Digs in Guangzhou

My rent in GZ was probably the cheapest rent I'll ever have in my life. At $100/month it will be tough to beat. But then again I also lived with the landlord, had to install two door knobs, and buy an AC unit (see photos above). She is a sweet woman who lived simply and frugally as she tried to find ways to make a living after her husband passed away. When I moved in, she had recently acquired a kitten to get the rats that had crawled up through the squat toilet and chewed through her television set power cord. She called the cat "little cat" and me "little Chang." Several times, her voice became impatient when I forgot that "little Chang" was me and failed to respond.

My landlord preferred to lock the front door from inside, which seems like a death trap considering that she would make sacrificial bonfires in the living room. I wasn't to leave my window open if I left the apartment despite the bars across it since "thieves could cut the bars." I didn't bother to point out that they could also just break the window. Her paranoia of thieves bewildered me, but over time I realized that this paranoia is rampant amongst people in China.

She taught me about traditional Cantonese beliefs that I had little exposure to before when I was living in northern China. She never finished primary school so our literacy in Mandarin was approximately equivalent. Often, she would switch into a Cantonese dialect when speaking with me, leaving me in the dust as I stood there staring blankly. Other times she would ask me how to say things in Mandarin, these mini-ego boosts would be quickly squashed when I went to work and was reminded of how much Chinese I have yet to learn. Her perceptions of health and understanding of causes of illness initially frustrated me, but ultimately broadened my understanding of Chinese traditional conceptions of health. She firmly believed the cause of all her health problems was because she didn't appropriately zuo yuezi after she had her son 16 years ago. Zuo yuezi (坐月子) is a month long post-partum period when the mother is not to be exposed to the elements or consume any cold liquids. In Cantonese culture, they have a special black sweet and sour soup with eggs and pig feet that they have to drink every day to recover from being pregnant. There are a whole set of rules and diet that is more or less strictly followed, even by Chinese physicians trained in Western medicine--just in case.