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.