Chapters 55 - 55 Changing Schools

Chapter 54

Apartments at the Number 19 High School

(August 2010-June 2013)

My colleague Mary Cardinez, from the Philippines, and I were the first foreign teachers at this school. Guan Jigang was the Foreign Affairs person at the Number One Foreign Language School when I was in Luoyang the first time. Between then and when I returned now, he had gotten a job as one of the Associate Principals at the Number 19 High School. He is the one that wanted to have foreign teachers at this school. There wasn’t a foreign affairs person at the school until Mary and I came. Zhao Fei was chosen for that position. She was an English teacher. She was great. I always hoped that Mary and I didn’t cause too many problems for her. Being Mary had been in Luoyang the previous two years and I had been in Luoyang for two years in the past, I’m sure it helped being we were not foreigners that just came there and knew nothing.

Our apartments were like new. They had been remodeled for Mary and I. New furniture and appliances. I think our flat screen TV's were 36-inches. They were so nice. A wall heater/AC combination in both the bedroom and living room. New bed and computer desk. It was really something. Both Mary and I were on the fifth floor, top floor, one entrance apart. I would go to my apartment in one entrance and she was the next entrance over. We weren’t on the school grounds. We would leave our apartments, go out to the street and walk a couple of blocks to the school. No big thing. I would rather have it this way than be on the school grounds. I had lived on the school grounds when I was at the Number One School.

I will tell a story about our TV’s. We had cable with forty channels. All but one was in Chinese. CCTV 9 (China Central TV) is the English Channel in China. It was mostly news and talking, not TV shows. As some time went on, maybe a month, we slowly started losing channels. I tried different things with the cable thinking the connection wasn’t good. I talked to Zhao Fei and she had someone check on it and then we had all of the channels again. As more time went on, it happened again. I told her and she had someone come out and fix it. I don’t know what was done but it worked whatever it was. By the time that it happened again, Mary had talked to some friends and they told her about the website Funshion where we could download movies to our computers so we didn’t care about the TV and that we were losing channels again. I bought a cable where I could hook my computer to the TV and watch the movies there. Funshion was great. I could watch the movie while it was downloading to the computer. Over a few months, I downloaded hundreds of movies that I wanted. They were American movies.

Later we found out why we kept losing channels each time. The cable came up the side of the building and was on the roof and another cable was attached to it to make it long enough to go into our apartments. It was just lying on the roof and when the wind would blow the cable would move and come lose and so the two cables weren’t tight together to make the connection and the loser they became the more channels we would lose. All that would have been needed was to take a couple of wrenches, tighten the cables together and put something on the cables, maybe like a brick, to hold them down.

Both of us were very happy with our apartments. I won’t speak for Mary, I don’t think it mattered to her, but I was very happy to be on the 5th floor. I would never want to be on the bottom. Even though we were not on the street, there were still the people that lived in the building walking by. Being on top, no one ever came by to go to another floor so there wasn’t any noise from that or from anyone above us. Also both of us could look out of our kitchen windows down on the street and in the distance so there was something to look at. When we looked out of our balcony on the other side, we would see another apartment building and down below was an area where a few people parked their cars and there was an area where there were a few exercise machines and where people could sit outside and children could play.

It was easier to keep warmer in this apartment compared to the one at the Number One School. Having two heaters really helped, I think the apartment was a little smaller also. My living room was kind of noisy because of traffic and other noise. Even though I was five floors up, the sound carries from everywhere and bounces off the buildings. The windows are thinner than here and don’t seal as well.

During the winter, I moved my TV and some furniture into the spare room where the computer desk was. I had bought a couple of round radiating heaters that could oscillate like a fan and it was very nice in there and it was much quieter. It worked out very nice.

I want to talk about the beds. Very different than here. I don’t know if they have beds like we do here, I never saw any. I think most hotel beds are similar to ours here in the US. My apartment bed had a wooden frame, both the headboard and where you lay. I looked them up online once and I think they are what we would call platform beds. It is very heavy to move. I think one time I tried to push it a little and I don’t know if I even moved it because it was so heavy. I got to wondering how they got the beds up to our apartments. Maybe the pieces came in different boxes. I think the one I had was a Queen size, it was a good size. No mattresses like here. There is a pad that lays on the wood that is a few inches thick. It worked ok but I had extra blankets in the apartment so I used those also for padding. It was fine, I never had any problems sleeping. I am wondering if we had that kind of thing in the US if more people would have fewer back problems.

One more thing about the bedding. I don’t know if I can explain this very well, I will try so if anyone reads this they can maybe follow what I am trying to say or what it is called that I am trying to explain. There was another pad, not very thick, it was used like a blanket for sleeping under. There was a sheet, I guess you’d call it that, with a zipper at the bottom that didn’t go all the way across. It was maybe a few inches in from each side. The pad could be taken out the bottom where the zipper was so the sheet could be washed. When I went to put the pad back in after I had washed the sheet the first time, I had so much trouble. I think it took me forty-five minutes to get that pad in place inside that sheet. I stood on the bed and holding it over the edge above the floor trying to shake the pad in place. I would put it on the bed and then I would reach inside and try to push the corners of the pad into the corners of the sheet. I worked and worked on that and finally got it good enough. As time went on, I got better at it and it didn’t take much time. What a pain. I don’t know if we have anything like that here in the US. I don’t think people would go for something like that, too much work. I would never have one.

