No Way Home

Mom said on the phone: "Why do you even think about coming back here? I myself just hates I can't get out of here. I can't stand its backwardness, its lack of civilization. I can't stand it every day and every minute and I absolutely don't want my children to come back here, EVER! You're born in this damn place, and you actually want to die here?!" Her voice broke in a sudden outburst of anger.

I put down the phone calmly. But there's undoubtedly a hard bump forming in my chest. Then I realized that the last ditch of efforts of my mom in her life long battle against her cursed destiny is to keep her daughter from returning to the place she was born in. The bitterness of my mom has a long root, but let's just say, she's from a better place.

 

I had left the K city at age eighteen with the same distain of that place, and the great expectation that I was going out to the big world, the real world and I was never going to come back, EVER. I had made my efforts. I went to a top University of the country, in the "developed region", I took a job in Shanghai. I took an MBA in Hong Kong, I stayed briefly in the U.S. and I came back working in Shanghai. It was not my plan to go back the K city. The plan was to live in a nice European city, or a small town is better.

 

But I'm tired at the age of thirty-seven. I had worked double the hours than my generation before and perhaps ten times the hours than the average person in my parents' generation. And Shanghai has been getting on my nerves for a while. The maddening crowds, the unending construction, the unrelenting noise, the corruption of morals (which is no way to run from, actually, unless I run out of the country), and the rocketing real estate price that kept the house of my desire eluding my power and finally a CPI index that seems to be spinning out of control, that drove me to draw up this back-up plan to finally wind up an apartment in the K city, as an insurance against the depreciation of my hard-earned money.

 

As the turn-around of mind works in favor of the K city, I started to miss its blue sky (still much bluer than all most all of the cities in China), its abundant sunshine with pleasant climate, its mushrooms in the summer, its air at least fresher than Shanghai and everything much cheaper. As to the backwardness and lack of "civilization" as my mom calls it, actually is an ignorance in itself, but not malicious or harmful. While the local people on average do lack in the grace of manner or style or sophistication compared with people in Shanghai or other "developed" cities, they're generally considered to be more honest, down to earth, or even good-hearted. To be true, there're more than a few people who actually told me that they are so drawn by the city's lay-backness, the good weather and cheap price that they want to retire there! Imagine how shocked they would be, to hear my mom's verdict on the city.

 

Still, my mom's protest has revealed a startling fact to me: that there is No Way Home for me. The draw-backs of the K city might still gets me, with a good chance, shall I really go back there.  Shanghai is becoming too expensive, plus too noisy. And the respective effort of me and my boyfriend to make a breakthrough outside of our jobs on projects with potential financial success may never born a fruit. 

 

Just yesterday I had been mourning about Lily's destiny, that she has a home she couldn't go back anymore and she has no place in Shanghai. But now, am I at a better place?

 

But if there's anything I'm really proud of, I have a heart of a rock, and I'm in this life a self-proclaimed passenger anyway. Home will be where my books are, home will be where my pen is (or actually keyboard and Internet connection). So if I have no way home, I'm not on the way home either. I'll just be on the road. Keep the music on.

Girl With No Home

The conversation on the lunch table, in a most uncharacteristic way, turned to Lily, the assistant of the team.

We were gathered casually for lunch in a restaurant on the fourteen floor of one of the unnamable, numerous office towers in the high-end office district near Jing'An Temple. You could see from the window the temple actually glows from real gold donated by pious billionaires.

 

"Lily bought an apartment?" everybody was asking, turning their glares toward the girl fidgeting in her seat, as she always does, under unaccustomed attention. Finally somebody has to repeat the whole story: Lily went to an real estate project under-building the weekend before and made a guarantee of ten thousand bucks, probably a good five months of her salary after tax. The problem is, the apartment is on the far end of Feng Xian, a suburb district of Shanghai that I know exist somewhere on the map. And her future home is so far away that you could almost see the sea from it.

