Our Little Work in Progress.
It occurs to me that I still haven't written anything about our new flat, other than poking fun at it for being small. It is small, truly; it's a studio flat somewhere between a third and a quarter the size of our old apartment (I use the two words interchangeably, it's a global age we live in). It's also expensive, at just under 160% the rent each month. That leaves us paying about 6 times as much per square meter as we were in Fuzhou, which on the face of it is a huge increase.
There are, of course, some mitigating factors to take into account, the most obvious of which is that our new apartment lies slap bang in the middle of Shanghai, whereas our old one was situated towards the southwest of Fuzhou, which, despite all its pretensions, is still very much a backwater city. Our nearest subway station is Nanjing West Road and we're within walking distance to the Bund (a reasonable long walk, certainly, but it's still under an hour). The location is ideal from a lifestyle point of view, although it leaves me with a bit of an undesirable commute to get to and from work, something which I may well come to regret in time.
Not that I didn't look for places near to the office, I did, I just failed to find anywhere that matched our budget and was livable. You might think apartments get cheaper as you move out of the city, and you'd be right, in part, but they also get newer and seem to get larger as well. Somewhere near the business park where my office is located may well have worked out cheaper by the square metre, but would have ended up costing us a similar amount overall, if not more, and offer less in the way of nearby amenities to keep us occupied in our spare time.
As it is, the area we settled on boasts an abundance of pleasant, European-style architecture and narrow, shady tree-lined streets, complete with numerous coffee shops, restaurants, bars, and a miscellany of different shops catering to both high-end consumers and xiaokang shenghuo* couples like me and the wife (it would be disingenuous of me to claim our jobs and backgrounds don't make us privileged enough to be comfortably middle-class for our present place and time, but you won't be finding Gucci handbags amongst our grave goods once we've passed).
The foreign influence and cosmopolitan atmosphere extends well beyond just the shopfronts and housing communities behind them. There are burger joints, milkshake bars, bagel shops, off licenses stocked with imported beer and wine, Vietnamese eateries that sell authentic, strong drip coffee with condensed milk (sure, we usually make this at home for a fraction of the price but it's still nice to know they're there for a sunny weekend afternoon), and more, all within easy walking distance of our home. While this would be nothing special for cities back home, it stands out as multi-cultural opulence when compared with what was available in Fuzhou and the cities we've lived in before.
But these comparative luxuries don't come at the cost of local flavour either. There is still a wealth of regional Chinese cuisine available nearby, from the ubiquitous Shanghai wonton joints, to Xinjiang lamb kebab stands, Sichuanese hotpot places, Hong Kong "tea houses", and even a Hunanese restaurant or two offering my favourite brain-meltingly spicy Xiang cuisine (my spice tolerance is fairly low, mind). There's also a fair number of local and European-style bakeries offering a wide variety of delicious biscuits and pastries, all within a five minute walk of our front door.
So the area is nice, or at least it suits our tastes. But what about the flat itself? It's small but cosy, as cliched as that sounds. It's part of an older housing community and is bursting with character (I have a copy of The Modern Sales Lexicon for Estate Agents here and you can't stop me from using it), from the old wooden floorboards in the living room/bedroom, to the stone-tiled floor in the kitchen. The space has been optimised perfectly, with no corner wasted and plenty of storage space. There are ample windows offering plenty of light, a proper sit-down toilet (always something to check for when renting in China), and hot running water in the kitchen sink (another luxury that most of my accommodation here has lacked).
The community outside is small and well-kept. There are plenty of cats running around, most of which have proven friendly so far, and pigeons lodging on the roof of a building across the road which often fly past. Frank Dikötter mentions pigeon racing briefly in his book The Cultural Revolution, saying how the pastime gained popularity in Shanghai prior to the communist takeover but then became a target of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, when many pigeon lofts were destroyed. I wonder if these, seemingly wild, pigeons now roaming around my community have any connection with those events; perhaps they were set free rather than culled by their owners back then and have since found a home for themselves amongst the roofs of the city?
Unlike our apartment in Fuzhou, we're not surrounded by 30-story high-rises, providing us with plenty of sunlight and views of the sky above. However, we no longer have a view out over the river as we once did, which is a shame. Our sofa is also a million times more comfortable and our bed hasn't collapsed in on itself yet, things which may seem small but are really quite important in the end.
After moving in I ordered some new furniture online, useful things like a bookcase, coffee table, and a bar stool so I can sit and type at the small, weird, bar-like dining table that protrudes into the living room, looking for all the world like a faux marble ironing board. We might need to make a few more little adjustments and additions here and there, but it already feels very much like a home here, more so than our last place, for whatever reason, and now we're both very much looking forward to our life here, in this flat and this city, for however long it lasts until we move on to somewhere more permanent (let's face it, we're never going to buy a house in Shanghai, we passed a couple of estate agents yesterday and boy oh boy is the local real-estate expensive).
*小康生活**. I am sorry for dropping in the unnecessary Chinese, but I have a particular fondness for this term, even if there's a medium to good chance I'm misusing it here. My understanding is that it's essentially used in a similar sense as "comfortable" in English, to indicate that your basic needs are met, both those in terms of survival, such as accommodation, food, access to medicine etc. but also more spiritual needs, such as education and access to entertainment and recreation. Basically, we're never going to have a big house and a flash car but we can afford to buy shelf-loads of books, drink tea, and order takeaway pizza on a regular basis.
**I just discovered there's an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the term "moderately prosperous society". I feel rather dumb admitting this, but up until now I'd never equated the two terms. Anyway, if you're looking to understand the concept, you're probably better off heading there than reading my silly little note above.
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