Gu Bo and Pa Lan Ka from 'Learn Chinese Text Book No. 2'
July 1
AM
My last class with Chen Laoshi. We both feel sad.
PM
More packing. I take the 5:00 pm train to Beijing.
Struggle session at Beijing Railway station to buy my return ticket to Tianjin. Hongyu appears. We go to Ma Xiao Dong’s again for supper. Soon she will be in the US, and I will begin a year of travel to various countries. Our future?
July 2
We were in a market. Someone at a booth selling vegetables asked whether I was a foreigner. Hong said I was a Beijinger. “If he wore some western clothes he would look just like a foreigner”, he said.
We had been using Li Ping’s place as a base in Beijing. Li Ping said she needs her place next week (when I plan to come for my last visit with Hong Yu). She phoned her brother to see if I could stay there. She referred to me as Ge Men(r) Gui Zi (a good friend foreign devil).
EVE
Ri Tan Park Courtyard Restaurant for supper.
July 3
See Hongyu off at Beijing Airport. She's going to UC Berkeley for a year as part of her joint Ph.D. program with Qinghua University. Chinese goodbye. I think I was more upset then she was.
Catch 9:13 train back to Tianjin. Hong Yu said her friends say she is naïve. “If you go to the US, you will never come back!” She wrote a letter to Elizabeth Rochester to ask about me.
EVE I met Gao Xiao Hui at the Tianjin Railway Station and brought him to the Underground Heat Guest House. Tomorrow we go to Tangshan.
July 4
I pick up Gao Xiao Hui at 5:45 am and we go first to the Telegraph Office to inform Tangshan we are coming.
10:00 am We are met at the Tangshan Railway Station by someone from the Tangshan Institute of Architectural Design. We are taken to Tang Shan’s biggest hotel. They will not let us share a room because Chinese people and foreigners are not allowed to do that. Also, we are not allowed to eat in the same dining room.
PM
We meet with Mr. Wang Jai Ling, the Deputy Director of the Tangshan Real Estate Administrative Bureau. Translation was provided by the Tangshan Foreign Affairs Office. Because we were coming under the authority of the MOC, we were given priority and good service. He gave us a general introduction to the housing situation in Tangshan. The goal of home ownership instead of state-supplied housing seems impossible to achieve; economically viable rents or mortgage payments exceed current total income. There are plans for gradual immersion, and for subsidies. The goal seemed insurmountable at that time. A 70m2 apartment at 1000/m2 would cost 70,000 yuan. A typical family income was 10,000 yuan/year. A factor of 7 to 1. In Canada, at that time, a house might cost 150,000 dollars and the family income was 50,000 dollars; a ratio of 3 to 1. Much better odds. I assumed some kind of cooperative financing and ownership methods would be necessary; hence the more social orientation of my research.
[ Note from 2021: I wonder how many people at this time could have foreseen that private ownership of housing would begin in only five years time. In the first years of the housing market in China, beginning around 1990, there were few individuals who could purchase a home. It was purchased, in fact, by work units who, in turn, sold it to their employees on friendly terms. Just five or six years later, this practice was forbidden and only individuals were permitted to buy housing. The boom started; somehow China was ready for it. In fact, the chief source of municipal financing became the selling of development rights in the form of long-term leases (not land ownership) of land for the housing estates that exploded at the edges of every city in China. In Beijing, the cost per square meter for housing rose from 3000 yuan per sq.m. in 1995 to 30,000 yuan per sq.m in 2005 and 100,000 per sq.m. in 2015.
Note from 2021: The relationship between “social” and housing was not to appear until after 2010, when management of these estates started to be taken over by residents associations from the previous developer-founded management companies. ]
EVE Gao Xiao Hui and I went for supper at a local restaurant, 12 yuan for both of us. We went to see the Tangshan memorial to the 250,000 people who died in the 1976 earthquake. In 1977, a choir of Cape Breton coal miners called “The Men of the Deeps” came to sing for the survivors. They were the first Canadian musical ensemble to tour the Peoples Republic of China.
[ The Men of the Deeps is a choir of working and retired coal miners from the island of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada. Organized in 1966 as part of Cape Breton’s contribution to Canada’s Centennial Year (1967), the group’s inception was an effort by the people of Cape Breton to preserve in song some of the rich folklore of that island’s coal mining communities.
Since 1967 the group has been singing of the work and lifestyle of the Cape Breton coal miner to audiences throughout most of Canada and the United States. In 1976 they became the first Canadian performing group to tour the People’s Republic of China after diplomatic relations between the two nations were restored in 1972. (Actually, Diplomatic relations between the PRC and Canada were established on 13 October 1970.) And as recently as September 1999 the men traveled to Kosovo in the former Republic of Yugoslavia at the request of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, where they performed in a gala festival organized by actress Vanessa Redgrave on behalf of the United Nations Children’s Fund. The group’s most recent tours have brought the choir as far north as the Ekati diamond mines in the Northwest Territories, and as far south as Arizona, Alabama, Florida and the Appalachian coal mining communities of Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania. In September 2008 the group was invited to perform in Las Vegas at the international MineExpo conference where sold out audiences enjoyed its unique blend of songs and stories for six consecutive nights.
