the Unfortunate Event that Gave Me the Chance to Learn More about the Condominium ‘Old Western Gate’
January 4th, 2010Pulce the Kittie is missing: not even the sound of her shrimp dry food, shaken in her bowl, drags her back home. The unfortunate event gives me the chance to learn more deeply about the geography, the dynamics and the soul of the condominium Old Western Gate.
Condominium where I’ve been living for two years.
Orange block of twelve floors, Romanesque in its stable posture with low centre of mass, richly furnished of balconies and precociously grown old, was built in the late 90s to welcome the new booming Chinese middle class. Biodegradable building materials, the anarchic maintenance of the structure, Tibet Road’s pollution and possibly a serious depression of the architect, all give it the charm of an old Sicilian palace proudly fallen in decay.
My state of business man of the Province with no nose for business and specialized in low and lowest gross margin niche markets grants me the unique possibility to live in a native environment, unspoiled by the presence of European and American expats nor by the luxuries of Japanese architectural firm.
I finally have the excuse to talk with the doorman, the doorwoman, actually, to whom I hadn’t managed to extort more than a grant and the occasional raise of her right eyebrow, in the last two years.
She’s explaining to me that the cat was probably been eaten.
“They like eat cat meat”
Unsettled by the way she whispers they (but they who, I wonder), worried about the destiny of my beloved kitty and above all intrigued by the possibility that at 9 o’clock of Sunday morning somebody might have hunted, cooked and eaten a feline for breakfast, I obtain to be escorted by a guardian through the whole apartment house.
Looking for the Truth.
The guardian takes seriously the task assigned by the inflexible doorwoman and he shows up with a huge ring of keys. We’ll be knocking at every door, we’ll enter into each office, boiler room, unrented apartment and attic of the building.
We start from the last floor, going down.
I doubt that the cat is precipitated from the sixth floor (where I live) to the twelfth, but there we are, Guardian explains to me that cats climb.
By the eighth floor I have already learnt a lot. First of all about the apartment house life.
Each floor is a world in itself, has an attitude. There are posh floors, with big golden plate door handles; modern and juvenile floors, where the apartments, doors opened and high volume music, give the corridors an atmosphere of Latin Quarter; socialist floors, rich of traditional iconography, proudly stark and Spartan; gastronomic ones, where tofu and squids are deep fried, so that the smell of multi-fried oil can make the floor tenants’ hair nice and fluorescent.
I also find out that the blinking neon tubes that enlighten some corridors seem to be set for a thriller movie.
The corollary being, the more fetid and chaotic the corridors, the more opulent and spotless the apartments overlooking them.
Common spaces tend to be gobbled up and colonized by the neighboring landlords. Corridors, stairs and common balconies are occupied by closets, clothes horses and big bags full of items destined to wholesaling and detailing.
Finally, the corridors are employed as promenade (people walks backwards, according to a local tradition), cycle tracks, squares for conversation and conviviality and training rooms for the ancient practices of tai chi and skate board.
I delve into issues of sociological and anthropological interest.
The landlords are torn between the comprehensible fear of the bearded foreigner and the instinct for well known Chinese hospitability. I’m immediately invited to “enter, sit down, drink some tea” (thousand-year formula of welcome), but the hosts use with me the same care that should be normally taken when you give reception to a tiger in your lounge room. Any contact with babies and elderly relatives is forbidden.
The tenants, instead of simply collaborating with the search of the kitty and denying any meeting with the latter, instinctively fend and show every corner of their house. They open closets, cupboards, storage rooms that could function as hiding places or storeroom for feline meat, to demonstrate their non involvement on all counts .
Broken the ice, they don’t miss the chance to interview the foreign visitor about the minutiae of his social and personal life, from the habits of the Italian pet animals to the salary and the true reasons of my belated celibacy.
The guardian, normally at humble and devoted service of the land lords and their whim, has now a resolute and military attitude, in his new role of detective. Role which is fully acknowledged by the searched land lords. This reminds me that somebody’s status, here, even when temporary and changeable, is the strong base for power relations and momentary hierarchies. I have a feeling that if I put myself in the middle of People Square and got to blow in a whistle, the upcoming drivers would stop and do as I say.
I have also found out the we don’t necessarily share with our Chinese friends the same trends on interior design. They certainly must feel the same dismayed bewilderment when they notice our feng shui disasters as much as we marvel in front of their fantasy about trimmings and their grandeur with regard to marbles, grimly dark woods and dazzling lacquers.
The guardian is a fan of Brescia Calcio and Roberto Baggio.
I finally discover that the building hides a second set of lifts, a sun thermal power station and a small dumping ground, not necessarily authorized.
Pulce the Cat was precipitated from some balustrade of the sixth floor to the offices’ balcony on the second floor, therefore hidden under a stack of cathode ray tube televisions of brand GuLunDi. Nothing to do with Grundig, as I am told. I found her after ten floors of search, a dozen cups of tea, one large steamed dim sum and a moon cake out of season.
They have not, in facts, cooked nor eaten Pulce, this is very important and pacifies me at once with my dear and hospitable neighbours.
