When I was living in Shijiazhuang this door became one of the silent background elements of my life. Like every other apartment block in our area, the yard surrounding the building was edged with a rows of brick built sheds, which tended to exhibit various degrees of ‘looking like they might fall down right now’. (These are pretty much Chinese Shed Premium Edition.)Waiting for coffee or pasta water to boil in my kitchen I would half watch fellow residents wrestling their bikes in and out of the sheds, reassured that the compulsion to keep stuff that is broken or no longer needed but might come in handy one day is cross cultural.
Posts
I guess the color of the door was the only way to identify one's storage unit.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I'm not the only one who hordes old stuff that should have been discarded eons ago.
It's odd - when I first got to Shijiazhuang I didn't think I'd ever be able to tell the difference between the idenitkit apartment buildings, but by the end of my time there - how could anyone think these buildings looked identical!
ReplyDeleteAlthough the security guards who kept our mail never did work out the difference between the three Caucausian female teachers!
interestg how each town has its own character
ReplyDelete