We walked through neigbourhoods with two-storey family housing, the lowest density I’ve seen in China except for villages and urban courtyard areas. Family life in the small lanes. Children follow us.
The main street of Tangshan is 60 meters wide including the sidewalks. With such a low volume of traffic on the road, it seems too wide.
July 5
AM
We check out of the hotel. Gao Xiao Hui and our hosts are there. I complain about their policies, in Chinese, in front of everybody. I rarely do this. No-one says anything. We moved to a different hotel - and cheaper - that at least lets us eat together.
We meet with the Mr. Fu Yu Lin, Vice-Director of the Tangshan Institute of Architectural Design, also two other architects and a planner. I felt I as only taking, and not giving. There was not much I could do but listen; I had no relevant Canadian experience to offer. I felt out of my depth. Despite this, Mr. Fu was very warm and fatherly. When we left, he put his arm around my shoulder and welcomed me to come back.
We went to another building to see a model of the Tangshan downtown area. There was another larger model of a proposed new district where there will be market housing, but purchased by work units, not individuals. For millennia Chinese housing has faced south. When this idea is used in modern housing design, and every unit faces south, the result is long rows of apartment blocks, aligned east-west. When this method is applied to a whole housing estate the result is referred to as “matchbox” housing. To relieve the monotony, planners and designers tried to add a limited amount of north-south aligned blocks, or break the line of the long blocks in small increments to reduce the relentless long straight lines. The latter method is acceptable because the units still face south, but apartment buildings aligned north-south, with units facing east or west, are not welcome by the work unit “consumers”.
PM
The Arch Institute took us around to see some housing, all four-storey. We visited two families. They had been warned we were coming and had time to “tidy up”. We were warmly welcomed. The first family only had one wage earner; the second had two. In the second visit, I asked their nine-year old daughter to draw a map of her neighbourhood. She did this and then showed me on the map the places where she liked to play.
We saw a four-story library that had lost its top floor in the earthquake and whose walls had all shifted horizontally 80 cm. It was unusable, but it had all been kept as a memorial of the disaster. We saw some two-story row housing built by private individuals for about 10,000 yuan per house. The owners found their own materials and contractors. And the owners are all from different work units. This method, in urban China, was rare.
EVE
It’s raining. Gao Xiao Hui and I stay indoors and I have a chance to ask him many questions. I also tried to answer his questions about housing in the West. We heard the Americans shot down an Iranian airliner.
July 6
We take the train back to Tianjin. I have filled a third of a Yin Pi Ben (Hardcover notebook) with notes. Back at Tianjin University campus, on the way to the Guest House, I met Prof. Zhou Zu Shi. He had been in the hospital for a week because his blood was too “dense”.
EVE
Say goodbye to my friend Harry. He's off to graduate studies in the US.
Continue packing.
July 7
AM
I went to Building No. 8 to get the letter by Jin Qi Min about my video tapes. He wasn’t there; on the way out I met him coming in. He said China has many problems. The students are not studying hard; they are all thinking about making money. The government doesn’t support education enough, prices are all rising. Teachers’ life is difficult; they cannot save money.
He says I need some income if I want to stay in China; he suggested I apply to UNESCO in Paris to see if there was a way they could support my work in China. He warmly welcomed me to teach more at Tianjin University. Then he asked me about my girlfriend, “You must think about these things if you want to live in China.” Everybody knows.
I felt this was the best goodbye I could possibly have before I went back to Canada; my Chinese “father” offering approval, blessing, encouragement, and understanding.
He finally asked whether there was any problem getting my visa application approved.
I move more things to Irma and Wofgang’s apartment. I photographed the staff (fu wu yuan) downstairs. One of them had to go home to her village in Shandong to look after her sick mother; she was very sad to leave her work in the big city.
EVE
Last visit with Lin Ning and her parents.
July 8
The Foreign Affairs Office provided me with a driver to send me to the Railway Station.
Train to Beijing.
July 13
Visit the El Hadi family, Baha’is from Egypt teaching Arabic at the Foreign Languages University.
July 14
Fly to Canada. I’m 41 today.
August 19
Get China visa in Ottawa
Begin CIDA Interviews:
August 22
Meet with Mark Shrimpton and Peter Pope in St. John’s.
Talk with my lawyer, Dennis Barry
EVE
Meet Pat Ralph.
August 25
At Robert Mellin’s home sorting old belongings I had left in his basement.
August 26
Meet Janet Pitt, Director of Planning and Policy, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
August 30 Ottawa
AM
Meet Edyth Goodridge
Get Hep. B Vaccine
PM
Meet Joan Selby at the Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada,
September 6
Visit: The Ottawa Center-Town Citizen’s Corporation, Yule Manor Ottawa, Ingred Larsen CHF
September 12
Montreal. Visit Vikram Bhatt, Professor of Architecture at McGill University, Montreal.
September 14
New York City
September 15
Interview Andy Reicher, Fernando Alarcon
TIL Tenant Interim Lease Program, limited equity coops.
September 16
East Haarlem TIL Executive Director, Michael Nunez, Bronx Venture Corporation Died 2004. According to his wife, Millie Pacheco Nunez, her husband was passionate and selfless in his desire to help people learn to help themselves. "Michael came from a very humble and poor family, but he was able to rise up because of his spirit, his determination and his belief that there isn’t any obstacle that can’t be overcome," his wife explained. "And in the many things he was involved in, what was always at the center of it was that desire to help people see that they too could be empowered, that they too could rise up, that they too could not only make something of themselves but also make their community better by doing so. That was his love and his legacy. That is what kept him so driven to always help anyone in any way he possibly could."
September 17
AM
“TIL” Conflict resolution workshop
PM
Party at Cathedral of St. John the Divine
September 18
Go with Tianjin Student, Sheng Kai, to the World Trade Center, lunch in China Town, and to the Statue of Liberty. We had lunch in a huge restaurant in China Town. It was so big all the waiters wore roller skates to get around.
September 19
AM
Meet with Rex Curry, Pratt Institute, Managing Director for Community and Environmental Development
PM
Interview Susan Seagert, Professor of Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center and subprogram head of Environmental Psychology.City University of New York, She co-authored a book called "Social Capital
(1990) From Abandonment to Hope: Community Households in Harlem. New York: Columbia University Press.
September 20
Visit Andy Reicher.
Visit a coop at Amsterdam and 105th, forty-four families form a Catholic Church community.
September 24
Baha’i Conference at MacGregor Lake, PQ.
Hasan Sabri spoke about Change through suffering. The roots feed the tree. Peace though individual pure kind and radiant heart, and justice (principles). Development starts here, not economy first.
September 25
In Ottawa meet John Edmonds, home from Pune, India
October 4
UK, Macclesfield, Roan Court, Black Road, Rod Hackney
Interview resident, Berbard Rushton and his son Tim, at 232 Black Road
October 5
Stoke-on-Kent
October 7
London: Camden Town Hunt Thompson Architects Community Architecture:
The Story of Lea View House, Hackney, Hunt Thompson Assoc., 1985
October 10
Interview Mr. Reed D.O.E. Near Tate Gallery
October 11
Visit Institute of Housing, Islington
October 12
Chalk Farm, visit former Tianjin University student, Zhu Jian Fei.
Meet Dr. Chris Gossop, Deputy Director, Town and Country Planning Association.
October 13
Meet Jose Ospina
EVE Friends Meeting House 52 St. Martin’s Lane
Oct. 14 Return to Canada
October 22
Hong Yu went to Boston to see Ma Xiao Dong and Xiao Hui in Philadelphia. She and Xiao Hui went to New York, and Washington. Our plan was for her to visit Ottawa after that and then return to California. I knew what day she was going to be at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water near Philadelphia, so I called her there. Xiao Hui was surprised.
I picked Hongyu up at the airport and we went downtown to have a meal. I was nervous about bringing her home to see my parents; or, were they nervous about meeting her? After a meal on Bank Street I took her home. It was OK. Dad is so magnanimous and welcoming; it’s Mom who is afraid.
We went for a walk in the rainy woods behind our home. Yellow leaves had just blown off all the trees about two weeks before and lay like glossy Canadian tiles on the wet ground.
In Ottawa’s China Town, Hongyu bought a fish and a few Chinese ingredients to cook a meal for my parents. While they were out that afternoon, Hongyu fried a whole fish in an open wok, on the stove. When my parents walked in the door, the odour overwhelmed them, and my mother, in a loud voice, said, “O my God, now we’ll have to paint the kitchen ceiling!”
Off to good start! Dad bravely ate the fish which unlike “western” fish has many quite a few fine bones.
October 28
Hongyu goes back to Berkeley
November 8
I leave Ottawa
November 10
Go to Beijing, via Shanghai. No longer have to go through HK.
Go to Zhuan Jia Lou. Zhang Chi (Cary) came by for a visit.
Nov. 12
Sort out 250 pounds of research materials into Canada pile, New York pile, England pile, etc.
Visit Jin Qi Min.
Nov. 13
Feel jet-lagged and sad. Many of my friends have left to study abroad; Lin Ning for example, went to Minneapolis. I feel anxious and alone, and my project is so big. I’m in over my head. I am now a full-time researcher; I don’t have a teaching job and I have less contact with the people at the Department of Architecture. I have “bought” my way here; I feel like an intruder. And this place is expensive, over CN$700/ month. Cost of food in the dining hall had almost doubled.
In my housing research, I will never be able to “help” China, at best, I will be able to understand part of what is going on. I am a designer; why have I moved from the design of housing to the theory, policy, and delivery models of housing? I am alone in another language and culture attempting to see where physical design and social needs meet. Why am I doing this?
Nov. 14
I go for a run. Zhang Chi (Cary) dropped by; he was encouraging about my research.
I made my first home-cooked meal in the little kitchen in my room; stir-fried vegetables, some leftover chicken from the dining hall, mixed with noodles.
Nov. 15
I start writing my CIDA report; finally getting all the pieces from all over the world pulled together in an orderly fashion.
Nov. 16
CIDA Report
Nov. 17
CIDA Report
EVE
Visit Lin Ning’s parents. Nice visit. Gave them a carbon brush to clean their records. They gave me Lin Ning’s address in Minnesota.
Letter from HHY.
Nov. 18
Letter from Zhang Long; she is willing to let me use her spare apartment in Beijing. In exchange, I will help polish her English translations of articles in “Building in China”.
CIDA Report
Help William with his design of a kindergarten.
Nov. 19
Good progress on CIDA report.
Cooked huge pot of bean and tomato stew.
Nov. 20
Go to Beijing. Christmas shopping for my family in Canada.
Supper with Liu Xiao Yi. She is having marriage problems. Nice to see her son Bao Dar again. Her husband, Zhang Chong Pu, is a great cook. Stay overnight at their place. Liu Xiao Yi told me Hong Yu had come to see her once, after I left for Canada, to ask questions about me.
Nov. 21.
I went with Zhang Long and Li Rui Hua to see their extra apartment at Xuan Wu Men. Xuan Wu Men is about two Kilometers west of Tiananmen Square.
The apartment building was one of a series of large slabs that stretched for about 3 kilometers on either side of Tiananmen Square on the south side of the street. They were built by Li Rui Huan when he was a contractor for the Beijing City Government, before he became mayor of Tianjin. My building was to the east of the Xuan Wu Men intersection, across the street from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The church’s foundation dates back to 1605, but the current church was completed in 1904 after being burned down in the 1900 Boxer rebellion. Almost right outside my door was a subway stop, and Tian An Men Square was about 1.5 kilometers to the east. The Yue Xiu Hotel was at the southeast corner of Xuan Wu Men, and, Tu Pian She, Beijing’s best place for developing photographs, was at the southwest corner.
My First Home in Beijing at Xuan Wu Men
My apartment had a small living room, a smaller bedroom, a small kitchen (the four walls could all be touched with outstretched arms), and a small 2 sq.m. bathroom. The walls were white plaster on concrete walls, and the floor was bare concrete. Lighting was exposed incandescent bulbs, one on each ceiling. There were two electrical fuses - one for lights and one for plugs - on a 5 amp service.
The apartments shared a common stair. From the landing on each floor, doors led east and west to narrow corridors with three apartments each. These access corridors faced north and protected the apartments from the noise of the wide busy street. The little kitchen had a window that looked onto this corridor. You could pass by your neighbor’s homes, see what they were cooking, and hear the metallic scrape of spatulas stirring big black woks.
The main rooms of all the apartments faced south onto a quieter, small street. Across that street, further to the south, was a row of six story apartments, about 25 meters away. The distance conformed to sun-angle laws which ensured enough direct light reached the first floor windows of our building. Ours was 12 storeys high and cast its long shadow on the wide street to our north. It was acceptable to block light falling on sidewalks and streets.
Li Rui Hua and I had already been to the nearby police station and asked permission for me, a foreigner, to stay live here. The police agreed if I bring an introductory letter from my work unit in China. I like the apartment. It’s very close to the subway. We meet the man next door. Very friendly; he had worked in Canada in the 1940s. In January I will move in. I felt welcome. After the visit we had a beautiful lunch together.
PM
Return to Tianjin on the train.
Nov. 22
Go to the Foreign Affairs Office to see about my Residency Permit. Xu Xin Feng said everything was OK except the doctor wanted my health record to be notarized. Without this I can’t stay in China! I feel hurt. I want to do something for China, and I get a bureaucratic hurdles. Xu Xin Feng suggested I go to the Canadian Embassy to get a chop on my record. I phoned the Embassy and get through to a man called Marc Dompierre. He says, “Come, we’ll do it!” I can’t believe it, an angel he is.
I try to catch the 12:30 train. At the front entrance of the station, guards stop me. I can’t go in to buy a ticket. I argue. A policeman comes over and lets me in. I buy a ticket. Time to spare, look around. We are all prevented from going to the trains by policemen. No explanation. Security guards running around with walkie-talkie radios. A delegation of leaders comes through and goes to the first class waiting room. Then we are allowed to move. We are told the 12:30 train has been canceled! That’s the first time in China that ever happened to me. I was offered a ticket on another train, a slow one, that goes to the Beijing South Station. I need the stamp from the Canadian Embassy today! It’s far from the South Station to the Embassy. I take a ticket. I paid for soft seat on the original train, but get a hard seat on the new one. They refuse to repay the difference.
A young man sits across from me, smiles into my eyes, puts his hand on my knee, and says he wants to practice English. I’m not in the mood.
At the South Station I ask a taxi driver how much to the Beijing Hotel. These taxis have no meters. He said an amount. I know it’s too much. I walked away angry. He chased me saying, “Twenty! Twenty!” I ignored him and took a small bus that cost 2 yuan. I take a taxi from the Beijing Hotel to the Beijing Railway Station to get my return ticket to Tianjin. I ask the driver to wait because it’s too hard to get a taxi from the Beijing Railway Station; the line-ups are very long. We go to the Canadian Embassy. Marc Dompierre takes my health form to some office behind a security door and I wait a long time. He comes out, a little apologetic. They only stamp they could put on it was one that said, “Seen at the Canadian Embassy, Beijing”. An innocuous, almost meaningless statement. There was a maple leaf in the middle of the stamp. No date. No signature. Everyone is protecting themselves. Will this work? I eat a stress-reducing Club Sandwich at the Jian Guo Hotel. Taxi to train station. Train back to Tianjin. The day cost me 85 yuan. Feel upset; I suspect a conspiracy.
