7: be it ever so humble...

so this would be home: a smallish hotel room off a double-loaded corridor, two flights up. you enter into a vestibule, a blue-tiled bathroom on the right, sleeping room beyond. what had been an open balcony is now an enclosed addition to the room, and serves as a kitchenette and laundry; fancy drapery can screen the archway to this area from the bedroom. large operable windows from the former balcony overlook a tiled courtyard; parallel to our building and about 30 feet beyond is the school gymnasium: large neon-blue-film-tinted windows face ours. the entire courtyard is topped with clear glass panes laid flat on a space frame structure, that meets our building at the head of the balcony window; the gym tops out at about the same height, and thru the glass roof, we get a north sky view above it.

james and i have adjacent rooms with mirror-image plans: his on the left and mine on the right. furnishings in each are the same: a (quite comfortable) platform double bed, with new sheets, 2 pillows and a duvet, a blonde-wood dresser, and a built-in wardrobe and desk unit, with bookshelves above to match. a hotel-size television sits atop a low end table. there's a padded office-style armchair, and a small student desk table. the ceiling height is at least 10 feet, with elaborate crown molding and an atomic-inspired light fixture centered above the bed. the landlord-white plaster walls have lots of scotch-tape residue from former tenants: the solid concrete walls preclude nails or tacks. the floor is plaid carpeting, a rare luxury, we were to learn.

the kitchen/balcony has countertops at both sidewalls; a small washing machine (selena the 2nd) and sink on the left, a chest-high fridge/freezer on the right. wall cabinets hold some odd dishes and pans, a rice cooker and a hot plate. the best appliance is an asian-style package a/c unit, with the remote-controlled air handler mounted high on the wall behind the bed; the compressor hangs on the exterior wall to the right of the window.

the bathroom is another special luxury, in our "western-style" suites, outfitted for foreign teachers with real sit-down, ceramic toilets (as opposed to the floor-mounted "squatters" in the rest of the building, and the city, and the country). the ceramic vanity rivals the toilet in elegance: a matching set, they are decorated with painted garlands and ribbons, and would look like delft pottery if not for the central images- of mauve and gray camels (two humps) in amiable groupings. as happens so often here, i'm clueless as to that allusion... a standard-sized bathtub with package hot-water heater, and a hand-held shower complete the ensemble.

our building houses the school kitchen and cafeteria on the ground floor; the two floors above were student dormitories when built, about 10 years ago; now it houses teaching staff in 12 rooms on each floor. on the roof, additional dormitories have been built: pre-fab metal-panel structures, with an open-air breezeway between, topped with a translucent carport-type canopy. each room has 4 sets of bunk beds (reed mats on plywood). all rooms share a central wash trough, gang showers and toilets. this is where the service staff live, male and female: guards, cooks, maintenance and cleaning staff. i thought my quarters were austere until i visited theirs: jimmied in between the supports for our grand rooftop neon sign, it's another world up there... but quite a nice view.

there was a construction project underway on our arrival: a narrow, 2-level concrete structure had been erected across the west end of the courtyard, connecting our building with the gymnasium, but topping out a level below the glass canopy. the bamboo scaffolding was alive with workers and noise and activity from early dawn until 'way past dusk; they were on a mission to complete for the start of school in another week. the only access to our stair was thru this anthill; lulu and the headmaster apologized profusely about the inconvenience, but it was more fascinating than disturbing. these work-persons might do anything: in the following weeks (they missed their deadline, of course) we saw swinging bosun's chair plasterers, sparking electricians standing in puddles, and welders wearing a shirt cardboard with holes for a mask, held in place with a pair of ray-bans. tile-cutters squatted over bare spinning blades; pallets of bricks were hoisted up by fraying cables on ancient winches; workers on the roof held the belts of their colleagues as they lunged out to capture the loads. 'twas a comic circus of dickensian dangers...

