11th Floor, Apartment 3.  Building?  Unknown.

I’ve been here 7 months now and still don’t have a goddamn clue what my address is.  I’ve tried to figure it out from analyzing the writing on the building and from asking other tenants, staff and University employees, meeting nothing but failure with every attempt.  Near as I can tell, no one here gets mail delivered directly to them.  Considering mail is typically a source of junk, bills, ads and other assorted detritus, I don’t find myself missing it that much, but with parents threatening to send massive care packages laden with all the non-perishable delectables I’m deprived of here in China (Cap’n Crunch, or any other breakfast cereal, for that matter — who ever heard of a country without breakfast cereal??), having an actual destination address for them would be nice.   In lieu of that, however, all packages are sent instead to the university where they somehow end up in my boss’s office.  He doesn’t seem to mind.

The Building

The entryway to my apartment building

It’s no Trump Tower, but more than serviceable for my needs.  As friends from the University began to spread out from school-assigned dorms into private apartments around town, I did feel pangs of jealousy for their 25+ story views, but not for the elevator-waiting that this usually came bundled with.  My building is, I’m told, the “Foreign Teachers’ Building,” which is accurate in that it houses most of the foreign teachers, but inaccurate in that we’re only located on two of the floors.  The lower ten floors supposedly house graduate students, though sparsely at best, given how few other people — foreign or otherwise — I ever run into in the lobby.

Balconies on the lower levels are all barred up, and there is a guard room in the front housing three fairly bored (but friendly) looking individuals that monitor who passes through and lock the doors each night.  Doors are locked promptly at midnight, and while we aren’t given keys to the main entrance, the guards are almost always there and in varying states of consciousness to let us in.  The locked main gate is doubly problematic in that we must be buzzed out to escape should any terrible calamity befall the building.  It’d certainly be a bad time for the guard to be on a coffee break…

Once, coming back from jeifangbei, the cultural and business heart of the city, I had the misfortune of experiencing one of said breaks around 4 in the morning.  Horribly drunk (a sensation I experienced too much in the first semester of the year, leading me to wonder if perhaps something was more potent and/or more toxic about the alcohol here), I walked through campus in the rain as I returned to my building, cursing the city, myself and the particularly strong depression that had settled over me early on after my arrival and had yet to let up.

My experiences here had thus far been a great deal less successful than those in South America — very few people spoke English, and those that did were almost entirely college students, leaving me feeling aged and disconnected from any real social scene to speak of.  As I wandered the city aimlessly, each failure to make any sort of worthwhile connection only further fed an inebriation that had ceased to function as a social lubricant hours ago.  Eventually accepting my utter failure, I begrudgingly returned home with my head down and my spirits at their lowest, seeking the respite that only one’s “home” can provide when I had the misfortune of finding my building completely sealed off to me and unattended.

Screaming in rage, I slammed into the main doors with brute (yet ultimately, ineffectual) force, then gave a similar performance on the door to the guardroom like some nightmarish foreign loon, with just as little success.   The last bit of fight drained from me as the door’s handle came off in my hands, and I collapsed onto the wet ground, resting my head against the hard metal of the entryway as the rain mixed with my exasperated tears.  Five minutes go by — maybe ten — and I look up to see the guard smiling at me apologetically.  He seems to be telling me where he’d been, but I don’t understand and I don’t care.  When the door finally opens, I walk in without a word and petulantly head up to my room.

On a positive note, it’s gotten slightly better since then.

The guard's room, directly outside the main entrance

The Living Room

Down a dim hallway with sound-activated lighting, 11-3 is the last room on the left.  Through the dark brown door, the meager kitchen is immediately to the right, while the “foyer” opens up into the living room.  Spacial limitations force me to store the refrigerator out here, next to the sofa.  It’s not always convenient when I’m cooking, though it does make snacks and drinks more accessible when guests are over.

The view while standing in the front door. The room immediately to the right is the kitchen.

The apartment came with a “sofa” of sorts — a long wooden bench whose uncomfortable slats etch themselves into the ass cheeks of anyone unfortunate enough to sit on them for longer than five minutes.  It is probably the poorest designed piece of furniture I’ve ever sat on in terms of comfort.  Within weeks of living here, I’d tracked down a furniture store and purchased a small futon for just under a hundred dollars.

Nearly everything else in here is provided by the university, save any wall decorations and the large red rug that covers the floor (“it really ties the room together…”).  The glass table is nice, though exemplifies another minor gripe I have Chinese style: The Chinese seem to like tables that have a smaller shelf directly below the main table.  I’m not sure what this is for (spices? newspapers?) but this lower rack is present on almost every Chinese dining table I’ve come across.  I don’t mind extra storage space at all, but why does it have to be located exactly where my knees want to go?  It effectively forces me to sit further out from the table while eating, which doesn’t really work for me.

The large appliance between the television and the balcony is the air-conditioning/heating unit.  I don’t think I could survive without it.  Chongqing gets pretty chilly in the winter, but the hot summers are especially brutal.

Sure the sofa and rug clash a bit at first, but you get used to it... The fridge would be way too small for more than one person, but works alright for me

The dining room table, complete with map of China hanging over it

Entertainment center. No idea how I would've gotten through this year without the XBox360

My hallway -- Bathroom on the right, bedroom on the left and smaller guest bedroom straight ahead. On the wall to the right is Barong, the Indonesian spirit of (among other things) protection. He's quite fetching.

The Kitchen

The kitchen’s woefully inadequate for my cooking style, but I make due.  As I mentioned before, there’s little room for a fridge in here, and part of the problem is the washing machine.  In a kitchen the size of most large closets in the States, giving up space for a washing machine stings a bit, but it’s the only place where I’ve got a water hookup.

Chinese people aren’t very oven-centric people, which is surprising to me as there are many bakeries around and they seem quite popular.  But baking in one’s own home clearly hasn’t caught on yet, since most apartments I’ve seen only come with gas ranges.  For Thanksgiving, I splurged and bought myself an oven for a hundred bucks.  It’s basically a glorified toaster oven (it’s electric), yet it’s still powerful enough to bake pies, cakes, pizzas and (most importantly for Thanksgiving) a 17 pound turkey.

Most Chinese food is stir-fried using extremely high temperature flames, meaning my range is close to twice as powerful at its high setting than any I’ve used in the States.  You can’t really leave food frying on its own for too long without constant love and attention or the risk of quickly burning your dinner (or your apartment down, in a worst case scenario) is quite high.  But on the upside, dinners can be fried up lightning fast, with flavors nicely seared in to all vegetables and meats in ways slow, low-temperature frying wouldn’t allow.  The other negative to this cooking style is that “low” setting is roughly equivalent to what would be “medium high” in America, which makes any recipe that requires “simmering” next to impossible.

Three cabinets don’t give me nearly the space I need, so I’ve picked up at least three additional shelving units out of sheer necessity.  The largest of them takes up enough space that even two people working simultaneously in the kitchen feels uncomfortably cramped, but in addition to storage, it also provides me with much-needed counter space.  And it’s not like I often have teams of people cooking things up in my apartment.

You can see just how small the kitchen is here, though I think I made good use of the space

The kitchen didn't exactly come with counter space, so I had to improvise a little

Kitchen cabinets, spices, bar...

The Bedroom

Since most apartments aren’t built with closets in mind, the room conveniently comes with two large clothing cabinets that manage to efficiently contain the sparse wardrobe I have over her.  The bed is large and was brand new when I first arrived here, and the desk and end tables might not be brimming with character, but they serve their purpose well.

My room effectively doubles as my office, since each two-hour class that I teach generally requires 4-6 hours of preparation time.  All the English teachers that I know here are jealous of my work schedule, since they tend to get around four hours more of class per week.  But I’m equally jealous of the fact that they basically just show up to class and start talking, while each class I give feels like a mini-presentation requiring hours of advance cramming out of me.  I think it all balances out.

With all the time I spend at the computer, though, I picked up the black office chair early on to replace the desk chair that came with the place — Much like the living room “sofa” they provided, comfort wasn’t high on the list when the landlords here were picking out furniture.  I keep the clothes rack in here as well, since the bedroom tends to be the warmest when I’m at home.  Clothes driers are definitely not standard fare in Chongqing.  The guitar, also, was a personal addition and not something that came with the place…

Amazing how the lack of wall decorations can really suck the charm out of a place

My "clothes dryer" and my work area

My closet

My bedroom window

The Spare Room

I typically keep this door shut at all times, so I don’t bother with tidiness in here.  Should any guests ever stay with me here in Chongqing, I’d have a place for them, but no one’s swung by just yet.  I basically use this room solely for storage.

The spare bedroom. Looking at the thick layer of dust over things scares me, since it's a testament to the air quality here. The uncomfortable "sofa" mentioned above is there on the right.

The Bathroom

Probably the best and nicest surprise I got upon moving in was a showerhead that was actually installed at a height taller than me.  Chinese people (excepting Yao Ming) aren’t known for being extremely tall, and I was certain I’d be spending the year slouched over uncomfortably in the shower, but this was happily not to be the case.  I’m also lucky enough to have a “western style” sit-down toilet; the standard for apartments in Chongqing is a simple porcelain plate on the ground with a large hole in it.