Go to Jin Qi Min’s home. Ask him what he thinks about my moving to Beijing; I feel I am betraying Tianjin University. He thinks it’s OK. He told me his own horror story of Chinese officials asking him to get a US Visa for his stopover in LA on his way to Lima, Peru. He got it with much difficulty, humiliation, and expense. It turned out, as he thought, that transfer passengers in the US don’t need a US visa. He didn’t need it!
Nov. 23
Xu Xia Feng is not at work today and can’t work on my visa problem. I waited half an hour for Liu De Fu, but didn’t get to see her either. I hope she will write me a letter of introduction that will allow me to stay in Beijing.
PM
Spent afternoon going to bank to take out 500 yuan with my credit card, the maximum I am allowed to withdraw in one day. I need 1500 to pay for my room next week, so I will have to make three trips to the bank on three consecutive days.
After the bank I go to the Post office to mail my Christmas gifts. Customs has to look inside everything so I do all the gift wrapping at the Post Office.
At dinner I met another Canadian who said she never had been asked to have a health record notarized. When they gave me the form at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa they never asked me to get it notarized, the form doesn’t request it, and they gave me an entry visa. Why for renewal, I should have to get it notarized?
EVE
Play solitaire, try not to jump out window. I may have to abort this whole enterprise. I imagine meeting the doctor who wants my health records notarized. I console myself. Maybe he is the “night watchman”, the Angel Gabriel.
"There was once a lover who had sighed for long years in separation from his beloved, and wasted in the fire of remoteness. ,,,He had given a thousand lives for one taste of the cup of her presence, but it availed him not. The doctors knew no cure for him, and companions avoided his company; yea, physicians have no medicine for one sick of love, unless the favor of the beloved one deliver him. At last, the tree of his longing yielded the fruit of despair, and the fire of his hope fell to ashes. Then one night he could live no more, and he went out of his house and made for the marketplace. On a sudden, a watchman followed after him. He broke into a run, with the watchman following; then other watchmen came together, and barred every passage to the weary one. And the wretched one cried from his heart, and ran here and there, and moaned to himself: “Surely this watchman is Izra’il, my angel of death, following so fast upon me; or he is a tyrant of men, seeking to harm me.” His feet carried him on, the one bleeding with the arrow of love, and his heart lamented. Then he came to a garden wall, and with untold pain he scaled it, for it proved very high; and forgetting his life, he threw himself down to the garden. And there he beheld his beloved with a lamp in her hand, searching for a ring she had lost. When the heart-surrendered lover looked on his ravishing love, he drew a great breath and raised up his hands in prayer, crying: “O God! Give Thou glory to the watchman, and riches and long life. For the watchman was Gabriel, guiding this poor one; or he was Israfil, bringing life to this wretched one!” Indeed, his words were true, for he had found many a secret justice in this seeming tyranny of the watchman, and seen how many a mercy lay hid behind the veil....those who journey in the garden land of knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning, see peace in war and friendliness in anger. Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 13
Nov. 24
During the night a truckload of bricks was unloaded, by hand, outside my window; I couldn’t sleep. I aspire to live up to the words of Abdu’l-Baha, “Anybody can be happy in the state of comfort, ease, health, success, pleasure, and joy; but if one will be happy and contented in the time of trouble, hardship and prevailing disease, it is the proof of nobility”.
I went to see Liu De Fu again. She welcomed me. We smiled. She will give me a letter for the police in Beijing if Zhang Long will send her a letter saying she is willing to rent the apartment to me. GOOD! Progress! I talked to Xu Xin Feng. She tried to phone Dr. about my document that was "seen at the Canadian Embassy". He wasn’t in.
Wrote letters to Zhang Long, friends in St. John’s, and my classmate, Jai Sen, now in India.
EVE
Work on CIDA Report.
November 25
Xu Xing Feng called to say local police in Tianjin had let other foreigners’ paper’s through in September without such close scrutiny of the health records, but for some reason, they want mine read and checked by a doctor who reads English.
Typing final copy of CIDA Report on my little key typewriter.
Xu Xing Feng called again. She has been on her bicycle to the police station with my health records with the stamp, “Seen at the Canadian Embassy”. She said she persuaded them to accept it and now has my Residency Permit! I raced over to the Foreign Affairs Office and profusely congratulated her in front of all the others. They were all laughing; we were all happy. They had all seen how dark I felt the other day. I walked in slow motion out of Building Nine, out of the dark lobby, along its central axis, and stepped out into the light on its triumphant grand staircase. “Thank you!” I said, “Thank you!”
Nov. 26
CIDA
EVE
Celebrate by myself, ride my bicycle over to the Sheraton Hotel for supper, a party of one.
Nov. 27
CIDA Report (almost finished)
Phoned Zhang Long. She sounded hesitant about sending a letter to the Foreign Affairs Office at Tianjin University. She said she will discuss it with Li Rui Hua. I feel unsettled again; hopes go up and down.
Note from Xu Zi Ping (Echo) left at the reception desk of the Foreign Experts Building
Nov. 28
AM
Finish typing my CIDA Report
PM
Photocopy Report
EVE
Sun Hua Sheng arrived. He said I am invited to a conference in Suzhou. He had a sore back. I showed him the “lie on your back with your feet up on a chair” position. Great way to relax back muscles. I used it often when I was carpenter in St. John’s.
