So we went to Dean Feng to let him know that we were planning to move off campus, and lo and behold, he tells us that the price of the apartments is 50 R.M.B. per usable square meter versus overall square meters. This lowered the price of the apartments significantly, though they would still be more expensive than the off-campus apartment we had found. The big plus was the convenience. I have four eight o'clock classes this semester, and if you know me at all you know that I'm not Miss Suzy Sunshine in the wee hours of the morning. The apartment we had found was north of campus and about a fifteen-minute bus ride away, but that was once you actually got on the bus and didn't count the fifteen minutes or more you could spend waiting for it. And if traffic happened to be a lot worse on any particular day, that could lengthen the drive as well. So suddenly I am having to leave home at 6:45 to be sure to get to school by 7:30. And we like living on campus. As much as we complain about not having a kitchen, it really is nice to just be able to walk over to the cafeteria for lunch or dinner. It's easy to get to class and meetings; my boss is always calling me to her office to pick up or drop off this or that, and doing so would be so much more difficult if we lived off campus. The higher price tag on the on-campus apartments was starting to appear more reasonable.
So we finally decided that, yes, we would live in the school's apartment if we could get one of the smaller apartments. It would be plenty big enough for our family and easily twice the size of where we are already living. Plus there was the possibility that we wouldn't have to sign a lease, so we could move out at any time. Now all we had to do was pray for patience!
The semester started and we attended another new semester orientation meeting. Dean Feng announced that the apartments would be finished within a week and that we would be able to move in by the end of the month. Why the delay? Well, the Chinese believe that when a building is built, there are all sorts of dangerous chemicals and toxins that go into the building and get stirred up in the air inside it, so after a building is finished, it has to simply sit there for two or three weeks. It's kind of funny; I don't know how they know when the poisons and toxins are gone, or where they go, or what would happen to you if you moved in before they had "settled," or why it's okay to move into a building full of toxins as long as you wait two or three weeks first, but that's beside the point. There is simply nothing we could do about it, and we had to wait.
On Friday of last week, Benjamin and I both received e-mails from our respective bosses telling us that anybody who was interested in living in the apartments should come to the office on Sunday morning to take a tour of them. In the afternoon we would have a meeting on housing allocation. Now to me, this sounded like the school was saying, "The apartments are ready and you will be given your keys on Sunday," or at least something along those lines. I'm sure you can imagine my response: this is going to be my best birthday ever!!! (Yes, Sunday was my birthday, or as Benjamin put it, the second anniversary of my twenty-ninth birthday.)
Sunday morning we did indeed take a tour of the apartments. I took a camera along to snap pictures so that I could start decorating in my head before we actually moved in. Overall I was very pleased. The furniture is a little on the cheap side, but it is all brand new, and whoever chose it did a good job picking out neutral items. From the moment I stepped in the door I was dreaming of where I would hang art and photos, where I would put candles and tablecloths, how I would arrange the kitchen, how many trips to IKEA I would have to make, etc.
So I went to the afternoon meeting with a happy heart. Benjamin and I had already spoken with many of the other teachers, and it seemed like most people did not want to move into the apartments on campus. We knew there were only seven of the smaller apartments available, and that we were about middle of the patch as far as seniority, but we didn't think we really had any competition. The teachers who were already living off campus didn't want to move back, and the teachers who were living on campus in the guesthouse for free (like us) didn't want to have to start paying rent.
Now here's the thing: the guesthouse we are currently living in is not ICB's guesthouse. We are actually living in the China-Israeli Center for Agricultural Studies. ICB's guesthouse, which is a stone's throw from where we are currently living, was evacuated with plans for demolition before the 2008 Olympics. (Apparently you could see the ICB guesthouse when a camera did a pan of the Olympic wrestling stadium, which is on campus, and the Olympic committee thought it looked tacky on television. It was in pretty bad shape.) But it never got demolished. In fact, last spring when Dean Meng was making us his promises about the on-campus accommodations he also informed us that the ICB guesthouse was going to be rennovated and every teacher was going to get a shared office space. (This was welcome news as well, but I was much more excited about the apartments. I will, however, enjoy having a work office as Benjamin and I currently share just one desk in our apartment, and we don't have anywhere to meet with students for our obligatory office hours. The supposed deadline for that project is the end of October.)
After informing us that we would have to pay rent for the on-campus apartments, we were given a second option: to move into ICB's new guesthouse--the one our offices will be in--for free. However, the rooms are smaller than they are in the China-Israeli guesthouse, where we have the biggest of all the rooms, so living in the new ICB guesthouse wasn't really an option. Benjamin and I would each be able to get a room, but they would be smaller (about 200 square feet each), and we still wouldn't have a kitchen. Basically, it would be a huge downgrade for us. For the single teachers living on campus, however, it would be a lateral move.
So at the meeting on Sunday every teacher interested in on-campus housing was asked to fill out form to let the school know where they would like to live. We handed in our forms and waited while Deans Meng and Feng counted. As it turns out, Benjamin and I were the only ones willing to pay the price the school had set. Everybody else wanted free accommodation in the newly-renovated ICB guesthouse.
Sounds good, right? I mean, if we are the only family who wants to move in, then we would have our pick of apartments. Not only would we be able to get one of the smaller apartments, but we would also be able to choose which floor we wanted to live on. But as it turned out, there are not enough rooms in the ICB guesthouse to accommodate everybody who wants to live there. Their solution: we have to get China Agricultural University to drop the rent on the apartments so that more of our teachers are willing to move there.
That sounds good, too, right? I mean, in my mind I'm thinking, "Great! We can move in, pay the higher rent for a month while this gets settled, and then start paying a more reasonable amount." That's what a normal person would think, right? Wrong. Since I am middle of the pack for seniority, Dean Meng wouldn't let me choose an apartment. He said, "You will just pick the best apartment. If the university lowers the price and other teachers with higher seniority choose to move in, they should be able to choose before you do." Dean Feng was actually on my side. He said it was reasonable to allow our family to move in ahead of others with higher seniority because we were willing to pay a higher price. Dean Meng countered with "But Seth shouldn't be living in that building with all the bad air anyway!" I stifled a scream...
So that's the story of why we're still waiting, why we can't move next week while we are on vacation, and why I am so angry with ICB that I am thankful for gun control laws. Hopefully...hopefully...hopefully it isn't the end of the story and we will be moving soon. Even if CAU lowers the rent on the apartments, we think we'll still be able to get one. There simply aren't a lot of teachers who sound interested. Most of the teachers here are single and only stay for a year or two, so living in a little room and eating at the cafeteria isn't all that bad if it's free and if it isn't for the rest of your life. We, on the other hand, might grow old in this stupid apartment; it does seem to have some kind of magnetic power over us. But hey, at least we're not breathing all that bad air. No, we just have to live with smog as bad as this:
