Interesting People Doing Interesting Things

My good friend and fellow martial arts athlete, Sarah, has been living in Nanjing for about a year now, performing research as guided by her receiving a Fullbright scholarship. On one of my Monday days off, I was able to catch up with her and shadow her around for a “day in the life of Sarah.” What a life it is!

Sarah is living in a part of Nanjing that has become rare in the city: a neighborhood with houses. These are not houses by American standards, but they are one or two story dwellings, unlike the large apartment structures that are so commonplace to the rest of the city. The homes here are about to become something more commonplace to the city: construction sites. 

Here you can see the rooftops of small houses against the backdrop of some apartment buildings and a large school.

Sarah is researching a neighborhood that is considered historical Nanjing: houses that were part of the city before the mass-migration from countryside to cities began about thirty years ago. Now, as is the case with developing societies, some of the old is slated to be replaced by the new. Enter Sarah.

Her research is qualitatively focused on those families that have lived here, sometimes in the same home, for generations. Some of her research participants have already been re-located, some are waiting for that day to come. For many, the moving day is uncertain. She told me that the people feel a bit in flux, not knowing when they’ll move or where they’ll end up. The government provides apartments in the suburbs of Nanjing for them when they do leave.

Here is a picture of some houses at ground level.

Her research was interesting, but I did not get to take in much during my short visit, and part also because of my limited Chinese conversation ability. Sarah is fluent in Chinese, her research being otherwise impossible.

She wakes up, happy she promised me, and immerses herself in the neighborhood community. She feels very welcome and eats dinner with her neighbors on a regular basis. Since she is a very nice person and a foreigner—an attractive girl at that!—the locals really do like to talk to her. She gave me a tour of the neighborhood, which is visibly poorer than what I am familiar with in my downtown area.

The homes are old and in disrepair, the decorations and furnishings, minimal. Many homes and shops did not have floors per se, just the concrete that the house was built on. Sarah pointed out one street where the majority of the shops, about twenty, were second hand clothing stores. Some of the stores serve a double purpose as the home for the shop-keepers, who sleep on a small bed hidden by a curtain in the back of the store. Some of the shop-keepers are local Nanjing people attached by a long family history to the city; others are migrant workers from the country.

Even here, in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Nanjing, there is no short supply of workers who come looking for opportunity. Yet even those living/working here have, in most cases, been doing so for several years, some as many as 10 or 15 years, and returning home during Chinese New Year to visit their children who are being raised by the grandparents.

In addition to the incredible research and language experience Sarah is producing, I absolutely admire her strong, indomitable spirit and her compassion for the people of China. By contrast to my living situation downtown, her apartment makes mine really look American! In fact, she told me she felt lie she was “camping” for the part of her research that involves living and sleeping in one of the homes. She does not have a toilet in her house, and must walk a few hundred steps to the community bathroom. Her shower is not ice cold, but it ain’t warm either. She sleeps in the same bed as her roommate, a Chinese college girl whose parents live in a different part of Nanjing. Yet when I told her that she could easily find comfortable, affordable accommodations more familiar to westerners, she said that she really did enjoy being a part, truly a part, of the community. She used to live in a nice apartment but felt that it was dishonest to her research since she wasn’t immersed, and that despite the “camping” nature, she felt she was more happy living there this way. I really admire her work and dedication to her project!

Here is a picture taken from the Nanjing Wall, looking back at the city.