Christians, Apartment Filth, and Other Observations from Yantai

Chinese New Year is tomorrow and my first week in Yantai is just about up. In disclaiming that surreal has become normal, the week was average by most accounts. I did not work and, therefore, did not have to wake up for anything in particular. I arrived on Monday night to a spacious but filthy apartment. The feeling of relief from arriving at the new apartment was replaced by disgust. I laid my head on the pillow and pulled a blanket over my legs, a sense of exhaustion waving over me. After a few minutes, another sense took over. Dust and must were surrounding me. I was sleeping on them, disrupting their months of stable serenity in the vacant apartment.

Over the course of the next two days, I washed everything – pillowcases, sofa cushions, towels, sheets…you name it. After the first load of laundry, which included the sofa cushions, I noticed the sofa was not actually the light grey I thought it was but a soft tan. I don’t remember the last time I mopped, dusted, and swept like this, probably because I never have. Each day I’d conquer a new room, replacing buckets of soap water after they turned black. In Shanghai, your “problem” of cleaning can be avoided by hiring a cleaning lady for $2 an hour. But, in Yantai, such practice is not customary. It’s one of the few subtle differences I noticed between the two towns.

It seems like there is a slower pace of life here. Maybe it is the fact that I didn’t have to work this week, but I doubt it. The people seem friendlier, more welcoming. The air - cleaner, colder and dryer than Shanghai - smells a bit more relaxed. And sometimes it smells like snow. Last winter, it snowed twice in Shanghai and they considered it a legendary season. This week, it’s snowed twice in Yantai. Granted, both brought less than an inch. But snow is snow and I am glad it’s regular again, expected.

A Sunday night sore throat morphed into a cold by Tuesday morning. Since I had the luxury of being able to relax, I let my body recover. Aside from cleaning, each day brought studying Chinese and watching the Wire, one of the most well-written shows I’ve ever seen. At some point, I also managed to sneak in a trip to the government building to handle visa formalities, my first chess game in eight years, three games of bowling, four games of pool, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I also made friends with the woman who runs the convenience store downstairs. She, in turn, introduced me to a family that lives in the next-door building. The father is from a different part of China, but the mother is from Yantai. She tells me her parents live across the street and I feel like I’m in South Philly for an instant. My new neighbors may not be Italian or Irish, but they are Christian.