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A room need not be large to be graceful - proverb
By Wang Yong |
May 12, 2010, Wednesday
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CREAKY closets, peeling paint and warped floors.
None of these dampened our affection for the old (by Shanghai standards), small, simply furnished apartment as my wife and I moved into our newly rented "nest" amid the roar of the concrete jungle on May 1.
Indeed, the five-story apartment building, built in 1984, already looks dilapidated from the inside out. On the walls of the squeaky public stairway hangs a dusty set of old electric meters and wires that you rarely see in a neat, glossy, modern, high-rise apartment building.
In putting our things away in closets and cupboards, some with protruding nails, my wife scratched her hands quite a few times, sometimes to the point of bleeding.
Our new nest lacks all the "modern" elements and amenities that make a "comfortable" home in the eyes of those who think the creature comforts are the only real "comforts."
Even my mother-in-law, after quickly scanning the tiny, ground-floor space with hurried steps, bet we would move out shortly. "It's too small, too old for you," she said. Small indeed - only around 50 square meters. Our 77-year-old landlady partitioned the apartment and now lives right next door to us.
But my mother-in-law was too certain of what is required to lead a truly happy life. Our new nest in Shanghai, though small and run down, has what modern apartments often lack: quiet and closeness among neighbors.
Our landlady knows almost everyone in the community and she can go to a neighbor's home for help, for example, if she forgets the keys to her apartment. You hardly know who your neighbors are in a compartmentalized high-rise building.
"For many years since I moved here, no one living upstairs has thrown a bit of dust into my courtyard," she told us. A few days ago, a bed sheet hung out to dry was blown from above down to the courtyard, breaking the stems of some flowers, but she picked it up and took it back upstairs to her neighbors without a bit of complaint.
In all the big buildings where I have lived since arriving in Shanghai in 2004, rubbish (sometimes very unpleasant refuse) often was tossed out of the upper windows. And without exception, those buildings are drowned in a sea of construction sites and/or elevated roadways that grant you not a moment of peace.
While many people willingly trade quiet and neighborliness for impersonal "modern comforts," my wife and I have been searching the other way round all the time - and this time we got it right.
Forgotten values
Quite a few Chinese economists and officials have made owning at least two apartments a prerequisite for a better-off life. They don't care whether those apartments are permeated by car emissions and buffeted by construction noise. They don't care whether you treat your neighbors as foes or friends, or just anonymous nonpersons. So long as you have at least two apartments, they say, you're better-off, and so is Chinese society.
That's where China stands now: about 30 years of economic reform have led one generation or more to champion material things in their quest for more and bigger houses and some even say tranquillity, rectitude and meditation are outdated. Long forgotten are Confucian teachings that a room need not be big to be graceful and flowers need not be many to be fragrant.
Our tiny nest is decorated with paintings of cranes and flowers drawn by our landlady in her retirement. They are invaluable to us as they depict the beauty of nature. One day I asked if she ever worried these lovely paintings might be stolen, and she laughed, "Who would know their value? Even thieves dismiss them as worthless."
None of these dampened our affection for the old (by Shanghai standards), small, simply furnished apartment as my wife and I moved into our newly rented "nest" amid the roar of the concrete jungle on May 1.
Indeed, the five-story apartment building, built in 1984, already looks dilapidated from the inside out. On the walls of the squeaky public stairway hangs a dusty set of old electric meters and wires that you rarely see in a neat, glossy, modern, high-rise apartment building.
In putting our things away in closets and cupboards, some with protruding nails, my wife scratched her hands quite a few times, sometimes to the point of bleeding.
Our new nest lacks all the "modern" elements and amenities that make a "comfortable" home in the eyes of those who think the creature comforts are the only real "comforts."
Even my mother-in-law, after quickly scanning the tiny, ground-floor space with hurried steps, bet we would move out shortly. "It's too small, too old for you," she said. Small indeed - only around 50 square meters. Our 77-year-old landlady partitioned the apartment and now lives right next door to us.
But my mother-in-law was too certain of what is required to lead a truly happy life. Our new nest in Shanghai, though small and run down, has what modern apartments often lack: quiet and closeness among neighbors.
Our landlady knows almost everyone in the community and she can go to a neighbor's home for help, for example, if she forgets the keys to her apartment. You hardly know who your neighbors are in a compartmentalized high-rise building.
"For many years since I moved here, no one living upstairs has thrown a bit of dust into my courtyard," she told us. A few days ago, a bed sheet hung out to dry was blown from above down to the courtyard, breaking the stems of some flowers, but she picked it up and took it back upstairs to her neighbors without a bit of complaint.
In all the big buildings where I have lived since arriving in Shanghai in 2004, rubbish (sometimes very unpleasant refuse) often was tossed out of the upper windows. And without exception, those buildings are drowned in a sea of construction sites and/or elevated roadways that grant you not a moment of peace.
While many people willingly trade quiet and neighborliness for impersonal "modern comforts," my wife and I have been searching the other way round all the time - and this time we got it right.
Forgotten values
Quite a few Chinese economists and officials have made owning at least two apartments a prerequisite for a better-off life. They don't care whether those apartments are permeated by car emissions and buffeted by construction noise. They don't care whether you treat your neighbors as foes or friends, or just anonymous nonpersons. So long as you have at least two apartments, they say, you're better-off, and so is Chinese society.
That's where China stands now: about 30 years of economic reform have led one generation or more to champion material things in their quest for more and bigger houses and some even say tranquillity, rectitude and meditation are outdated. Long forgotten are Confucian teachings that a room need not be big to be graceful and flowers need not be many to be fragrant.
Our tiny nest is decorated with paintings of cranes and flowers drawn by our landlady in her retirement. They are invaluable to us as they depict the beauty of nature. One day I asked if she ever worried these lovely paintings might be stolen, and she laughed, "Who would know their value? Even thieves dismiss them as worthless."
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