Scale

've been really busy over the last week since Cloudy left, but the client likes my design very much so it appears that they will go ahead with it in some form. This is great news. I also have a permanent apartment, or a sort-of permanent apartment. I have a connection to a someone who houses English teachers and has an apartment that someone broke their contract on. They get new teachers every August, so they feel that they can get more money for it then, but for now they're willing to rent it at a reduced rate for short term. My representative/friend is trying to negotiate a longer contract, but I feel ambivalent because after fighting to squeeze onto buses and subways every morning I'm starting to think that it might be best to live near work, even if I like the neighborhood that I'm moving into more.


The apartment itself is really nice and too big for one person. I have two bedrooms, three beds, a balcony that looks out over a little urban river, a big kitchen and a western toilet. It is not in the neighborhood that I fell in love with, Dongshankou, but it is directly adjacent. It's close to transit and is located in a neighborhood which feels in scale like I imagine the downtown areas of mid-sized mid-America towns such as Columbus, Ohio felt 60 years ago before everyone moved out to the suburbs and the apartment buildings were all turned into parking lots.

Scale is an interesting issue here in Guangzhou. The neighborhood in which I work, Tianhe, was largely built in the last 10 years or so and feels massive and cold to me. There are tall buildings, large plazas wide streets, wide sidewalks. Imagine New York if you left the buildings the same size but increased the size of the outdoor space by 300-500%.

On the other hand, the path that I usually walk to work is through these crazy, labyrinthine alleyways that weave through the district in the second picture in what I've been told is referred to as an urban village. I want to write more on these areas later because they're fascinating, but for the moment I should get back to work.

To wrap up, just like Goldilocks I feel that the scale of my new neighborhood is just right.