First off, some goodbyes

Our school-provided apartment is named Yashi Lou which means elegant poetry building. But like how most of us usually doubt the Chinese sense of aesthetics, one can only be confused in trying to find the elegance or the poetry in our Yashi Lou apartment. Nevertheless, the white bathroom tiles that cover the building facade, the stained and peeling walls and the pipes lining the bathroom have actually been home to Trey and me for the past two semesters in Shenzhen Polytech. The calm lake outside our building, contrasting the hustle and bustle of student life within the campus is not something that anyone gets even in tall, gleaming high-end apartments in Shenzhen.

But endearing as campus life is, Trey and I have to live the life of a married adult couple with a real home. Tomorrow we will be moving to Baishizhou--a neighborhood that displays China as raw as it is, with narrow roads cramped with noodle shops, Chinese fastfood, children's toys, hardware stores and brothels all in one strip. Men in suits spit on the street and mothers let their babies take a dump in the public thrash bins. And this is the real China that we've come to know, accept and love during our first year in this country. And tomorrow we go back to this neighborhood, but this time, we live in the white, gleaming apartment that towers the entire neighborhood. A 75 sqm two-bedroom place on the 29th floor will be our new home. Our small balcony overlooks a golf course, an amusement park and all the other apartments in Baishizhou lined along a main highway.

Maybe next time I'll talk about color swatches, curtains, couch pillows or the inconveniences of having no hot water in the sink. Or maybe help my husband deconstruct my being a narrow pit, whatever that means.