The Best of Both Worlds

As I prepare for my fourth Chinese New Year in Shanghai I think I am finally getting the hang of living life in this fast forward city. I recently moved into Jing An district after a year in exile…sorry, I mean Hongkou. I have nothing against Hongkou personally, but until they finish the Bund tunnel project I think I would rather help dig it (with a gardening spade) than sit in any more mind numbing Haining Lu traffic. But why look backwards? It’s Chinese New Year, and a new beginning. Gong Xi Fa Cai, I say, and a happy Xin Nian Kuai Le to all!

Back to my new apartment. I have moved to nearly fashionable Dagu Lu, a road whose name will resonate deeply with all lovers of ethnic cuisine, massages and DVD’s. I now live in the swanky Zhong Kai Cheng Shi Zhi Guang (a mouthful in any language). Well, sort of. Technically speaking I’m next door to the aforementioned mouthful. Don’t get me wrong, we share the same address, but that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. You see, when they razed the city block of hu tongs a few years ago to make way for progress, the developers did something unusual: they built two extra high rises for all the displaced Dagu denizens to live in, right next to the new complex. And that’s where I live now.

It’s a nice life over here I must say, in my little hu tong in the sky. And I’m settling right in with the locals too. On the day I moved in there was a lot of commotion and kibitzing among the guards, staff and residents as my trusty Da Zhong rental truck backed into the parking lot. A new laowai in the building was a bit of news, but of more interest seemed to be the contents of the truck. By the time it was half empty there were a good twenty people standing around commenting and smiling at me good naturedly, pointing at my inscrutable paintings and furniture (I scored big points for a few antique Chinese pieces). One framed print was from a student art show I curated last year, and the message was in Chinese, which brought sighs of approval and prompted one august fellow in thick pajamas and running shoes to give me the thumbs up. I was all right in his book anyway. When it came time to move everything upstairs (to the top floor thank you very much) the building ayi was very animated, and made a big show of blocking off the elevator for me exclusively until we’d finished. She was on my side too it seemed.

I soon realized that I was living among the real natives of Shanghai. That first day my new next door neighbor, an elderly lady wearing five layers (that I could see) to combat the cold, knocked on my door to voice displeasure that I had left a few end tables of the landlord’s outside my door against a common wall between our apartments. Through a combination of mime, broken Chinese and charades I tried to explain that the end tables weren’t mine, and the landlord would be coming for them soon. But she was unimpressed, so I somewhat grudgingly shifted them over to the other side by my door. I’m new to the building, so I wanted to make nice. At this point her antique husband teetered in from the elevators with his equally vintage Forever bicycle. It turns out she was defending his time honored parking space.

As a New Yorker I know what it means to have quirky neighbors. It can be trying, annoying, even enraging – but it can also be fun, hilarious and heartwarming, and let’s face it, it’s what gives a building character. In every building I’ve ever lived, it’s not the location or any aspect of the apartment that I remember most. It’s Crazy Lenny chasing kids with a baseball bat, or Mrs. Z who sat in the first floor street window and would always ask everyone to get her stuff from the deli. When I lived in Chinatown there was an old lady who walked up and down the stairs all day muttering in some incomprehensible dialect, glowering at anyone she didn’t know. We called her the security guard.

So now I wake up each morning to the sounds of my neighbor tinkering endlessly with his bike, upside down, wheels off, parts everywhere. Every day he does this, but I don’t mind. It’s his space more than mine, and I accept that. He cooks fish for his wife every night and it smells and I can deal with that too. When I was getting rid of an old desk I didn’t want I gave it to them, and when I couldn’t find a certain type of light bulb and asked her, she presented me with two brand new ones and a fa piao for eight kuai the very next morning. We are neighbors now, and I’m living in the hu tong in the sky, surely the best of both worlds.