This Is China

Yesterday I moved flats from the North East to the South West of the city, to be closer to work and friends. Anyone who knows me may be able to imagine the chaos that was likely to ensue in the wake of this activity, as forward planning and organization are not my strong suit. So, D-Day [Departure Day] arrived and the flat was finally signed for. Having had a back-and-forth game over contracts, money swaps and fraud analysis by the organisations I am involved with [a tedious and long sub-text to this tale] and the landlord, I was relieved the bureaucratic part was over. I speedily fled and collected Gaya, who had kindly offered to help me move. And from this part on, that is the running theme throughout this entry: Overwhelmingly humbling kindness from friends and strangers.

Gaya and I attacked the scrambled mess of my apartment with ruthless vigor, disbanding with collected junk and meaningless items I had horded over the past year. Amidst the activity we chatted and giggled and got high about our closing proximity of habitation. Slightly alarmed by the mounting piles of belongings, we began frantically filling any spare space in bags and boxes to evacuate the current abode and reach the new one in time to buy electricity so I didn’t spend my first evening in darkness.

Once everything was collected, I went out in search of a Taxi Mini-Van. Not living in the busiest of thoroughfares, I began randomly walking up to any mini-van, in the hope of finding someone I could persuade with a smile and a 100Kuai note. The first man I stumbled upon was golden. As he began to pull off, I knocked on the window and he stopped. Suddenly realizing I had no idea the Chinese for ‘Move house’ I said, “Today I live here, tomorrow I live in Gaoxin…I have too many bags, can you help with your vehicle?”…a stifled smile and perplexed head scratching gave way to ‘Ke Yi’ [I can] and said he could give 10mins or so. An hour and a half later, we pulled up and emptied out at my new apartment and not so much as a flicker of consternation had crossed his face in that time. Instead, he had drawn right up to my door, helped Gaya and I load and then driven 45mins through rush hour traffic to take me to the other end of the city. He enthusiastically worked through our broken Chinese, inadvertently giving us tuition and we established he was my neighbour from a couple of floors below in my old apartment. I tried to offer him money and wine as a thank you, to which he point blank refused saying he was just helping out an old neighbour and I was left with a golf-ball size lump of humbled appreciation in my throat.

As we began moving the piles of wares from street to apartment, a new neighbour abandoned her activities and without being asked, helped us to load everything into the elevator [riding up and down the floors a few times so we didn’t prevent the other apartment users getting to their homes] and then into my flat. Again, priceless generosity. She introduced her self, as the last bag was tossed into the apartment, and told me where she lived.

Gaya and I closed the door on my new apartment breathing a sigh of relief and beaming with happiness at the people we’d encountered. We cracked open a beer in celebration and sat in a new construct of total chaos.

Sometimes, with my lack of understanding and other pressures of living in a foreign land, I get more than a little snappy and it is ridiculously easy to fall into the trap of throwing a generalized tantrum at your host country and all who represent her. And many times, Chinese on mass, can be very unforgiving and cut throat…a living demonstration of ‘survival of the fittest’ as those who don’t win, perish…but on a one to one basis, the calibre of people can be breath taking. A common expat phrase here is ‘T.I.C’ [This Is China] and is usually used in a derogatory context to berate the idiosyncrasies of this vast country that drive each one of us slowly [or sometimes rapidly] nuts. Today however…T.I.C…in its very best guise.