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Living with the locals

By Daniel Garst (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-01 11:33

Historically, very few Westerners in China have lived among ordinary Chinese people. In old China, most of them resided in exclusive foreign concessions and interacted only with their servants and Chinese officials. In new China, laowai were barred from renting private apartments up through the 1990s and thus led a bubble-like existence in special residential hotels.

All of this started to change before the Olympic Games. More foreigners began holding middle-level white collar jobs in Western, joint venture and even Chinese firms, started their own small businesses, or taught English in private language schools. While high level managers in Western Companies with fat expatriate packages rented flats in luxury apartment communities, these less affluent laowai made do with less expensive housing.

I am a case in point. I began working as a corporate trainer in a large Chinese SOE two and half years ago. Although my job pays fairly well, I initially could not afford to rent higher end housing in Beijing (and still set aside some money).

So for two years, I rented a flat in a middle-tier apartment community in Dongzhimen Aside from the dozen other foreigner tenants, the 1000+ residents in this community were all Chinese. These Chinese were ordinary people, the kind of folks who are called "Old Hundred Names", or laobaixing in China.

While living there, I was struck by the fact that only a small handful of these laobaixing were uncomfortable with the presence of us laowai. One was a very old woman living in a flat on my stairwell, who greeted me with a hostile stare every time we crossed paths.

Living with the locals

My next-door neighbor, who lived in the small one bedroom flat between my two-bedroom and the other two-bedroom apartment across the hall, presented a different problem. This heavy 40-something woman bought the apartment shortly after I moved into the community.

She had a teenage son, but I never saw a husband move into the flat, so this lady was probably divorced. She also clearly had financial problems. When we first met, the door to her flat was open, and I could not help but notice that it was scantily and shabbily furnished. And one year, after the Nov 15 deadline for the heat going on had passed, she asked me if I had heat, indicating that she hadn't paid the heating fee.

I soon began hearing violent quarrels erupt practically every night through the thin wall between her flat's sitting room and my master bedroom.

I could never tell what she was saying, as her raspy voice sounded like a snarling cat. The shouting would be followed by screaming and her front door being slammed shut.

I would then hear a male voice, which might have been her son, ex-husband or some other male acquaintance, shouting into apartment.

Fortunately, my neighbors across the wall, a married couple and their teenage daughter were entirely different. This was especially true of the wife/mother, a warm-hearted woman in her 40s. She always said hello to me and cheerfully responded to my efforts to chat with her in Chinese.

This woman also went out of her way to be helpful. She told me how to pay my gas, water and electricity bills. And around Nov 15, my neighbor would come over and rub her hands against the hot water pipes to check if the heat was on, adding that she was happy to contact the management people for me if it wasn't working properly.

One evening, this lady invited me over to her flat for tea and watermelon. She was boarding some foreign guests for a few days and wanted my translation help. We talked for four hours, and I learned that the whole area south of Dongzhimen Beixiaojie had previously been all courtyard houses.

This family and the others living in the courtyard houses were given new housing in their neighborhood, so the area retains a strong sense of community, even though it now consists entirely of large apartment blocks.

Last summer I moved into a nicer building south of Sanlitun Soho.

While I don't miss my old apartment, with its shoddy kitchen cabinets and cracked bathroom washbasin, I do miss the laobaixing community spirit of my old Dongzhimen neighborhood. And I also miss my old neighbor across the hallway.

I did see her one day while walking past the old building.

I told her I'd moved to Sanlitun, and she said, in a tongue in cheek way, "Oh, you're near all the bars now!" When I replied in Chinese, "Wo bushi jiugui!" (I'm not a drinker), she howled in laughter. My life in China has been filled with great experiences, and having this wonderful laobaixing neighbor ranks as one of the best.

The writer is a corporate trainer in Beijing.