zimatravels

     I am living amid many contradictions — the old and the modern, quiet and noise, good air and bad, the poor and the rich, the east with a touch of Europe.  There is more variety than I ever imagined in the 6.5 square miles that comprise Macau.

     I have added a clever European hot water heater to my shower that heats the water as I use it.  My little “kitchen” has expanded to a cabinet for pots and pans and a miniature refrigerator.  I usually take the handy camping stove, which I light with joss sticks, out to the railing of my hallway balcony to cook the little that I bother cooking.  I call it my “kitchen extension.”  A large plastic bowl on the slab is my sink.  No wonder Chinese don’t lose mobility as fast as old Americans.  Nothing, including the water spigots, is at a convenient height.  Squatting to reach the water spigot, and squatting at the toilet, are daily challenges.

     In my “main” room, I have added a plastic closet, some lamps, a very comfortable chair for reading, and a mosquito net above my bed that somehow ends up strangling me by morning.  It’s really quite a cozy home, although the bars on all the windows seem somewhat prison-like.

     I can tell the time of day or night by the noises that surround me.  Very, very early in the morning, I am awakened by the chairs and tables being set out in the alley next to my home.  Workers stream in for breakfast noodles or rice, noisily greeting each other and chatting loudly as though they aren’t sitting next to each other.  I wake up long enough to put in my earplugs to soften the din.  The scraping of the chairs and tables and the dismantling of the makeshift restaurant a couple of hours later wakes me again in time to get up to go teach.

     The evenings are lively because of all the restaurants hiding in the alleyways around my home.  Outside the restaurants are many cages holding animals I can’t identify.  They come and go and are advertising the menu of the day.  I always feel sad for these victims awaiting execution.

     The narrow street in front of my home is filled with frequent noisy, smelly buses and cars.  Since tiny Macau has so few places to drive, rich teenagers are fond of riding by over and over with their customized cars and blaring radios for all to admire.  After the buses have stopped running, and the joy-riding teenagers have gone elsewhere, my home becomes deliciously quiet.  Soon, the clink clink of the mahjong tiles becomes audible as the mahjong parlor just in back of my home begins in earnest for the night.  These games, with excited yells when a game gets hot, often go through the night.

This is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.  This is how I described my home in my travel journal dated October 15, 1992. 

     As yet I have no job, and no work permit to remain in Macau past 20 days, but I’ve signed a two-year lease for probably the most unusual apartment I’ll ever have.  I’ll try to describe it.

     I had quickly decided that I didn’t want to live in a highrise in the very congested main part of Macau, so I headed for Taipa Village on the first island connected by bridge.  Without much of a clue as to how to proceed, I stopped to buy a bottle of water in a small shop on the first floor of a row of homes.  The teenage girl who took my money started a halting conversation in English.  I explained that I was looking for a small apartment.  She said to wait a minute, and left.  Some minutes later, she came back with a woman who had a connection with an apartment for rent very close by.  We went into a building just a few houses down.

     What has become my room in Taipa Village is a medium-sized light and airy room with a high ceiling.  Two large doors open up into a long balcony with a bamboo rod high up for hanging clothes to dry.  There is also a large window, and a hallway that includes another large balcony, a slab sticking out from the wall that I finally understood was  my “kitchen,” and a small room with a squat toilet.  There is a  cold-water spigot low on the wall near the squat toilet and one at foot level from the balcony off the hallway.  When I asked about a shower, the landlady said they could put one in for me next to the squat toilet.

     There is another apartment off the hallway, and a stairway leading to a third apartment upstairs.  Underneath is the unused first floor of the building, which once was an office but is now only used for storage.  All space is shared with an infinite number of cockroaches and geckoes and one small mouse who comes home every night at 10 p.m. and goes directly into his hole.

     Ah, the view!  The view is best.  I see green everywhere.  From my second floor balcony, I look out upon a small, decoratively tiled public water area combined with a tiny Buddhist shrine across the narrow street.  Behind these are some magnificent trees and luxuriant foliage climbing up the hill as only the tropics can grow them.  Next to the shrine is a wonderful old, abandoned building that has been well reclaimed by nature with vines and flowers crawling everywhere.

     When my new teenage neighbor, Bobbie, explained to the landlady that I had no furniture, I returned to find a table, chair, and what must be the very first version of a sofa bed in the room.

     I only pay $100 a month, which is probably double the going rate for a Chinese person.  As a foreigner, I never would have found this place without Bobbie’s help.  I think I’ll be happy in this total Chinese environment.  Actually, it’s much more like mainland China than Hong Kong or Macau city.

     I’m ready for a modified “nest,” not unlike the several birds nesting in the eaves of my front balcony — not too permanent, but “home” nonetheless.  But can I find a job with a work permit that will let me stay?

This is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, written in my travel journal in September, 1992.