on arrival at our new abode, lulu gave us some time to get out of our dress clothes, then offered us a tour; she had the rest of the afternoon free for us. the entire school complex was teeming with workers, unloading boxes and furniture and preparing for the new year, so we didn't venture above the ground floor, but left thru the west gate to survey the neighborhood.



jiao yuan middle school was ten years old, we learned, and situated in yitian village, one of the first planned developments of the new shenzhen, right on the hong kong border. within the gated, limited-access "superblock" roughly ten blocks square were several business districts, two other schools, a sports center and a medical complex, and scads of apartments. the earliest buildings are low-rise, seven story walk-ups. immediately ouside the school gate is a plaza ringed with small shops and three markets, some noodle stands, some barbers- pretty much everything you need. it truly serves as a neighborhood living room, a reality that western planners can only sketch and dream of... (but then again, westerners wouldn't be caught dead ballroom dancing with their neighbors to patsy cline tapes).



the "LGF" sign that appears to be sitting on the school roof is actually atop a new highrise on the hong kong side of the border, near what looks like our checkpoint charlie- we're that close. center city is still about 30 minutes away by commuter train or bus, however.



with the success of deng xiaopeng's experiment of easing open the border came wealth for the yitian villagers: the vacant land on the north edge of their complex was developed as 40-story high-rise apartments. they were now landlords, riding the boom; though it looks like a modest community, the village is now rich.



the afternoon was too hot to cover much distance on foot, so we asked our contact teacher to show us how to get around shenzhen on the bus. our closest stop is across yitian boulevard, in front of the complex where lulu lives, pictured below- typical of the party-hat exhuberance all over town.



lulu took us to the main electonics street, about a 15 minute ride, and we walked thru the dizzying emporia of gadgetry and widgets and circuitboards and equipment- some set up like tiffany's, some like the diamond district, with individual booths in towering, deafening halls. we went to the knock-off market, so shameless, they even call it that, and looked at clothing, handbags, jewelry... we walked the shady, bustling streets inside of the airport-runway superblocks. and of course, we ate: lulu is from the extreme northwest corner of china, five hours travel by plane. she took us to an ethnic restaurant of her people, with belly dancing and music and spicy lamb-on-a-stick and yogurt and smoky bread and wild colors and exotic seeds and seasonings: somehow, turkey collided with india, and dragged afganistan along for the ride. i'm still not sure what tribe this actually was, but that's just normal now. she insisted that we were her personal guests, on paying for everything; we'd most definitely hit the jackpot.

in the course of dinner, we learned that we were essentially on our own for the next 2 weeks: there was to be a faculty meeting on monday morning, but after that we were free until the start of school the following monday, september 4th. lulu was planning her wedding for late october, and wasn't going to have much time for us, but would be available by phone for problems. she knew my birthday was in the next week, and said that the headmaster insisted on having a dinner for the occasion. i asked sheepishly if it would be ok for me to be away for my birthday: i hadn't been to shanghai yet to see my friend paul rice and his family, and this free time looked like a hole in the fence for me. no problem: we'd do it later.

the rest of the week was spent unpacking and setting up, exploring the streets and stores, household shopping and learning our way around. on the morning of the faculty meeting, the empty school came to life. a couple of hundred teachers filed into the auditorium (lots of shorts and sandals, i was relieved to see- pretty informal bunch), but only after having collected a red envelope on checking in. inside the envelope was cash: 300 kuai per teacher (about 36 bucks), just for showing up on time! i was learning to like this gig.

the headmaster showed us he might be a replacement for castro: after introducing the new teachers, he spoke enthusiastically, and in chinese, for nearly 2 hours. i was afraid of nodding off, but sneaking a look around the auditorium, i saw that was pointless: those teachers not snoring with open-mouthed abandon were busy text-messaging on their cell phones. i'd forgotten an earlier lesson learned in china: there's a whole different ethos to paying attention here. it seems strange that in a culture where respect is so important, actual listening is not.

turned loose from my first official school event by noon, i jumped in a taxi and pointed to my map to show the driver the local airport; i was off to shanghai.

next: bright lights, big city...