The real problem is, the suburb of Shanghai is not in the concept of suburb of NYC or LA, it is a place, well, let's say "not suitable for Shanghainese", and Shanghai, being a city on the sea, has but a horrible coastline that constituted with smelly mud and smelly, muddy waters.  

 

"I told you you should not buy it, it's too far away, you can't come to work"

"Did you actually bought an apartment just by looking at it for one time?"

"You didn't even see a "sample apartment", just saw the building under-building?"

"Did the old couple you met at the sales office who said they are buying too actually said they'll take care of your child when you have one?"

"Why are you in such a hurry to make the guarantee? Why don't you ask people before you do?"

 

Lily was instantly buried under bombardment. And she tried feebly to make her story, "Well, I thought if I do not buy that now, I would never be able to buy an apartment in Shanghai". This arouse a new round of questioning:

"Why don't you wait a few months, the pricing would go soft by year end"

"With just a little bit more, you could get a fully furnished one by the Metro Line 13 and you could come to work easily"

"How could you furnish your apartment? It's so far away and you need to transport everything there, it's impossible"

"Why don't you look further? How did you come to that?"

Well, at least she could answer the last question, "I just went to the website and made assortment by reversing price and I just chose the cheapest one from the list"

 

Xiao Fan, her best friend in the office shook her head and said "For a dress of 200 bucks, you think so hard and keep going back for four, five times before you decide to buy, for an apartment, you just decide to buy it in an hour, what's the matter of you?"

"Well", the already humbled target confessed, "when I made the payment, I said I have no money and they said I could use credit card and I gave them the credit card but I snatched it from her hand and she snatched it away again and I snatched it back again and it went on four or five times and finally Ah Lai (her husband) couldn't stand it anymore and he just took it from me and gave it to her. He said if you wanted an apartment so bad, you just do it this time".

"Perhaps you could call the Bank and ask them to hold the money" somebody made a final suggestion. To this, Lily struggled facially for a moment before sank into her usual resignation, "well it has been two weeks…" I wanted to say perhaps you forget the guarantee and took it for a lesson. But nobody else is saying this so I guess it's not a good piece of advice.

 

The discussion about Lily's apartment went on for two weeks in the office with or without her. And everyone has come to the consensus that she had made a bad decision and that if she move in her future home in a year or so, she couldn't work in the office anymore, but perhaps she could work as a sales rep who covers that suburb, but she would also need a car.

 

Then one day I was in the toilet stall and heard Lily and Xiao Fan, each in a next stall exchanging more conversation about the apartment. When we all came out of the stall, I asked a question which I had been holding for a long time: "I don't understand it, Lily, why do you HAVE TO buy an apartment in SHANGHAI?"

 

As a famous dissent against the rocketing real estate price in Shanghai, I'm die-hard against buying an apartment in Shanghai, my argument is crystal-clear thought never echoed with: if I could buy a decent house on the Cote d'Azur, or a decent apartment in Paris, with the same amount of money, why would I buy an apartment in Shanghai?" Besides, if I'm not lucky enough to retire on Cote d'Azur, I shall retire back to the K city, a place with pleasant weather year around, abundant green and flower (who supplies half of the country's flower market), delicious mushrooms in the summer, half of the living cost and much less people, traffic and noise. In sum, I could hardly find a motive to buy an apartment in Shanghai and I don't understand why Lily, who's also from out of town and who obviously couldn't afford such price, has to?

 

"I must buy an apartment in Shanghai, coz I have no house back home" Lily burst, perhaps had enough of us.

This was totally out of my imagination. In my mind, every small-town people come to Shanghai has a house back home, coz our parents have to have a house; as to people from the countryside, they not only have house, but farm land too, otherwise how to they survive? It's up to you that you do not want to be a farmer anymore and move into the city, but your "country house" should always be there.

So I wasn't ready to give up. "How come you don't have a house? Don't farmers always have a house?" It's very unusual for colleagues to ask so deep and specific into personal information, but Lily and I were already familiar and she is a girl who never gets upset or anything, so I decide to go all the way to find my answer.