Between the apartment building and the school were many small restaurants. A lot of the students would go there at noon. Both Mary and I found food that we liked in a few of them. We both liked guo tie. It is a fried dumpling that is bigger than normal dumplings. 

There was another place that Mary liked to go to that had da pan ji, translates to big plate chicken. It's kind of like spicy chicken stew. You would get chicken, potatoes, noodles, red and green peppers. Another place had bai jia mo, it was called a Chinese hamburger. It is like pulled pork. It is minced or chopped meat and put in flatbread. I remember having that the first time I was in Luoyang, I really liked them. It isn’t like an American hamburger. 

My favorite place to stop at was a little place that had pictures of food on the walls. It would show the food all cooked on a plate. That’s kind of why I started going there. I could point at what looked good. It cost 6-8 yuan, about one dollar. It started out that I liked gai jiao mian (pepper noodle), there were some vegetables and noodles. Then there was niu rou gai jiao mian (beef pepper noodle). This was beef, vegetables and noodles. There was also another one where they added onions to the gai jiao mian and it was called-are you ready-zi ran niu rou gai jiao mian. Zi ran niu rou is beef with cumin. There is also tu duo niu rou gai jiao mian (potato beef pepper noodle). I would eat anyone of them but I did like the last one the best with all of those things in it. 

A lot of these places you could use the term fast food for them. It could take maybe five minutes or less. Now and then, Mary and I would stop during the week. Maybe one or two times a week. Very convenient. Another food that both of us liked was dandanmian. This dish comes from Sichuan Province in southern China. It consists of a spicy sauce with some vegetables, chili oil, Sichuan pepper, minced pork and scallions over the noodles. We couldn't get this at the restaurants by the school, we had to go to another place.

I think it was the second year I was there that a store called Dennis was built on the corner just a block from our apartments. This is a chain store and they were in different places in Luoyang. I think there were four at that time. The one where I lived was a smaller one because of the area, we were close by a mall and other things. They had groceries, some clothes, household items and other things.

The mall, Xin Du Hui, was about three blocks away. One of the stores was Carrefour in the basement and that is similar to Walmart or Dennis. That store actually comes out of France. It has groceries and other things. There was another big store a few blocks away from the mall called Wang Fujing. That also had a grocery store in the basement. So there were three grocery stores within four blocks. There was also a small one outside our apartment building called Da Zhang. This is also a chain store that you can find in many places in China.

Also within four blocks of our apartments was a Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut, two KFC’s, a McDonald’s plus another small McDonald’s by the mall that sold only ice cream. DQ only sold ice cream and drinks, no food like hamburgers, hotdogs or French fries, things that our DQ’s have here.

The French fries and ice cream were just like here. I did not like the McDonald’s hamburgers, they didn’t taste like here. Maybe they fed their cattle differently so the meat didn’t taste the same. I also heard that some of the meat in the city came from Australia, which could make a difference also. I did like some of the other sandwiches. The pizza in Pizza Hut was ok but didn’t have the flavor or as many toppings like here.

All of these shops and food places being so close to where we lived made it really convenient. But also along with all of this brought in a lot of people to the area. Every weekend would be like what Christmas is in the US.

    

Chapter 55

Rick’s Apartment at the Number 19 High School

The building that Mary and I lived in was not on the school grounds. When we left the school, we walked a couple of blocks to our apartment building. She and I lived in the same building but had different entrances. We both lived on the fifth floor which was the top floor. We were the first foreign teachers at the school and we were treated very nice. The school redid the apartments so they were like new. New furniture, tile on the floors, new washing machine, fridge and kitchen things. We also had a new 40-inch flat screen TV.


This is the living room. In the bottom left corner is the wash machine. On the wall in the upper right corner is the heater/AC combination. There was another one in the bedroom. The doorway to the left just past the washer goes into the kitchen.


If you are asking why is the washing machine is in the living room, because it’s too big to go through the doorway to any other room. Also because the faucet to hook the hose up to and the drain was in the bathroom behind the wall and they could just cut a hole in the wall to put the water hose and drain hose through. It worked out very nice.


You see the bottled water sitting on the stand. There are two spickets where one side lets the cold water down and the other lets the hot water down. The chair is sitting in the way so you can’t see those. There is a heater in the stand to heat the water. It is common in China to drink hot water. They don’t drink much for cold water or use ice cubes. When I needed a new bottle, I would contact the school and one would be delivered.

On the counter and to the right, there is a black electronic device that maybe could be called a modern day hotplate. I can’t remember the name so I will just call it that. It would heat up very fast. I don’t know if we have those or something like it in the US. The thing above it hanging from the ceiling is an exhaust hood.