The only real problem here is the “window”.  It’s basically a small rectangular opening without any means of being sealed.  On cold winter mornings, the frigid air rushed right over me as I showered, fully negating the warmth of the water.  As it was also an unwelcome entry point for insects, I took the matter into my own hands, sealing it with cardboard and duct tape.

The bathroom window, sealed off with cardboard and duct tape

The View

It’s not spectacular, but just having a balcony is a pretty decent perk here.  Each of the bedrooms has a large window alcove as well, though the alcove doesn’t seem to be load-bearing which limits its usefulness a bit.

The Chinese tend to be very stingy when it comes to using electricity, which is generally a good thing, though it can be taken to absurd levels.  Case in point: motorcycles often drive around at night with no lights, only shifting the lights on when absolutely necessary.  Can this possibly lower fuel consumption in even the slightest way?

What this means in apartments is that locals are extremely diligent about turning any electrical units off when not in use, and keeping heat/air conditioning at the lowest possible settings.  I might not be as diligent as they are, but I still respect the behavior (especially in a country with such a dense population and known energy consumption issues).  What I don’t understand is how people can be so energy-minded and then have the thinnest possible glass in the windows (not to mention the aforementioned shower window).  On cold nights, it’s possible to stand by my fully-closed windows and just feel the breeze flowing unhindered through the glass and over me.

Hazy, Chongqing sunrise, from my balcony

Looking down from my balcony

More view

This should give a good idea of the air quality here. I just washed the balcony floor less than a month ago, and already it's got this thick layer of... whatever it is, coating it

Whether or not the inconvenient fever rushing through my veins these past 17 hours of cramped air travel is swine flu or not matters little to me.  It probably doesn’t mean much to those in China that are likely to quarantine me for such symptoms either, but the inconvenient result would still be the same.  I’m told that classes — classes that I will be teaching — begin at Chongqing University in less than a week, and odds are starting to favor my first lesson plans being drafted up in a cold, sterile room in a hospital somewhere in China, sequestered off from the other 1.6 billion people I’ll now be sharing a country with.

Are there longer flights from any point A in the world to any other point B than the flight from New York to Hong Kong?

The airline’s friendly enough, and the back of each chair is loaded with its own entertainment system, helping to alleviate the relentless boredom of the situation, though there’s little to counter the discomfort of the seat’s rigid contours and the subsequent sores that worsen alarmingly across my lower back and nether regions.  The movie selections aren’t bad, and seem to cover all bases.  Ignoring the chick flicks, kiddie fare and hard dramas, I settle on Watchmen, The Hangover, some movie I’ve forgotten that was billed as a “Bro-mance” and a second viewing of Star Trek (this time without the Spanish subtitles).

I’m in a minority here on the plane — a feeling I expect to be getting used to quickly.  Chongqing, including its suburbs, currently counts over 30 million people as its citizens.  Foreigners make up less than .0001 percent of that, meaning that it’s likely to spend days around town without seeing another un-Chinese-looking face.  Unlike more international cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, widespread use of English hasn’t made its way out to Chongqing yet, creating a language barrier around me more daunting than the Great Wall.

Good Times.

Even with a blanket on, the deep fever chills rack through me, forcing a bad, full-body impersonation of a cheap, Mexican vibrator.  Gauging the current state of my illness by said chills, I surmise that my fever upon exiting the plane at Hong Kong international airport is hotter than it’s been at any point on this seemingly endless trip.  Either my body’s not aware of the consequences of its actions, or it’s really not into this China gig and using every trick up its anatomical sleeve to get my hot-blooded ass out of the country.

The illness has drained me.  Five o’clock shadow and constant shifting about on my seat seeking occasional respites from consciousness has left me dirty, debilitated and disheveled.  In short, upon passing through the health station in Hong Kong, I’m officially, by both local and international standards, a mess.

Ear, mouth, rectal and armpit (the latter being the official choice in Quito, Ecuador, at least as of my last arrival) thermometers have all been phased out now in favor of a less hands-on approach.  As passengers work their way through the flu  checkpoint, handing in the now-mandatory health forms that are doled out on every international flight (where have you been for the past week?  Do its citizens often consort with swine?  Would you describe your explosive diarrhea as “awkward” or “crippling”?), a device not unlike a Star Trek phaser (60′s version, not Next Generation or the new flick) is focused on each passing individual, immediately separating the healty from the… well, me.

“Eh-scuse me sir.  Come.”

In broken English, his tone and gestures more than his words inform me that something is terribly wrong.  He skirts around the language barrier entirely by simply handing me the thermometer, like damning evidence from a crime scene.

