Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on but the rent
Dear landlords,
yesterday evening the Little Tiger and the Flying Pig were invited for dinner at Aunt number 4’s apartment. Aunt number 4 lives together with her husband and 3.5 five year old son in a spartan apartment in a quiet area close to the second best university in Sichuan. The apartment consists of a small livingroom and a small bedroom. They share a dirty kitchen with a neighbour family and share an even dirtier bathroom with four neighbour families. Yesterday they were having a dinner feast for 14 people in the living room. It all started in the worst possible way. The ricecooker started melting, which meant no rice, but this didn’t seem to bother the others, since they rarely eat rice until the end of the meal (the crazy thinkers states that they can eat more of the other more expensive dishes if they don’t eat rice). The Flying Pig pretended also not to care to show his politeness, but inside his heart was weeping. All the men smoked in the tiny living room while eating, but luckily the flying pig sat next to the fan and had two bottles of ice cold beer to make him forget his rice sorrows. The 3.5 year old son born in the year of the chicken met the Flying Pig six months ago, but he was still shy among all the gathered people. One of the 3.5 year old chicken’s uncles pored him some beer and he drank two cups before his mama said enough. After the beer, he didn’t seem so shy anymore and the flying pig was quite amused by his voice. The little chicken sounded a little bit like a little chicken that just got it’s puberty voice change.
The Little Tiger told the Flying Pig that the other people gathered were the family of Aunt number 4’s husband. Apparently they were a little bit more egocentric and not as nice as The Little Tiger’s family. Also they were poorer and Aunt number 4’s family used to live with her husband’s parents until recently when they moved to the spartan apartment. But next month they will have to move to a new apartment with three rooms and with a non shared bathroom and a non shared kitchen, since the glourious government of China is planning to tear down their current building. As nice as they are they offer the inhabitants 360 000 yuan if and only if they move to the new building and buy an apartment there for 33 000 yuan. A win win situation for the people living in the less nice apartments, but not so nice for the people living opposite aunt number 4’s apartment, with nicer apartments.
In China the government owns all the ground. When somebody wants to build apartments they lease the ground for 75 years and after that the government can take it back at anytime, but they will offer the inhabitants some kind of compensation (usually money or another appartment somewhere else). This sometimes leads to people unwilling to move being moved by force. Many of these tales can be read throughout the internet and also be seen in movies.
Sincerely Yours
Fei Zhu hanging around another day in the magnificent country of China
