When we first came to China fall of 2008, we planned to live in our school's guesthouse for a month or so while we looked for our own place. The room we were given in the guesthouse was bigger than average, but it was just a sitting room and a bedroom. The bedroom had room for one double bed and space to walk next to it. The sitting room had a couch and a wardrobe. It wasn't a place we wanted to live long-term.
Two or three days after moving in, the school offered us a larger apartment with a decent-sized living room and a much larger bedroom--room for a bed, a wardrobe, and a crib in this one. I was hesitant to take it since we were planning to move off campus within a couple of weeks. I mean, the apartment they showed us was a big improvement over the one we were already living in, but it was still pretty yucky and tiny, and I just didn't think it was worth it to move everything. Well, Benjamin was pretty convinced that it was worth it to upgrade to the larger place even if we would only be staying there for a couple of weeks, and since he said he would do the moving while I worked on lesson planning, I agreed. (Incidentally, this was an act of submission on my part; yes, feminists in egalitarian relationships can and do practice the fine art of submission!)
Well, it turned out to be a smart thing to do because moving off campus was going to have to be postponed. We found out that landlords in China typically require tenants to pay three to six months' rent at a time, in addition to a hefty security deposit. We had only brought enough cash to China to make it to my first pay day, which we had misunderstood to be the twentieth of the month. (Actually, it turned out to be the twenty-eighth. The Chinese accent makes it really hard to distinguish these two numbers.) Then when I finally did get paid we squandered pretty much all our money buying a washing machine since we had previously had to wash everything by hand or take our clothing to a shop off-campus where they charged us per item to launder our clothes for us and our clothes came back with tags stapled into them that hurt like the dickens and were really hard to take off, too. Oh, yeah, and we bought a microwave and DVD player, too.
After that, we thought we should be able to move out between semesters. I had a month off starting in mid-January, and we thought that by then we would be able to save up enough money. I mentioned this to my boss and she discouraged us from moving off campus since (a) it's a big hassle with loads of paperwork and oodles of long lines to stand in and (b) the school was working on getting us better accommodations. Plus we were getting kind of used to where we were, small as it was, and liked the idea of saving so much money (where we live now is rent-free), and we thought we could stick it out until the end of the school year.
Spring semester began. All the teachers at ICB were invited to an orientation meeting. At this meeting the dean of our school stood in front of us all and gave us this speech:
"It really is a shame that our teachers, some of the best teachers in Beijing, teachers who have come to Beijing from all over the world, are living in the accommodations we have provided. Our teachers are living in single rooms while teachers at other universities are given entire apartments. Our teachers don't have kitchens; they have to eat in the school cafeteria with the students or go out to eat every single day. Our teachers don't have the quality of life they would have if they worked in their home countries or even at other universities in Beijing, and for this I apologize.
"Building 41, on the north side of campus, is an apartment building recently constructed for full professors at China Agricultural University. CAU has allocated twenty-one of these apartments to ICB. Two teachers will share each apartment, so there will be room for forty-two full-time teachers. The apartments are 1300 and 1500 square feet in size, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a study. The apartments will be ready for you to move into on May 1."
(Okay, so it wasn't nearly as eloquent as all that. Imagine the above with lots of inappropriate pauses, a really, really thick accent, tons of grammatical errors, and none of the big words, and that's what we heard.)
And then they showed us these gorgeous computer generated photos.
I was thrilled to pieces. Benjamin was thrilled that I was thrilled.
May 1 came and went, which wasn't really that big of a deal. I mean, in China deadlines are understood to be flexible, and though it frustrated me because I thought Dean Meng should have known better than to promise us the new apartments by a certain date, I knew that I simply had to be patient. You simply can't rush the Chinese.
Near the end of May we discovered that Seth could climb out of his crib. But we had a problem: no room for a toddler bed in our little bedroom. We went to the dean in charge of the apartments, Dean Feng, and explained the situation. We told him that we appreciated that the school was getting these apartments ready for us but that if they couldn't be ready in a couple of weeks we simply had to move off-campus in order to have a safe place for Seth to sleep. He promised us that the apartments would be ready by the time we left for the States mid-July. Benjamin and I didn't really know what to do, but ultimately we stayed put. It seemed silly to move off-campus for a couple of weeks and have to pay rent over the summer when we would be gone. We moved Seth into our bed (which he didn't mind one bit!) and started getting a lot lower quality of sleep.
As we were getting ready to return to the States for the summer, we made a point to speak with Dean Feng and ask him about the progress on the apartments. He said they would most certainly be done by the time we returned from abroad.
Then, one week while we were visiting friends in Kentucky, I received an e-mail from my boss Joyce. She wrote that she had finally been given the price of the apartments. I cannot stress to you enough that we had no idea before this point that the apartments would not be included as part of our compensation. No one had told us or even hinted to us otherwise. In fact, the exact opposite had been implied, if not expressly stated.
Furthermore, the price of the apartments was outrageous: $900 and $1,100 per month for the smaller and larger apartments, respectively. Many of our fellow teachers were already renting apartments off campus, and they typically paid $400 to $500 per month. The apartments on campus were larger, but we certainly didn't need 1300 square feet of living space. After all, our apartment in Kentucky had been only 750 or maybe 800 square feet.
Now we were filled with questions. Why was the school charging us for the apartments when at the new semester orientation meeting they had been presented as part of our benefits? Why were these apartments so expensive, to the degree that they were priced about twice as much as we thought would have been reasonable? And most of all, why had we been discouraged from moving off campus if we would have been better off financially that way anyway? The amazing thing about China is that we will never get an answer to any of these questions. Saving face is an important part of Chinese culture, so we can't simply go to Dean Meng or Dean Feng and accuse them of trying to exploit us. We can't even really ask them any pointed questions. All we can do is speculate with our colleagues, which we have done aplenty.
We returned to Beijing determined to find our own place off campus. After toying with the idea of me quitting my job (I hadn't signed a contract, Benjamin had, and we could live off his salary until I found something new) we realized that it would be better to continue working while looking for a new position. I started looking online for apartments, and we visited some rental agencies in some areas where we would like to live. After looking at ten or so apartments, we found one we were very happy with--the rent was about $450 per month--and we told the realtor that we would be back the next day with a Chinese friend who could help us communicate. If we received favorable answers to our questions (for example, we wanted the landlord to replace or at least remove the couch, which was gross), then we would sign a lease. But before doing that we thought we would go see Dean Feng and let him know our plans. After, we had been bugging him for months regarding when the apartments would be ready, and now we weren't even going to live in them. As angry as we were, we thought it was a good idea. I think we also felt the need to tell him that we were disappointed with how the situation had turned out, even if that did mean that he would lose face.
I told you it was a long story!! I'm going to have to take a break because Seth needs to go to bed. I'll try to finish up the saga soon!
