home):

Our master bedroom and bathroom:

Most of our furniture came from our local “Fakea” store (a copycat of the famous Swedish furniture store).  Some other items came from the local used furniture market, including most of the things in our study:

We also have a guest room (feel free to visit!), complete with an open-air closet:

The guest bathroom now has its own cabinet (such extravagances aren’t included in a basic apartment):

We have a fairly small kitchen, but Susan seems to make it work:

We picked up a small “pantry” from the used furniture market, putting it on the front porch across from our clothes washer:

Our apartment has a fourth “bedroom” (about the size of a large closet) which serves well for overflow storage.

To top it off, we even have a furnished back porch with a convenient “clothes dryer” and a great view of our neighboring apartment buildings:

We are very thankful for our new home!

Some of our graduate students took us out to a goose-soup dinner this week:

One of the “special” parts of this meal is to eat the goose head:

Even though Susan looks hesitant, she joined in once she got a figured out where to start:

The food is always a bit more familiar at home.  Here are some students about to enjoy homemade cookies and cake at our apartment:

We finally got living room furniture for our new apartment (hurray!) and had some students over to play games.  Here we are playing “Qwirkle” (thanks Dixie!):

It is the end of the school semester for my senior class students.  We will miss these kids:

In preparation for our year-end auction, we took some of the kids shopping to help us identify things that Chinese students enjoy, like these hand muffs:

The auction is a fun way to end the year, allowing students to practice business principles while spending “small money” that they earn for class participation:

Click these links to see brief clips of the action: AuctionAction and ChickenAuction .  As winter approaches, this student was really excited to get a new scarf:

As parting gifts, these girls were sweet to give us two plants for our new apartment:

Our new apartment has a pretty good view of the surrounding area.  Here are a few of the typical scenes that can be seen from our 11th story porch (click the highlighted words for videos):

The frequent crossing of trains (Train Crossing):
A funeral procession (Funeral):

The grand opening of a new store in our community (New Convenience Store):

The school children across the street doing their daily collective dances (Dancing Students):

Of course, we can always see the air (something that you shouldn’t be able to see), thanks to trucks and smoke stacks nearby:

But there’s good news about our air quality: it has been raining for over a week, scrubbing some of the bad stuff out of the air.  Tonight’s snapshot of the Kunming air quality (relative to surrounding cities) makes me glad to live here:

Unfortunately, the rain also brings cooler weather.  It’s not such a big deal when the temperature drops to 49 in most places, but that means the indoor temperature also begins to fall (no central heating here):

Brrrr (ignore the date on our semi-functional thermometer)!

Both of our sons are planning to get married in the next seven months, so we’ve been thinking about weddings a lot lately.  With that in mind, our  English Corner tomorrow will focus on wedding traditions (both western and eastern).

Interestingly, as we’ve walked along the waterfront at Dianchi Lake (south of our city), we often come across bridal photo sessions and have snapped a few pictures of our own:

It’s interesting how fast the Chinese people have adjusted their wedding attire to a more western style.

These photo spots would be even better if the water in the lake wasn’t so badly polluted (to see the news about this, click here):

One of the major reasons for the pollution is the large amount of construction underway in our city, particularly on waterways that flow directly into the lake.  A good example is found right in this waterfront park.  During our first visit to this park a couple of years ago, there was a large area for picnics, playgrounds, and amusement rides.  When we came here last May, we were surprised to see that most of the park had been demolished and a construction project was well underway:

Now, you can see a very long row of high-priced apartments starting to take shape:

Too bad that the waterfront view will have the same green color as the vegetation around the banks.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the rapid pace of modernization in China.  Here is a photo of a nearby street where things haven’t changed much in a few decades:

When you walk to the end, you step out into the new world of China.  Looking to the right past the pyramid of sugar cane, you can see our apartment complex:

The rate of change is staggering, especially for some of the older folks who are probably still trying to figure out what happened to their predictably simple lives of the past.

A few more photos of interest.  Here is a shot from our apartment window of the street below where parents drop off their children for school:

It’s hard for the picture to convey the amount of honking and chaos while kids weave their way through traffic – quite a bit different than some of the highly coordinated systems in the west.

We took a group of students hiking up the nearby mountain last week, stopping for this picture at the ancient gate of a temple:

One of the students brought her two month old Siberian Husky (actually, a good little hiker).  Susan was excited to be able to hold the puppy in this photo.

A few more random pics: While selecting food at a local restaurant last night, a friend reminded us that it wasn’t so strange to make a diet of locusts and wild honey:

Also, we came across this suction-cup bowl while looking for ways to make the best use of space in our new apartment.  I often wonder who comes up with these translations:

Even if the product is mediocre, who can turn it down if it enables you to “enjoy your life”?!

Like most westerners, the do-it-yourself spirit is alive and well within us.  That is especially evident when moving into a new place.  Our desire to improve our surroundings drives us to make a “to do” list and get to work.  Here are a few “DIY” projects from the past week.

We got a good deal on a used bookcase from a nearby furniture market. It arrived unassembled with some hardware broken and missing:

After some improvisation and a lot of cleaning by Susan, it turned out nicely:

In order to move our internet connection from the living room to the study, I experimented with the wires in this junction box, eventually (and miraculously) connecting the right ones through an unused RJ45 connection panel:

Water has been leaking down from our kitchen sink into the cabinet below, requiring a thorough recaulking:

Speaking of caulking, I attached some plastic conduit to the floor of our bathrooms to keep the shower water from soaking the bathmat:

All of the apartment walls are concrete (often covered with tile), so it takes a masonry bit to mount an adjustable shower bracket:

Remember the ugly, poorly painted bed from the last blog? Hopefully, it will look better by tomorrow:

This post highlights one difference between many westerners and Chinese.  As Americans, we take a certain pleasure in doing things ourselves.  But in China, it seems that people may actually lose face if they possess numerous “handyman skills,” since it suggests that they were unable to hire someone else to do these routine tasks.  The abundance of cheap labor recently led to the closure of the remaining six Home Depot stores in China – in the words of a company spokeswoman, China is a “do it for me market, not a do it yourself market.”

This is too bad for folks like us.  I recently found a soldering iron at the local B&Q store (a Home Depot copycat), but they didn’t have any solder.  I also found an RJ45 internet crimping tool, but no RJ45 jacks to crimp onto the wire.  Fortunately, we have a tiny hardware store across the street:

This guy had the conduit and spray paint I needed.  In fact, he probably has everything else that a “DIY” guy might want (if he can find it):

During a past visit to our local zoo, we puzzled over the intended meaning of this sign:

It is possible that they are really referring to “word records,” as is evidenced by this hospital name in the north part of our city:

If you have an emergency and need quick attention, it may be a mistake to try and tell the taxi driver to bring you here.

Perhaps the sign is really talking about world records – and China is certainly a land of extremes.  At the zoo, we found a very high concentration of butterflies in their special aviary:

Unfortunately, most of the butterflies weren’t fluttering around – they were trapped in the wire mesh under the skylight:

Other extremes that we recently encountered include the highest teeter-totter we’ve ever seen (at the nearby construction site),

a very large pile of cash to pay for the rent of our new apartment,

and a crowd of extra students trying to squeeze onto busses that are already packed.

We still don’t understand why Chinese brooms are so short (but we do understand why the backs of many old Chinese women are permanently bent over):

Speaking of our new apartment, we bought a bed at the local used furniture market.  For an extra ten RMB, the seller was kind enough to paint it, resulting in one of the worst spray-paint jobs we’ve ever seen:

The final “extreme” is also found in our new apartment furniture.  Since the concrete-walled apartments in China rarely have built-in closets, you have to buy a wardrobe in which to hang your clothing.  We recently bought a 180 cm wardrobe to fit the 185 cm space in our bedroom, never expecting that it would be such a close fit:

The delivery guys insisted that we put it somewhere else, but it miraculously squeezed past the door molding and is now in place:

Talk about “extremely” thankful!

We have been living in the same apartment since we came to China in early 2010, but rent escalation finally reached its limit, and we began looking for a new apartment.  Fortunately, a number of new complexes have recently sprung up around our school, and we found an apartment at the end of this street:

If your image of China is one of a quaint village tucked into some rice paddies, think again.  This massive complex of 20 and 30 story buildings is just one of dozens being built in our city.  After a dusty walk through an active construction zone, our building is on the far end:

One of our students helped us find the place and served as translator while I reviewed and signed the contract:

Each room in the 1350 sqft apartment looks similar to this:

One of the bathrooms provides us with the opportunity to improve our squatting muscles:

The apartment actually has a good view of the school building where I teach.  It’s about a 10 minute walk to my classrooms on the 5th floor under the dome:

Here’s the reverse angle view from today’s classroom to our apartment building:

Looking out of our windows to the north provides a good view of the old and new buildings in this part of town.  Of course, the short buildings will soon be torn down and replaced by huge ones to block the mountain views:

After some serious packing on Thursday and Friday, we hired three guys to come and load our stuff into their “moving van”:

I kept wondering why they didn’t use a hand truck for the big items, but it didn’t seem necessary for these small, tough guys.  I was especially impressed by this man who carried our refrigerator down three flights of stairs:

We’re now moved in, but are in desperate need of furniture (we’ve been using our previous landlord’s for the past three years).  We made our first trip to the furniture market yesterday and hope to quickly get this stage of life behind us.

It’s nice when you find a roadside restroom in China:

It’s even nicer if you can read Chinese when trying to decide which one to use:

One of the significant advantages to Asian toilets – you don’t usually need to clean off the seat:

But there are exceptions.  The Starbucks coffee shop has toilet seats, but encourages its patrons to avoid squatting on them:

A popular local Western restaurant has a toilet, but restricts what you put in:

So if you can’t put “it” in the toilet, where do you put it?  Some people seem to have no problem using the outdoor facility provided along the roadside (just when you thought the trees were planted there for aesthetics):