“39.2, eh?  Hmm.. Is that bad?   My Celsius/Fahrenheit conversion skills aren’t that great.  I mean, I can tell from a weather report if I need a sweater or shorts, and 39.2 is definitely shorts weather, but you know…” I trail off.

“Fever,” he says, confirming what I’ve known for some time.

“Fever?  Really??  Is it a bad one?  You know, I felt great on the plane.  This always happens when I get off planes.”

“You go Hong Kong?”

“Hmm?  Oh no, Chongqing!  I’m a teacher.  I start work this week.  Teaching Chinese people.  In Chongqing.  Where I’m going immediately.”

He thinks deeply before responding.  ”Have fever.  Drink lots water and don’t have fever in Chongqing.”  Going against all stories of the massive hype and swine-flu-related panic that surrounds China right now (and this *is* a country of people that practically wear those surgical health masks like a fashion statement), he seems to be letting me go.

“Ok, I will!”

Hong Kong has officially been a part of China for over ten years now, though remains its own small, self-contained world.  It has its own language (Cantonese — though the characters are the same as those from China’s primary, government-sanctioned language, Mandarin), its own food style (also Cantonese), its own currency and its own ways and means of governance toward its people.  What this means to me (though I don’t know it yet) is that I’ll be able to freely access websites in the airport like FaceBook, Picasa, YouTube and pretty much any website with “blog” in its name for the last time.  Well, for the last time without a bit of effort on my part getting around the system.  More on that later.

Six hours to spare originally meant time to explore Hong Kong.  All the overtime work my hypothalamus has put in has disallowed that, both in terms of airport security and in my severe lack of the physical energy it’d require to handle such an excursion.  Hong Kong International Airport is a tremendous travel complex, and while it’s not exactly thrifty to shop, eat or get massages there, I did my best to kill time by indulging in all three.

Three snack breaks, four botched napping attempts and countless trips to the bathroom later (airports are the worst place for a bladder to get all twitchy) and a bilingual boarding announcement comes out over the speakers.  Sadly, it’s in Chinese first, though I’m quick to figure out its meaning when I spot a massive surge of people shooting forward toward the gate, forming a shape that only vaguely resembles a line.

Dinner is served onboard — some sort of sweet and sour chicken — and isn’t bad, all things considered.  No movies are provided this time around, but that’s fairly standard on flights less than three hours.  I try my best to sleep one last time, though the jet lag would be inescapable even without combining its forces with that of my flu.  It’s been close to 24 hours of travel time so far, and even though I gathered the current time from a clock in Hong Kong, I’m not 100% certain of what day it is…

At the airport, my new employer greets me at the gate.  It’s a good thing, as I’ve got no phone or contact information for anyone here, and even in a city this large, English speakers are damned hard to come by.   Huang Yong greets me with a large smile.  His English isn’t terribly good, but as my Chinese is non-existent, he’s got a leg up on me.

It’s hot out, as I get my first taste of Chongqing’s infamous heat.  It’s known as one of China’s “three furnaces,” sharing the honor with Wuhan and Nanjing.  It’s also my first opportunity to experience the dense smog that perpetually engulfs the city.  During my year here, I’d come to love and hate so many aspects of the city, but high up on my list of “hate” is the regular lack of clouds, stars, sun and moon and “the color blue” from what would otherwise be a beautiful skyline.  Locals tell me Chongqing has “always been foggy,” claiming the gray haze isn’t in any way a by-product of heavy industry, but I’ve never seen any other fog like this.

Culture shock sets in as the relentless sprawl of buildings hum by us, covered in Chinese lettering, big and small.  Their daytime liveliness is only a fraction of what’s to come by night, as the Chinese clearly seem to revel in neon skylines that burst forth like frenetic city-sized video games.  Drivers are quick to use their horns, but less quick to stick to any lane as line markers are little more than suggestions here.  A billboard shows a toddler of about three urinating a rainbow into a western-style toilet with a proud grin on his face.  I supposed I’d be cheerful if I pissed rainbows, as well.  Toll booths and traffic lights are generally adhered to, excepting of course for motorcyclists, as they seem to make their own rules as needed.

After a quick driving tour through the campus (not a single non-Chinese face spotted in the throngs of people — I’m definitely in a small, small minority here), we arrive at what is to be my new home for the year.  It’s an older building, but it’s been recently remodeled.  Elements of its less-than-contemporary past come through in places, but it’s a fairly sweet deal for the price (free lodging and utilities with my job contract).  I think I’ll give the apartment an entry of its own, next.

After 25 hours in transit, it’s time to put my new Chinese bed to use and get some sleep.