Always at Home

Although I made fun of The Good Earth a little, my housing situation in Beijing followed a similar cycle of ups and downs. In fact, it's probably my punishment for taking a little swipe at a Nobel Prize winner that just after posting that, for my last stretch in Beijing, I didn't have a place at all.

It wasn't always that way. At one point, I had two apartments. Another time, I had an apartment, but was crashing on someone's couch.

I moved to Beijing with a duffel bag and a Dell laptop that only had a few more months of life in it. I didn't know anyone, but I was in touch with a friend of a friend. She connected me with one of her friends, and I ended up perched above Chaoyang Bei Lu, just outside the Fourth Ring Road, in Luoma Jiayuan—that is, Rome Estates. My sublet was in a very nice building, though I soon learned that it was nothing compared to some of the villas in Shunyi, something like the Westchester of Beijing. Complexes with lofty but often nonsensical names like Yosemite provided housing approximating an American suburb for expats and wealthy locals. Incidentally, my favorite name for an apartment complex, this one near the 798 Art Zone, was Pearl Harbor, where a German artist I worked with lived. During a recent visit back, I was sure that I misunderstood a friend's English accent when she invited me to a party at an apartment building called Chateau Edinburgh.

A small city, Rome had thousands of units spread over dozens of buildings. Gold fabric covered columns near the entryways. A statue of Caesar presided over the center of the complex. In our section (phase two), there were 2,600 units—and now phase four is going up. I get the impression that in a decade or so, the population of Beijing's Rome will rival that of actual Rome.

I quickly discovered China's nouveau riche. Little kids—just one per couple—played outside with their grandparents or ayis ("aunties," a term used for nannies and maids), sometimes both, looking on. The residents of Luoma Jiayuan, called a "Pragmatistic Mansion" on the real estate billboards, drove BMWs in and out every day, sitting in traffic for maybe an hour to get to the center of town. Anything could be ordered in. Any notions that China's just a poor Third World country were quickly dispelled. But let's not forget that China is still a place of extreme contrasts: Just across the street, migrant workers working on a new set of towers bunked in canvas tents—just behind an ad for the new development featuring Che Guevara.

And I, too, was living a privileged life, making relatively more money as a foreign freelancer than my Chinese peers, going to Mandarin class three times a week with wives on expat packages, and exploring the city in my ample spare time. I had a great deal on the place with one small caveat—when the couple who owned the apartment and their baby were back in town, maybe four or five days every two months, all four of us shared the two-bedroom apartment. But stuck so far out east and living alone, I felt a little isolated. So when the couple moved back to Beijing, it was time for me to get real.

A Chinese friend's apartment near 798

The kitchen in an apartment used by earthquake volunteers in Chengdu

When I left the Pragmatistic Mansion, just before the Olympics, I looked at a few places, and chose the cheapest. My rent was about $150 a month for an apartment shared with a Chinese girl about my age and a Chinese couple. I passed up one place in the Chongwen district with individual locked bedrooms with hot plates, a shared bathroom, and a small living area with a couch and water cooler. Another, in a great location near Sanlitun, had a window from the bedroom looking into the living room.

In the southeast of Beijing, near Panjiayuan and the Temple of Heaven, I was in a solid old apartment block with very few foreigners. There one older French guy who'd lived in the area for years. I never met him, but other residents told me his Chinese is very good and his complexion is very pink!

I was closer to the center, near two of my favorite attractions, and feeling a bit more like I was experiencing the real Beijing, but conditions were rough: the ceiling was crumbing down in places, I put tape around the edges of my windows to stay warm through the brutal Beijing winters, and oil caked above the stove so that if it got too hot, the grease would drip back down onto the stove—yeah, I had to be careful, but it's probably not worse seasoning than some of the cooking oil used in cheap Chinese restaurants.

A group of women sat in front of my building, tending to their little white dogs, fanning themselves, and sitting on squat stools. One woman was always there, and I was told to call her something that loosely translates to Big Momma. She had a quasi-official position keeping an eye on the area and the bike shed across from my window.