He is encouraging about my housing research, and asked me to get a presentation ready for Suzhou.
Nov. 29
AM
Work on my CIDA Report.
PM
I put the printed report in some Tianjin University A4 brown envelopes. I went to three Post Offices before finding one that had stamps with large enough denomination to send the envelopes abroad. It took all afternoon. My packages need 11 or 12 yuan each. Stamps for a normal large letter cost 1.60 yuan.
EVE Paste brown paper over Tianjin University’s name. Put addresses: Marielle Bourdage and Fred Dawes at CIDA, He Hong Yu, Don Johnston, and Prof. Norbert Schoenauer.
Nov. 30
PM and EVE
Wrote letters to Colin Munro, Sandra Hutchison, Mom and Dad, Dennis Barry, Ann Wilson, Maury Miloff, Andy and Mary Lynn Jones, Peter and Peggy Pope.
December 1
Wrote letters to Qiu Jiang at UBC, Margaret John, Michael and Elizabeth Rochester, Sheng Kai, Chris Crabtree, S.K. Mohandas, Tom and Marcie and Arlen.
Mail everything at P.O.
EVE
Jin Xin came by. Repaired a pair of my pants. We played cards.
December 2
Telegram from Suzhou
I received a telegram from Suzhou about my upcoming visit. Inter-city communication was by letter or telegram.
December 3
Zhang Chi (Cary) came by with questions about my report. He was especially interested in the part about participation and consultation.
EVE
Supper at his parents-in-law’s home. His wife’s name is Zhang Hongyu. We looked at photo albums. Her mother is originally from Vietnam; came to China in 1952.
December 4
Prepare for conference in Suzhou. Received invitation telegram from organizers.
EVE
Called Zhang Long. She said she had sent a registered letter to the Tianjin University Foreign Affairs Office saying I could use her apartment in Beijing. Now Liu De Fu can write her letter to the Beijing police and I can move to Beijing!
December 5
Prepare for Suzhou talk.
Liu De Fu phoned to say no problem to get re-entry visa for when I return from India . My guardian angel!
December 6
Early train to Beijing. Pick up visa application from Indian Embassy.
PM Overnight train to Shanghai.
December 7
Picked up by car from Suzhou.
PM
Go for walk in old city with Sun Hua Sheng and his friend Mr. An.
December 8
AM
Go with Sun Hua Sheng and Mr. An to see Wen Miao Confucian Temple. Sun Hua Sheng did the site planning.
PM & EVE
Prepare for my presentation. Sitting with blankets around me, no heat. I wore only one pair of pants, did not wear long underwear, and caught a bad cold.
December 9-12
Conference in Suzhou with Sun Hua Sheng.
Name of Conference: Suzhou Jiu Jie Fang Gai Zao Gui Hua 苏州旧街坊改造规划研讨会
December 10
EVE
Walked with Sun Hua Sheng to some farmers’ self-built homes at the edge of the old city. We looked inside one house at the invitation of an old woman who lived there. She welcomed me to come back and draw the house if I wished. As we left she said, “We are all one family.”
December 11
In an evening I chat with Qu We Zu. He said what I am trying to do with my CIDA research is “spiritual” work, very difficult. “People who just do business, that’s easy!”
Qu Wei Zu, Director of Renovation, Suzhou Municipal Government, Old City Redevelopment Office, Dong Nan Da Xue, Tongji Da Xue, CAUPD, Zhejiang Planning Institute. The elected Board of the Tong Fang Lane Housing Association hires a Resource Team to carry out survey, to prepare individual financial and construction plans. It has power to make contracts and borrow money; eg, contract a construction company to do larger works.
December 13
AM
Visit No. 50 Shi Quan Jie, a renovation of an old house.
PM
Visit Han Shan Monastery and a new housing estate, Cai Xiang Xiao Qu.
December 15
Train to Beijing.
December 16
Return to Tianjin Very tired, cold lifting.
XXX came by to look at my photographs. She wanted to talk about doubts she has about her emotionally-closed boyfriend. She wants to postpone their wedding.
Letter from Zhang Long had been sent to me, not to Foreign Affairs Office . I took it to the Foreign Affairs Office. Liu De Fu was not there. I left it with a note. Wait and see.
December 18
Wrote letter of recommendation for Xiao Wen, 4th year arch student, who wants to study abroad.
December 19
Bring information to the Foreign Affairs Office and fill out a application form for re-entry visa. The Foreign Affairs Office asked me to prepare a performance for the New Year’s Party at the Guest House.
Liu DeFu said I could pick up my introduction letter for the Beijing police tomorrow. Great!
PM
Xu Su Bin came by. She helped me pack my books.
EVE
Help William (student from Africa) with his kindergarten design.
Late evening news on TV had a long segment about India in honor of Ghandi’s state visit to China. The program ended with an introduction to the Baha’i Temple in New Delhi.
December 20
The letter of introduction from the Tianjin University Foreign Affairs Office to the Beijing police is now in my hand!!! It will cost 360 yuan to rent a van to move my things to Beijing.
