My Neighborhood

I live in a cozy (read: small) flat on the 16th floor, with features such as a screened-in porch, a western toilet, and, my personal favorite, south-facing windows. The view from these windows looks down on a courtyard, where, every morning, kids play and women dance. Sounds like quite the bucolic scene, I know, but I’m not kidding. Along with the kindergarteners who come to school every day, play on the playground, and generally make happy shrieking noises, women from the neighborhood also descend upon the courtyard. As a group, they do a synchronized dance of a variety I have never really encountered to a brand of high-pitched music I can neither classify nor describe (it’s not Chinese classical music, I know what that sounds like). This dancing is a city-wide phenomenon – Beijingers like to dance! During the fall, I thought surely they would take a hiatus during the cold, windy winter, but nope. Like Rocky, they brave sub-zero temperatures, and they're out there every morning, smiling, twirling, and moving their middle-aged hips. Kudos to the dancers, who make the neighborhood happier!

I can say that I truly like my neighborhood (propaganda notwithstanding - see below). It's a fairly old neighborhood, yet with modern and foreign influences noticeably creeping in. Purists may turn up their nose, but, in my opinion, it’s not an altogether bad trend, at least for a bumbling ex-pat like myself. When I feel like having some good ol’ spaghetti and tomato sauce, for example, there's Jenny Lou's, the foreign grocer, not far from me. Also, the shuttle stop, which I often catch to teach international students, is conveniently nearby.