As winter turned into spring and now spring turns into summer, I have grown more and more attached to my neighborhood in the Zhaohui district.

The neighborhood is nothing special, and those of us accustomed to quality building standards at home might think my building resembles a turn-of-the-century tenement.

Nonetheless I have grown to love it.

The exterior of my apartment is a mish-mash of different window panes – some old, wood carved window panes mixed in with the “new” aluminum variety that holds blue glass in place – and it usually looks as if the occupants of each apartment have their entire wardrobe hanging from their balcony. After watching the construction of new buildings near by or renovations of old buildings, I know that our building is constructed mainly of brick and concrete. The building materials, which are probably not the most stable, do help our apartments stay cool in the Hangzhou heat and humidity (and it also keeps us even colder in the winter).

I wasn’t very impressed by my apartment building when I first got here. The walkway up to my building was being completely rebuilt and I had to walk over rickety bamboo bridges or tip-toe over stacks of bricks to get to my doorway. Everything seemed so loud in the morning – people and cars and doors slamming – and my neighborhood looked like it had been coated in cement.

Now I’m accustomed to the sounds of doors slamming and children whining about going to school drifting through my paper-thin walls. I wake up, stumble to my coffee maker and look out my kitchen window. From there I can see old men and women across the street at the track doing their morning exercises.

If it’s a sunny day a small grassy area near my apartment is filled with comforters being aired out on clotheslines. Nearby children and their grandparents use the communal outdoor exercise equipment.

A quick walk through a maze of trees and apartment buildings plops me out right next to one of my favorite restaurants – dubbed “the standby” by former foreign teachers because of our regular visits for lunch and dinner. (You can almost always count on the standby for a good meal). A quick walk east, past a bus stop and the man who sells fresh chickens and ducks every morning, is a park that borders a canal.

The park is also nothing special, just trees, grass, and a winding path that cuts through the narrow strip of greenery. On one side there is a small paved road, on the other is the murky colored canal where men use a four-armed contraption with a giant net to catch fish. In the early morning, elderly men and women do taiji in the middle of the park, and others set up their radios and listen to broadcasts while they chat with friends. Other than the news, one other sound dominates the morning air: birds singing.

In an area thick with brush and trees, people bring their song birds out for fresh air every morning. The wooden cages hang from branches as their owners take a leisurely walk around the park. In some spots every other tree has a cage. Some birds sound as if they’re talking to each other; and others sound as if they’re having a screaming competition.

Back at old building 75, children chase each other on bikes or shoot each other with toy guns. Parents are nowhere to be found, and the kids couldn’t be happier. Around the corner, grandma and grandpa refill their tea jars and play another round of mahjong. The women who sit outside our neighborhood convenience store gossip in Hangzhou-hua (the local dialect) while they knit sweaters.

The architecture in my neighborhood is pretty horrible (in fact, you could say there is a lack of architecture). It is the same as almost all neighborhoods in China – utilitarian and faceless.

But when I heard that my building would be torn down and replaced by a new high-rise apartment complex, I realized that more than just a building would be lost by its destruction. A community would be lost amid 30 stories of glass and steel. The tables and chairs set up in nooks of green space would be paved over; the intimacy of many smaller buildings would be replaced by the anonymity of one giant one.

I could go on and on about the flaws of my apartment, a structure I once compared to a garage. But it has its own quirky charm, and its rough edges make daily life that much more interesting.