At my bank on Jie Fang Lu, I found my money had arrived. Thank God! Now I can pay for my room and the car to Beijing.
Dining hall supper; eat “Pork Balls in the South”.
Got my picture taken at a little photo studio on Bin Jiang Dao. Order ten copies. Always need passport size photos to stick to applications. Will pick up later.
December 21
Still no re-entry visa.
In Tianjin, I get ready for move to Beijing. Get my things from Wolfgang.
Zhang Chi (Cary) came by. He said China’s modernization is leading to an increase in corruption, especially among leaders.
December 22
No news from Dennis Barry, St. Johns lawyer, about the remaining money from the sale of our house (about 3 years ago).
My bank account is down to CAN$500.00
No news yet from CIDA about whether my interim report is acceptable and whether they will approve the second half of my grant.
December 23
I started the day writing a complaining letter to Hongyu about my tests and difficulties. The phone rang. The Foreign Affairs Office says my re-entry visa is ready! They also said I should make a report about my research. Zhang Chi (Cary) came by; he helped me write the report. I believe in the fruits of prayer.
At the photocopy center, I met Liu Heng Qian. I met him the first time I came to China. He had just come back from 3 months in Jordan. He came to my room for a visit. He was working on the construction of the King’s Palace, a building designed by Kenzo Tange, a famous Japanese architect. He was never allowed to leave the construction site. He said Wang Xiao Tong (one of the graduate students I met in 1985) wants to come back to Tianjin University. Problem at this end is what her status will be. If it’s too high, others will object; some are jealous of those who go abroad.
PM
Xu Su Bin came by to help me shop for a few items for my move to Beijing. We also visited a new post-modern Exhibition Center 天津会展中心 designed by Rocko from Hong Kong.
EVE
I went with Jin Xin to buy materials to make a blanket including a blanket cover. She made a set for me. I ended the day tearing up the letter to He Hong Yu that I had started in the morning. She gave me a small cloisonne pen cup, I still have it.
Gift from Jin Xin
Dec. 24
I wrote a letter about my research for the Foreign Affairs Office and then went to pick up my passport and re-entry visa.
PM
Buy sweet potatoes for tomorrow’s Christmas Party at Marcie and Dave’s, Room 404.
Still struggling with depression. No good financial news.
EVE
Wolfgang and Irma invited me to a party at their place. They had little gifts for everyone. Very sweet people. Stayed late talking with Ito, a warm man from Japan. We made paper cranes.
Invitation from Hongyu's family written by Bater
Dec. 25
Jin Xin came by and made my quilt blanket (mian) with a removable, washable cover.
Join foreigner’s party at Marcie and Dave’s; gave them my sweet potatoes. Marcie, an avid cook.
I wrote letter to Hongyu about different forms of housing ownership. Before she received mine, I received one from her about different forms of home ownership. We two are in mysterious parallel worlds.
December 26
Phone call to Canada from my room. Dad very disappointed the Christmas package they sent to me had not yet arrived. He said it included long letters from him and Mom. Mom had burnt the Christmas dinner potatoes.
I dreamed I was on a bus full of executives on the Canadian prairies heading east. Charles Cullum scoffed at the idea of the executives project, a 15-storey tent of silvery gray cloth with loose flowing sides. It was moving slowly like a tabernacle, like a missile ready to launch. He said see you on Young Street, slapping his thighs and bending over like a clothes-peg. In the distance was the parliament buildings of Manitoba. The prairie was bare except for monuments. I sat in the grass wondering. An insistent little boy curled into my father’s lap to take shelter. He seemed to be an indigenous boy.
Dec. 27
Tianjin University cannot arrange a car to take me to Beijing because a teacher was hit by a car lately and all the campus cars are “frozen”. Get off-campus car for 350 yuan.
My passport’ photos are still not ready. Later, Xu Su Bin said, “Don’t worry, I will take care of that.”
EVE
Said good bye to Jin Qi Min. Actually, the research I am pursuing and the Architecture Department’s main interests are not so related. I am very grateful to him for all his support.
Dec. 28
Load small van and go to Beijing.
I’m afraid we might be stropped at check points between here and Beijing. But, no-one bothered us. Kenny G plays lullaby “Songbird” on the radio. The two drivers helped me take everything upstairs to my 42 sq.m. new home at Xuan Wu Men, Building No. 20, Apt. 306, Beijing, 100051
Zhang Long was there. We had a baozi lunch and a nice chat at the restaurant next door. She told me about her friend, the editor of Women in China and her troubles with lack of circulation and subscriptions. The government is cutting back subsidies and wants English magazines in China to be self-supporting.
Walked to Xi Dan after she left. Ate yang rou chuan (lamb skewers) and yoghurt in a returnable ceramic pot with a paper lid. Bought peanuts, apples and oranges for my new home. I’m happy to be here. I walk on the sidewalk and claim the whole city as my home. “Beijing! You are mine now!”
