One Capitol

In the Daoyi Development District where universities relocated from their town locations, it was wide open spaces of farmlands. Three years ago I saw a lonesome four-story structure a mile north of the campus in the middle of nowhere. The building had a sign on the top floor that read: One Capitol aka Hui Zhi Shang Du.

My host family and I bought a garden apartment there before “rules in the book” got me out of employ; the unit was handed to us in June. With my radically changed financial situation, I am hustling to get my promised share of a seventh of the cost for a third of the space; my host family already plunked their six sevenths of the total. My share is earmarked for the inside work that needs to be completed by the time heat is turned on in November.

My current temporary residence is in a seven-story building, constructed in 1995 in what is now called the old Shenbei Center. Without elevators, residents on the seventh floor are in the best of shape. They climb 20 steps between each floor.

Buildings at Shenbei Center are close to 20 years old but they look ancient compared to the new dwellings in the area. Some occupants even drive official looking black sedans indicating that they might be government retirees. At 60, they are still sprite enough to care for grandchildren during the day while the parents work, as two-family incomes are now common to afford the rapidly rising standard and cost of living. I measure inflation by the price of corn on the cob on the sidewalk, now three times what it was three years ago!

The newbies in the neighborhood are entrepreneurs who trade goods from the countryside to the urban markets in buy-and-sell commerce that fills up quick sprouting sidewalk markets in the summer. These enterprising ones also sneak their children into urban schools.

When I moved in last March, the place looked like a rundown barracks in Garapan, or a ghetto on the Westside of Chicago. Well, “ghetto” is a misnomer. It is more like the hutong with the narrow but lively street where the palace hired help in the ancient Imperial Palace in Beijing lived. Private cars crowd my “alley”; one even parks his car on the children’s playground that is the central community node.

The local street sweeper keeps his tools in my building’s basement so we quickly interacted when I swept three sets of stairs (I live on the second floor), wiped off the telephone numbers on its walls, scraped the accumulated flyers including those on the entrance door, then placed potted plants in strategic locations on the stairs, windows, and landings.  A community officer tried posting a notice on our entrance door where he always posted before, and I pointed him to a makeshift bulletin board I delineated with duck tape on the wall of the first floor landing. The officer taped his announcement in a huff.

One day, I picked up street trash placing them into the bin and cleaned out the plastered ads on the electric pole on one end of the playground. The police got the word around that a «foreigner» resided in the neighborhood after the community office made sure I understood that I report to the police within 30 days on arrival from any extended absences!

My new residence at One Capitol follows the classic path of Shenbei Center. It built five-story dwellings (British architecture) for immediate occupancy equipped with underground parking lots, attracting the motor-owning moneyed class. Park-like surroundings are maintained in villas, townhouses, water fountains, piped music, gold fish bubble pools, two-floor top mansions, and garden apartments.

I carted debris Saturday from our ground floor dwelling over the weekend as my host›s daughter works to get the place habitable before the end of the year. We pushed a cart full of scraps from the tile layer when a worker next door asked which company we worked for. “Face” is guarded in China, of the inquired and the inquirer, so we made up a name and said it with a smile. The other unit›s interior work is contracted; owners do not show up with rolled-up sleeves but with fans to watch the work progress, fanning from the shade sipping their soda.

My host family will get an upgrade from their current dwelling and I will hang my name on a permanent address for the first time in a surrounding that represents everything I rebelled against, of gated communities of the privileged classes, owned by no less than J. Matheson Holdings of Hong Kong!

But a good deal is what I got, a seventh of the cost for a third of the space. I told the ceramic floor setter to tell inquirers that I was the house gardener since I am seen tending the garden of corn, radish, cabbage, cucumber, gourds, and green beans.

On feng shui, my third of the space is no bargain. I face the north side that does not get the sun even in the summer, let alone winter. Still, since my next seven years is writing, I got me a quiet secluded surrounding.

To sing praises for One Capitol must be a function of old age.