I felt self-conscious about looking like a wasteful foreigner (although most of my middle class Chinese peers were just as bad about throwing things away), so I was careful to not throw away anything unless it was truly worthless. Still, I knew that whenever I took out the trash, by the time I was back in my second-floor room and looked out the window, the neighbors would've picked my stuff apart, salvaging sneakers with the sole nearly detached, empty shampoo bottles, and pens with no ink.

The apartment was grimy, but I loved it. There was a feeling the place was just cobbled together—the laundry machine you had to drag into the bathroom, with the water discharging into the sink. Two rival fruit stands occupied the entrance to the complex, and I eventually became friendly with the owners of one. In the summer,  chuanr stands spilled into the sidewalks. The dry-cleaner did simple alterations for pennies. The convenience store had horrible processed food and watery beer for about 25 cents, with a nickel deposit on the bottles. Oh, and two brothels-disguised-as-barber-shops sat right outside the entrance.

When I wasn't in class, I worked in my room. I loved the antique wooden furniture, the yellowed tile ceiling, and the hopelessly scuffed wooden floors. When the pollution wasn't too bad, I'd go running along the stinky canal nearby, where Chinese men fished and swam in the winter. At night, I'd take the bus out to music venues.

And then, once again, my fortunes changed! I'd just been offered a job doing Time Out Beijing's website and covering the Beijing music scene for them. When I was freelancing and just commuting into the center of town occasionally, living so far away wasn't a big deal. But having to fight traffic every morning rush wasn't that appealing—it meant an hour mashed against strangers in a crowded bus.

At the same time, a friend of mine, who works in an industry that's slightly more remunerative than journalism, was sent back to the US by his company. In addition to having a super posh place in Beijing, stumbling distance from the main Sanlitun bar strip and across the street from the Workers' Stadium, my Friend with Money is also slightly obsessive-compulsive, and didn't want just anyone looking after his place.

We struck a deal. I would look after his place and fend off his nosy landlord (nicknamed Betty the B). And I would pay half his rent and keep his ayi employed. I still had a few months on my lease in south Beijing, and Friend with Money wasn't sure when he'd be sent back, so I split my days between two places. I enjoyed the bachelorette pad in the center—walking distance from my office—but went back to my old place sometimes to have some quiet or to pick things up.

But the new place was posh, and for once, traveling during the day didn't require battling traffic. Courtesy of the landlord, there were glass tables, Pier 1-ish Buddhist art, and leather couches. In my little haven of Orientalist design, I watched DVDs and put in long hours finishing up work that didn't get done in the office.

Eventually I moved out of south Beijing, and Friend with Money still hadn't returned. The Chinese bohemians down the hall ran a tattoo parlor out of their apartment. We had a 24-hour doorman. It was easy to get gourmet pizza delivered.

My ayi would sometimes give me her old clothes

My situation was too perfect to end that way, though. Just days before I planned to leave Beijing, the lease was set to expire, but Friend with Money would still not be returning to town.

What's more, Betty the B found new tenants—her match in bitchiness, the couple asked her to replace the light fixture in the living room with "something less Chinese-looking"—and wanted us out early since they would be paying considerably more rent.

One week before I left Beijing, I helped my friend's girlfriend and his ayi pack up all of his belongings. I put tags on all of the landlord's furniture so it wouldn't be sent off to his storage space. I carried big boxes to China Post, even mailing back two stools that now sit in my living room.

And just days before my departure, I wheeled one suitcase and carried a big plastic tube containing the art I'd purchased (now very expensively framed and hanging over my bed and sofa) over to Season's Park. It was just a couple of blocks away, a luxury complex for families who wanted to be in near the center of town—in the summer, there's a pool! I lived in the guest room of my Friends with Money and Baby for my last week in Beijing.

That's how it happened: from Rome to romantic grittiness to the heart of Beijing with a place on the side—and then back to nothing, except gorgeous mementos and memories.