As you can see throughout these pictures, my apartment is really nice. Mary’s apartment was the same. The school really put a lot of work and money into them to make them so nice for their first foreign teachers. Mary and I really appreciated it. Both Mary and I got the welcoming flowers when we first got there.

I want to say one thing about the utensils in the kitchen. In China, we use chopsticks of course so we really don’t need much for silverware. As I was going through the cupboards to see what was there, I found chopsticks of course and I also found a spoon, a fork and a knife each wrapped individually in the original wrapper from the store. I had to laugh, it was so funny. I didn’t need much for silverware. One of each worked. I think I bought a sharp knife for cutting.

Like before when I was in the Number One School, the water heater is on the wall and the bathroom and shower are together. Easy way to keep the stool clean too.


The floor has a little slant but I would need to use a squeegee to push the water to the drain. Here you can see how the wash machine is hooked up. The white hose to the faucet to put water in the machine and the gray hose to drain the water out of the machine.


This is a queen size bed. I looked online and I believe in the US we call this a platform bed.


The “mattress” is a little smaller than the ones in the US isn’t it? Maybe four inches instead of twenty. This was great. No box spring or mattress to eventually break down and your body getting sore. Below that mattress is wood. The whole bed is wood. The little pad with the red around it is an electric blanket. It was kind of small. I bought it thinking it would work fine but after awhile I wish I would have gotten the next size bigger. Hey, it worked and kept me warm.


On the wall is the other heater/AC unit. The door goes out to the balcony where I can hang clothes when I wash. The balcony is enclosed with windows.


In this picture and the next, you can see how it was to hang clothes up. They dried fast when it was warm out and I could open the windows and let the air through. I could also put my fan there and use that to move the air and the clothes would dry much faster.


Both of these things had wires on them and I could use the crank to lift them up and down. It was really nice.


Looking from the living room into the bedroom on the right and the spare room on the left. During my first winter at the Number 19 High School, 2010-2011, I moved the living room furniture-couch, the little table in front of the couch along with the TV and stand into the spare room, bought a couple of radiating heaters and used that room from then on for the whole year and it was really nice and much quieter than the living room.


The computer desk in the spare room


The refrigerator is in the spare room because it is too big to go through the kitchen door. That’s ok, I got more exercise that way walking from the kitchen to the spare room. And then after I moved the furniture from the living room into the spare room, then the food was right there by me. Top door was the fridge and the bottom was the freezer. Middle part was not a door, it was where the motor was.


The living room was where I would dry my clothes during the winter. Bikes are great things to hang things on, lots of room. Had the heater on and used the oscillating fan to blow the air around. On the left, I had brought the water bottle and stand, the microwave and kitchen table from the kitchen to the living room because it had the heater and was warm because it had gotten really cold for awhile. There isn’t a heater in the kitchen. After I did that, I closed the kitchen door to keep it warmer in the living room. I had to be aware that if it would get too cold in the kitchen and the pipes could possibly freeze but usually it was warm enough in there, even though there wasn’t a heater, it wasn’t a problem.


Putting in new exercise machines. This is looking from my balcony. This is common in China. Apartment complexes have exercise machines like this for people to use. A lot of the elderly take advantage of these.


For the people that have cars in our apartments, they can drive through the front gate and park between the buildings. There were only a few where I lived that had cars.


This is looking out of my balcony. The building on the right is one of the student’s dorms at our school.


These two pictures are looking out of my kitchen window.




This is the gate into our apartment buildings. I have mentioned before that China has gates and walls everywhere. Gates to go in and out of schools, apartment complexes, workplaces and other things. Also walls around these places. There are also gatekeepers at these places. They are there to make sure the wrong people don’t go in. After all of the problems that we have in the US in schools with bad people getting in and harming children and teachers, maybe we should put up gates and walls for our schools for security and making them safer.


When I walked through the gate, I would go left and straight ahead to my entrance to go up to my apartment. I think there were four entrances.


When I came out of the gate from my apartment complex, I would go to the right and this street is Han Tun Lu. I would go to the end of the block, turn right onto Sha Chang Lu and go a block to the Number 19 High School which is located on Tang Gong Xi Lu.

On the left side of the street are stores that sell clothes, a pharmacy, grocery store and a restaurant where the red lanterns are. On the right are businesses. Right by the gate where I come out is a little store for snacks, drinks and ice cream. There is a bike repair shop, another place makes frames for windows, a place that sells cell phones. Down at the end where I would turn right to go to school, was a tailor that would repair clothes.


This man and his wife were the gatekeepers for our apartments. He was a really good guy. We couldn’t talk to each other because of the language difference but we did fine. This picture was taken on June 28, 2013 the day I left to come back here after being there for three years. I should have told him that I was going home because I was tired of waiting for him to learn English so we could talk. He would have laughed. I never asked him his name. I should have. At least I could have put it here. He didn’t ask me my name either. It didn’t matter. We were friends and happy to see each other.

There are good people everywhere you go in the world, no matter what country or whether you can talk to each other or not.