The Office

Although it’s not quite something straight out of the Scranton, PA-based office that Steve Carrell heads up the NBC sitcom, my office in the Department of Foreign Languages is slowly developing into an extremely quirky locale that I get to experience on a sometimes pleasantly and sometimes unpleasantly consistent basis.

A few days after the school year began, I met a Chinese colleague on the way down the hallway who works in the office across the way from mine. Walter had just gotten back from spending a year teaching a class on modern Chinese art at a small liberal arts college in the American Midwest, and he was interested to hear what it was that was pumping into my head through the massive Bose headphones I had wrapped around my head. We starting talking about music and then a bit about the class he was teaching here at Tsinghua—“English for Art Criticism.” By the end of the conversation I had agreed to come in one day to tell the class what I thought about modern art generally. We’ll see if that lecture ever comes to fruition and, if it does, how much of a catastrophe it turns out to be. (I would probably just end up going over Paul Klee’s On Modern Art with them, which, for anyone who’s interested, is a very short but very very interesting discussion of Klee’s personal theory of modern art and what it is supposed to do—if anything at all.)

Its high ceilings and large windows (with a little green courtyard outside) make the place seem surprisingly appealing, despite the bars stripped across the glass to prevent robbers from breaking in and grabbing the computers. There is a pile of what looks like either mulch or dirt in a plastic bowl filled with water right in front of where you enter the office. The mystery mix—perhaps meant for gardening in the courtyard outside—actually gives the place a kind of earthy smell that counteracts the sterile effect of the cleanly-mopped white tiles covering the floor.

While writing at one of the computers early on a sunny Thursday afternoon two weeks ago, I heard a song come on loudly in an office down the hall from mine. It was some kind of Chinese pop tune, and the male singer’s voice was strained in what must have been a lover’s lament. The song ended and then immediately was replayed, this time with an extra male voice thrown into the mix. Someone down the hall then proceeded to replay this Chinese pop song at least a dozen times, singing along each time, until their voice must have just been absolutely obliterated. I took a rest from work for a minute to listen in—all I could make out were some lyrics saying something like “I love you”—but to be frank neither one of the singers’ voices were that good. The fact that myself and everyone on the hall had to listen in over a dozen times not to gentle crooning but to booming, out-of-tune Chinapop seemed a little bit much to ask, even if this guy down the hall was aspiring to karaoke superstardom or something.

I am pretty sure that the singer is a fellow who constantly comes in to my office early in the morning to wash up and brush his teeth. We have a sink, as well as a bunch of brooms and mops, right behind where our desks and filing cabinets are located (the office itself actually used to be a broom closet that they converted into an “office”). The past several times I’ve been around at about 7am or so, someone has rolled out of the department’s periodicals library next door and came in, toothbrush and washtowel in hand, ready for his morning toilet. I’m not quite sure what the deal is, but I think that there is a good chance that this guy sleeps in the periodicals library either on some nights or every night. We’ve now ran into each other several times and, unlike Walter, he’s made absolutely zero attempt to introduce himself. When we do “speak” to one another on those early mornings and even later on in the day, his answers are monosyllabic grunts more so than language. Apparently I am not the only one to experience some rude behavior from the periodicals librarian—even some of the Chinese folks have commented laughingly that he has a reputation for ornery comportment.

One day about a week ago, I was sitting in my office on another beautiful early afternoon towards the end of the week, and I heard another voice coming out of the office next door. This one was unaccompanied by any music, but it was richer and more refined than even the “professional” pop singer I had heard the week before. I was an older tune—the song didn’t follow a verse-chorus-verse progression, and some of the notes were haunting, like those that come out of an erhu (an instrument that consists of “two strings,” the literal translation of its Chinese name). The voice stopped and, maybe 15 minutes later, Walter walked out of the office across the hall and made his was out the department’s main door, done with work for the day.

I’ve begun to work in my office more and more as my first month in the city has moved along. I can come in at any time I want, thanks to the 24-hour security guards who are “standing watch” over the department’s always-open doors. They have a TV in the office where there is usually a couple of them stationed, and from what I’ve seen the overnight routine usually consists of one watching the tube while the other catches some ZZZs—easy money, if you don’t mind living like a vampire.

I no longer have to show my i.d. to any of the guards in the office, as it is that, for the first three weeks of the semester, I had an excuse to be constantly in their face asking whether or not several packages from the States had arrived. At one point, I was standing in their door two or three times a day when I was waiting for some crucial medical documents I needed for my residency visa. After I finally got the materials for my visa, I was expecting a delivery of a couple of boxes from Amazon, which had me in the same doorway slightly less often. At one point around a week ago, before I could even open my mouth as I approached the office, one of them gave me a preemptive meiyou (“don’t have [it]”) before I even noticed that they were looking in my direction. Eyes rolled as I craned my neck to look at the stack of boxes behind the two men on the other side of the window, and my scan revealed two boxes with the characteristic Amazon smile on their sides. They were two boxes in a stack of twenty other similarly-sized boxes, and, because I didn’t yet know how to say “below” or “above,” they went through almost every single one before they got to the first Amazon box. I figured that a good way to gesture to them about what I wanted was to smile maniacally (imitating the Amazon logo), point at my face, and then point at the boxes they were rifling though, saying zhege, zhege (“that one, that one”) over and over again. They were both very happy to see me leave after they finally found both boxes. At least when I walk by the guard office now, all I get are smiles—massive, maniacal smiles. Those were the last boxes I needed from them, and I think I might have stuff shipped to my apartment instead from now on.

Speaking of vampires: Although I do like working in my office at night, the walk from the guard’s office to my door can be a real gut check. (See photo: “Cozy if you’re ... Hannibal Lecter.) Once I get inside, sit down at my desk and start working, I’m always slightly stressed as I hear shoes patter down the tile hallway approaching my door. The last several times I’ve heard those footsteps, however, it’s been my officemate, Rob, an Englishman, who also likes to work there late. I liked Rob immediately from the minute he opened his mouth at orientation, commenting that he taught “English Literature and Culture—or a lack thereof” here at Tsinghua. Extremely funny individual. His lecture this semester is going to be on the Chinese obsession with football/soccer and, in particular, David Beckham. Looking forward to that one. He teaches English for law majors here, along with several courses in a program designed for wealthier Chinese high school post-graduates who want to brush up on their English to help with their chances of getting into British colleges. I saw him earlier this evening, actually. He stopped by for a minute with a third-year law student who was looking to expand her musical horizons, and Rob was able to provide her with some albums by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Radiohead. The three of us talked for a while about Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, and Rob was pleased to see that someone in America knew about them. The student who came in with Rob was involved with a guitar-playing club on campus, and we talked about the prospect of me stopping by one day to perhaps learn a couple of chords with them.

After Rob and I parted ways outside of the department, I put on my jacket and pedaled home through the rain. I was dressed as if I’d just come from the gym—the only laundry I had available, the rest of it being strewn all over my room drying in the super-dry Beijing air in my apartment. I’ll probably venture down to Wal-Mart at some point soon to pick up a drying rack, but the colors strewn across the furniture in my living room actually helped to brighten up a living space that has been described by someone down the hall as “depressingly Spartan.” (Note bedsheet hanging from an open window.)