"There's nobody in my village anymore, all the young people have gone to the cities, last time I went back, there was weeds by the road up to my waist."

This finally shut me up. It has never come across my mind that her "home" back home is no longer habitable.

 

A few days later, I took Lily and Xiao Fan to lunch.

I always need company for lunch and sometimes when the people I usually luncheon with are not available, I took the juniors in the team out. Lily and Xiao Fan are not my team, but I have developed some special sympathy for them and like to share some of life's niceties with them that they could not afford by themselves.

So we found our way, or I found our way to Bellagio, an Italian restaurant next to the temple. The name is a miss-match though coz it's actually Venetian-themed with a painting of St. Marco, masks on the wall and part of a gondola as a bar.

When we were sharing a big Tiramisu, Lily told me more about her home.

"People used to plant all kind of vegetables around their house, in the summer, there used to be all kind of melons, and I remember sometimes we slept by the melons to keep them from being stolen, now there's no vegetables any more, no nothing, lands are wasted, old people don't have energy for that, it's all weeds everywhere"

"We used to have this brooks by the village and we drink from it when we were thirsty, now it has tried up with only a strait of mud covered with garbage"

"We used to have a swamp at the end of the village and they leased it out to people running fish business, they said when the project earns money, they will distribute it to the villagers, but every year they say the project is losing money"

 

"Don't the young people ever want to go back home farming? Don't you want to?" I asked cautiously, already sensing a negative answer. The Answer is negative, but in a way I didn't anticipated.

"My family has but a little piece of land, it's not enough"

"Why do your family have but a little piece of land?" (a stupid question)

"Ai", Lily signed in her little peaceful way, "somehow my family only has a little bit of land… after my father died…. And once they were digging a ditch through the village and it cut through our land and where my father's tomb lies and they asked my mom to move it coz "otherwise water will go around it and you could not do your tomb-sweeping anyway", they said they will give my mom 200 bucks for it, my mom paid the tomb-moving people 1000 bucks but they didn't give her the 200 bucks…"

I found myself short of words. Now I see Lily has to stay here, her adopted home of Shanghai, although the city is too big and she's too small.

 

"But how about the place you're renting now? Can you keep renting it?"

"We have moved so many times, I do not want to move anymore…"

Xiao Fan cut in to provide her witness "She hasn't unpacked everything from her last move"

"Why do you move?" (I have stayed in my place for an amazing ten years)

"The landlord want to raise the price every few months � they said everything is more expensive now and they have to make a living too…. And it would be nice to have a shower with hot water at home…"

"You don't have a shower in your place?"

"The machine is broken"

Xiao Fan cut in again, "you should test it before you move it, or you should ask the landlord to reduce to the price",

"Well", Lily signed her little peaceful sign again and inclined her head, "you have to live in here anyway"

 

"But do you really like Shanghai? What do you like it for?" (this has recently become my favorite question to everyone I met who's not from here)

"She said she could buy things cheaper here" Xiao Fan volunteered, adding her own derision in the tone.

"How's that possible?" I couldn't believe it.

"That's true. I could buy a jacket for 40 bucks at Qipu Road last year � this year of course it will be 70, but the same jacket will be sold for 200 bucks at our place"

"Your village?"

"No, the town, and it's still cheaper than Ah Lai's town"

"Really?!" I cracked my spoon on the plate.

 

By the time we collected our bags to go. I'm fully convinced that Lily should buy an apartment in Shanghai. "Well" I said, "if you have the money for the down-payment, I think you should buy it".

"I don't…I'll borrow it from my aunt and my uncle besides the bank…." Her voice traced off.

 

Stepping out of Bellagio, the humid and heat of Shanghai's summer swamped us immediately. It's another day of gray fog but no rain. The new office buildings of glossy glass walls towering into the sky, like a fleet of giant ships lost in a misty sea. At their foot, construction machines are tearing open the ground again for a new Metro line, so that more land in the suburb could be sold at a good price and built up with "cheap" apartments and the Lilys of the city could buy a piece of home of their dream.