Apartment in Shenyang China : Everett's Abode
Hi, and welcome to my Chinese abode. Yes, this is the lucky floor number 7, the very top of the concrete block: the pimpin' penthouse. You should see my leather doors and the whores that congregate in the courtyard every night! I moved in here around the end of October, and for 80 dollars a month (US), it was a find! My friend Lania kept her Chinese ears open and heard about this place just across the street from the main office of the school and spitting distance from the Japanese and American Consulates.
This is a pretty typical Chinese apartment, if not a bit on the large side, especially for one person - one of my Chinese friends lived in a place half this size with both of his parents. Do your bulbs hang low, do they dangle to and fro? All the light fixtures welcomed my arrival by leaping from the walls in a shower of sparks. The light bulb in this picture survived the fall, but his friend shattered after plinking across the piano. It gave me the feeling of a castration half completed. I'm standing in the kitchen/entryway, the stove and sink are behind the glass wall, while the bathroom is on the left. There were 2 other rooms, one small (more of a bedroom), and one larger (more of a living room).
I confess that I enjoyed singing and peeing in the shower. The bathroom was a bit small, but had all the necessities -- what you see is what you get. That porcelain thing in the floor is the shower drain AND the toilet (use your imagination). I'm holding the shower head in my hand, but if you want to change the water temperature, you have to go into the kitchen where the water heater is, then wait for the water in the heater to heat up or cool down.
Most foreigners freak out at the squat toilets, but actually, they're kind of nice: your derriere doesn't have to come into contact with anything unsavory, but all you novices should watch your aim. Once you get acquainted with squat toilets, you realize that you are truly human; food goes in, poop comes out, and the manner of this coming and going isn't terribly important in the grand scheme of things. Remember kids, don't leave home without some tissues: they are your napkins, snot rags, and your ticket to the bathroom. Toilet paper is rarely provided in Chinese bathrooms, even in hospitals and hotels. There is a related article, "Toilets of the World," in the Rant Archive.
It's a wee bit cold in here. Shenyang has a "National Heating Day" when the whole city fires up its boilers, regardless of heat wave or Arctic cold. It was kind of anticlimactic, actually; my friends Peter and Amy and I went out for noodles to celebrate, but even after the special day, I was never able to melt butter on my radiator. Sometimes the pipes were hooked up in series; if your neighbor turned off his radiator, you would no longer have heat. On top of that, electric space heaters were illegal for some reason, but your hooligan narrator smuggled 2 of them in anyway. The thermometer in the picture was INSIDE my kitchen. I saved the styrofoam from my appliances and stuffed it into the window panes to help solve this unpleasant problem (you can see it in the background of the first photo). Most buildings in China do not have central heating. When you walk into a restaurant or the post office, a soothing rush of warm air does not greet you.
Cameron Martindell arrived from Japan in time for Thanksgiving, and he is to thank for many of these pictures. He found the large tropical picture in my kitchen highly amusing, so we wore temperature appropriate dress for this self portrait. Cam's got more pictures of this and other adventures on his intrepid web site, www.offyonder.com. This tropical picture became funnier and funnier to me as I noticed it in more and more homes and businesses. When friends Brant and Bronwen sent me pictures of their apartment in Xi'an, I saw the familiar piece of decor. Brant and Bronwen have posted some beautiful pictures of China and other travel destinations as they tour the globe with dauntless mirth: www.accultured.com.
For the Walk Through Tour
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