Dec. 29
I clean the mouldy refrigerator and repair the door bell. Li Rui Hua came by and we went to the local police station (Pai Chu Suo) to register. He had already been there to talk with them and they had agreed I could stay. There were not many foreigners living in Beijing at that time and I may have been the only one living in the southwest part of the city. Most foreigners in Beijing lived in the eastern and northern parts, closer to the airport; or in the northwest, in the university section of the city. The Ming Emperor Wan Li allowed the Italian Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, to live in my neighbourhood in 1605. His home was just to the west of the Catholic cathedral across from my home. In the colonial days, Beijing’s foreign concession area was to the east of here on the other side of Tian An Men Square; the site that was attacked by the Boxers in 1900.
The Police Sub-station was located a little south of my place. We wandered through the hutongs instead of going out on the big street. The Station was a converted courtyard house, part of a vast track of one-storey courtyard houses that stretched about three kilometers, as far as the southern boundary of the old Ming-Qing city.
Location of my Beijing home December 1988 to mid-1993, shown on a 2001 photograph. When I moved there the original fabric of the old courtyard city was still quite intact. The small square of high rises just to the south of my home was built after I moved out.
Location of my Beijing home December 1988 to mid-1993, shown on a 2020 photograph.
South of my apartment little of the original courtyard fabric remains.
In the central areas of typical western cities there is a street grid defining blocks from one to three hectares in size.
Typical Block Size in Manhattan
The structure of Beijing is quite different. Main streets are spaced far apart to form very large blocks, from 50 to 100 hectares. On most of the big streets that define these “super-blocks” there were, in 1988, only a one and two storey shops and a few small office buildings. There were almost no high-rise buildings in Beijing at this time.
Super-Blocks in Northeast Corner of Beijing Old City
These large urban blocks are then subdivided by small lanes (hutongs) about 8 meters wide. Inside the super-block there is a strong disconnect with the big city streets surrounding them. You are now in village-scale neighborhoods where daily life spills out of the courtyard’s wooden doors onto lanes with no windows.
* * *
The police at the local station were friendly. All my papers were in order, including the introduction letter from my Tianjin University ‘work unit’. They helped me fill in a few forms. I received a resident’s permit for the city of Beijing. It entitles me to live here, and to receive ration tickets for rice, oil, and pork. We went to the office next door to get the ration tickets. I‘m allowed 1 jin (pound) of rice and a 1/2 jin (pound) of oil per day. They are more expensive on the free market. Every month when I checked in with the police, I picked up more ration tickets. Li Rui Hua showed me where to buy rice. Once he left, I went into my little flat and savored the moment. Now I had my own home and I was in a Chinese neighborhood in the heart of old Beijing. I got down and kissed the floor.
I bought some vegetables. Cooked my first meal: egg, lamb meat, stir-fried vegetables and steamed-bread.
Dec. 30
The apartment already had a few pieces of furniture, including a bed. I bought an iron wok, a few pots, and other kitchen things. A bamboo reed mat was my carpet, and a white enamel metal pot held my rice. When I bought the metal pot, they asked me whether I wanted the lid that came with it. I told them I don’t need the lid. I spread out all my books on the bed. On the wall, I put an aerial photo of London, a piece of Yunnan blue fabric from Liu Jie, and a picture of a Tibetan Temple. I bought two lamps. I have a home!
Plan of my Xuan Wu Men Apartment in Beijing
Most days of the week at 3:00am a fleet of horse-drawn carts, brought by farmers, filed into the street under my south-facing windows. By 6:00 am they were ready. The carts were lined up on both sides of the street, to sell vegetables, meat, fish, household goods, clothing, etc. As you traversed the crowded gap between the rows of animated farmers, the sing-song noise of selling warmed you on two sides. Potatoes, carrots, tofu, pork, flopping fish, and red plastic buckets pleaded to be bought and carried off. “Ni zenme mai?” “How do you sell that?” “One yuan per jin.” “Ok, one jin.” I listened to others buying before I bought, so I knew what the price should be. I had a reed basket with two handles. Hong Yu later told me it made me look like an old lady.
I can’t find the 150 FEC that were in my pants pocket yesterday. I found it later. I had worn my best pants to look good at the Police Station. I had put those pants away along with the FEC.
The previous tenant of my flat had left a bottle of solution for cleaning and lubricating an artificial eye.
I went to the Beijing Hotel and asked directions to a bank that could receive funds from overseas. I need to borrow US$1200 from Hongyu.
At the Friendship Store I bought some cloth for curtains. When I got home the length was right but not long enough to make a hem.
I went to the Indian Embassy to get a visa (CIDA Project Part Two). They were closed for the (Western) New Years Holiday.
Beijing Hotel phones don’t reach Tianjin. I want to tell Dave and Marcie to hold on to my mail; I will pick it up later when I go back to Tianjin. I had to write them a letter instead.
Around 2 pm I went to what I thought was the laundry near my home but it was closed and dark inside. I read enough Chinese to understand the sign said “Open at 4 pm”. When I went back at 6:00 pm the laundry was a restaurant, lit up with many bare fluorescent tubes.
The laundry was the next shop over; it was closed.
My shower was now installed. I turned the timer switch on the little hot-water tank, got undressed and stood under the shower. After standing for a while, with no water coming out, I understood the timer tells me when the water will be hot. Got dressed; fifteen minutes later tested the water– lukewarm. Another fifteen minutes - now it’s too hot.
I stand in a big red plastic bucket under the shower and nod my head quickly in and out of the hot stream.
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