Goosed by a taxi (and other adventures.) I had begun to worry that I was becoming too acclimated in China, beginning to overlook the interesting details that will still be novel to my readers, make their vicarious experience richer. Then, as if experience itself were crying out to be noticed . . .

The other morning I was crossing YanTan Lu. (I wrote a year ago about the hazards of crossing the street here.) I had completed phase one, crossing the westbound lanes, and was standing on the dusty yellow line waiting for my opening to cross the eastbound lanes. A warm, smooth, solid object glided across my backside – I turned my head just in time to see a bright green Lanzhou taxi cruise off. The driver didn’t even look back; I don’t think he realized he had wiped a wide stripe of dust from the doors and fender of his car with a foreign teacher’s ample rump!

Our weekend kicked off the busy autumn social season. Amity teacher Karin came to town from remote WuWei to shop for provisions, and Gary arrived from remoter Zhangye to meet four of his Canadian friends who are touring China. On Sunday the Zhangye group would board the train at ten PM, leaving us plenty of time for sightseeing here during the day. They vacated their hotel and left their luggage in my apartment while we explored Lanzhou together. We walked along the Yellow River. Lanzhou has one of the best – and longest! – riverfront parks I’ve ever seen. It stretches for miles.

We visited the Temple Market, where local antiques and handcrafts are traded. Finally, about 8 PM, we returned to my apartment to retrieve the luggage.

My key failed to open the door. I dashed upstairs to Ruth’s and got the spare key, but that one didn’t work either. At dusk on a Sunday, on the third floor of an eight-story building of twenty-four apartments, we attracted wave upon wave of volunteer assistance. Gary speaks fluent Chinese, luckily, so we were able to communicate – but unable to open the door. The scene took on a comic aspect as night fell. Stairwell lights in Chinese buildings are typically sound-activated. One stamps one’s feet, claps hands, coughs or whoops in a practiced frequency. The noise turns on the bare bulb on each landing. As we huddled on my landing (about three square meters of grimy cement floor) the light went off at its programmed interval, over and over, and we all stamped, clapped and shouted it back on, over and over. University personnel (my landlords) arrived. Gary and his four compatriots left without their luggage – I dashed out with them to find two taxis and then returned guiltily home. I was having trouble shaking the sense that the whole fiasco was somehow my fault . . . university staff continued to try to open the door with my keys and theirs.


The first locksmith arrived on a motorbike with his compact canvas toolbag. He was dressed in a suit coat, dress slacks, dress shirt and v-neck sweater. (It’s typical in China for humbler professions to wear dressier clothing. Had we called an investment banker, he probably would have arrived in a warmup suit and Nike sneakers.)

If you think, as I once did, that lock smithing is a delicate art involving precision tools and slow, deliberate movements, think again. This practitioner set upon my lock with pliers, a chisel, a heavy hammer, and (after rousing my next-door neighbors to let him plug an extension cord into their socket) a high speed drill. The force he applied should have breached Fort Knox, but my door resisted. By this time, my role had degenerated to that of perpetual cheer leader. Whenever the overhead light, predictably, went out, I clapped my hands dutifully to turn it back on. In the course of the evening, I must have clapped the light on about two hundred times.
Locksmith number two arrived in designer jeans and a sports jacket. He was younger than the first one and clearly the no-nonsense, now-we-will-open-this-door-no-matter-what guy. He used a plastic card around the edges of the door to find out where the obstruction was, leading me to believe that he not only knew his trade, but might have come to it from a less legit branch. After that, he simply set to. He made so much noise, I was able to take a break from cheer leading. He made so much noise, I whispered useless apologies to all of my neighbors, especially those with babies and children; it was well past ten PM. Plaster sifted down from walls and ceiling. My peephole ejected in fragments. Assault after assault, and the stubborn door resisted. Then, suddenly, at five minutes to eleven, it suddenly swung open with a gentle, anti-climactic click.

Have I told you lately how much I love my apartment? I recently did some more decorating in the living room, making the sofa and chairs softer, and added some table lamps that cast a soft glow. I love my apartment even when I haven’t just stood on the landing for three hours, clapping my hands every sixty seconds to illuminate the efforts of kung fu locksmiths. On Sunday night at eleven, it really looked like home!