Diary from China ––
Wednesday, July 27, 2005; Shanghai
Excerpts from Diary: I was admiring
the rows of 100-year-old housing when Fan (one of Zhang Wei’s cousins /
sisters, she’s in middle school) said that her grandparents lived in an apartment
building like that one, very old. I took
some pictures and we continued walking – turns out she ran ahead and told them
we like to see it, and we got to go into one of these apartments! We passed some other Caucasians walking
through the project, and I thought, LUCKY LUCKY
ME! I get to go INTO one of them!
The grandparents are no longer living (Grandfather
had died 30 years ago, Grandmother a few years ago) but living there now are
one of their daughters (Fan’s aunt) and her husband and son. She had taught
math to middle school in a southern province until she retired last year, and
then she moved back into her parents’ home.
The reason she lived all her adult life so far from home is because
during the Cultural Revolution, as she came of age, she was sent to work
there. I’ll try to find out if she met
her husband there or if he was also displaced from
We walked through the
100-year-old apartment complex.
The apartment buildings are
being renovated, including replacing the exterior with new brick, using
scaffolding made of bamboo (the last photo of bamboo scaffolding was taken from
a bus elsewhere in Shanghai -- for a photo of a bamboo ladder click here).
We are greeted at the residential
entrance in the back of the building by Fan’s aunt, who served us sugar beets
and watermelon. The apartments have
beautiful molding, and a wall was built to separate it into two rooms. Outside the apartment, the
hall leads to a patio on the roof. We
can look down into the apartment, where we see Fan. The front of the apartment
building now has stores and offices. Return to Diary from China Return to home
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