The gate checks me, opens and I follow my directions back three buildings and then left to the second walkway. There is an archway, as the directions promise, and next to the archway, a child's three wheel gleams as red as the roof tiles.
I climb a ramp, there is a lift, and ask for the second floor. It is so clean, so polished. They must pay to keep it so clean. Woo Eubong's door is blue and before I knock it is opened by a child-maybe four years old? She is sucking on a purple ice lolly and does not speak, only looks up at me.
"Hello," I say.
She regards me seriously and then runs back into the flat, leaving me at the door. She is wearing blue coveralls and yellow shoes.
An older girl with long pigtails peers around the corner. "Mama!" she hollers, "he's here!" She smiles at me, showing missing teeth, and disappears.
A man comes around the corner, tall and fair-skinned. "Engineer Zhang?" he says, "I'm Zhang Chunqing, Eubong's husband. Come in."
The flat smells of food cooking, and from somewhere I hear Woo Eubong saying, "I know he's here, I'll be right out. Go talk to him."
Zhang Chunqing calls, "Girls? Come out here?" He takes my jacket, the girls skid around the corner on the hardwood floor like puppies. "These two worthless daughters are Xiu-ping and Xiu-lin."
The girls giggle madly and take back off for the kitchen.
He sighs, "You will find we are not a very formal household, I'm afraid."
I find it is very hard not to feel at home here. Woo Eubong comes in bringing finger dumplings and sliced vegetables and Zhang Chunqing gets beer. The girls want to watch the vid and are told they can't do it in the front room. They disappear into their bedroom but reappear every fifteen minutes or so to get some snacks and regard me owlishly before breaking into giggles and dashing off to the bedroom. Zhang Chunqing tells me that the older girl, Xiu-ping, is going to a special school where she learns piano and Japanese and we fall into a discussion of the best way to learn a language. Woo Eubong quizzes me on how I learned Mandarin. Chunqing is a biology teacher at a middle school for students who are preparing for University work.
The room is pretty, but there is a pair of small red shoes by the doors that lead to the balcony. A stack of papers sits on one end of a shelf that displays pottery (perhaps my teapot was a good choice.) It is not as beautiful as my apartment, but it is more comfortable. And the beer works on me and I begin to relax a little. It is hard to completely relax, I am always watching my behavior, trying to be Chinese. There is a huaqiao saying that when you step foot in China you become Chinese. Maybe it is true if you are first generation, maybe it would be true for San Xiang's child, Foreman Qian's grandchild, but it is not true for me. Maybe I am more my mother's son than I ever knew.
But I like Woo Eubong a great deal and her husband is easy to talk to. Dinner is delightful, thousand year old eggs, sweet and sour pork and spiced cabbage with anise, a chicken roasted with it's head tucked under it's wing, fresh sliced tomatoes with a dusting of white sugar, candied yams. The girls have to be told to pick up their rice bowls when they eat, they want to leave the bowls on the table, stick chopsticks in them and carefully try to get the rice in their mouth with spilling anything. Woo Eubong is a little embarrassed, but I am relieved to be treated to real life. Everything at Wuxi has seemed to consist of glossy surfaces, effortless perfection, with me as the only flawed example of the other life I knew. It is nice to see that children are still children.
After dinner we talk some more, and I find myself admitting that I am frustrated.
"You try too hard," Woo Eubong says. "You have this feeling that what you are trying to do is very difficult, but it isn't. Once you find a way in, it will not be difficult at all."
A way in. A way in where?
Monday at Wuxi Engineering Technologies. I spend the morning reviewing jobs. I am starting to pick up speed, this, my third week. I eat lunch with Woo Eubong in the cadres' dining room (five pink prawns on the side of my plate like five shingles, slices of green kiwi fruit from Australia, cooked cucumber and tomato.)
"Today," she says, "you're not going to scribble. Today you are going to design doors."
"Why is that?" I ask.
"I am trying something different."
Ah. Okay. So that afternoon I sit and design doors. Imagine a door, the system draws it. A wooden door. A metal door. A garage door. A great Chinese double gate, each side set with eighty-one brass studs. A moon gate, the opening a round zero. Then back to wooden doors. Without windows, with insets, with carving, with a window, with square panes, with panes like a fan. I take a stack to Woo Eubong. She nods.
"Keep working," she says.
"Doors?" I say.
"Doors," she says.
So I do doors with transoms. Doors with security systems. Doors that fold, that retract, that slide. Doors within doors. When I run out I do doors of varying widths. Doors of varying finishes. A stone door. I start to indicate a little bit of entryway but Woo Eubong, leaning over my shoulder says, "No, just the doors."
Glass doors. Stained glass doors. Revolving doors. Doors for openings with arches, with triangles. Doors in doorways with lintels. I rack my brains for variations of doors. I do doors that open up. Doors that swing, slated doors, bamboo doors, half doors. My desk is covered in doors. People passing stop and look, shake their heads. By four-thirty I think I have done every kind of door known to man. But Woo Eubong keeps me making doors until 5:00.
I walk back to my apartment, noticing the doors I pass.
There are a lot that I hadn't thought of. Hell, when I get back to the apartment I find that I hadn't even done my closet door. So that night, I do a few more doors, and when I pull out my schematic of Wuxi Complex, I run through all the doors in the place.
Li Jian-fen was incredible with doors.
I begin to realize the importance of doors. They set the tone for the building, they are the second interaction between building and person, the first being the sight of the building. I think about the black doors of the main entrance to Wuxi Complex. They are opaque, lusterless matte. It is not just the efficiency of energy absorption, it is also the effect they have when one enters. They are like walls, they protect.
China is obsessed with walls. The university is walled, every factory, every school, every office complex or hotel is surrounded by a wall. And so doors are very important because they represent vulnerability but also opportunity, which is a great metaphor for every endeavor.
Excited, the next morning I am ready to tell Woo Eubong all about my understanding of doors. I see why she has had me study doors. But she is planning and I don't get a chance to talk with her. She has a luncheon so I eat lunch with a couple of people in the department and when I get back from lunch there is a message from her in the system.
Do floors.
And so I do floors. And the next day steps (a long, difficult afternoon.) Thursday I do windows, which is a pleasure after steps. And Friday I do lighting. Saturday, usually my half-day, there is a message in the system for me. More lighting. Monday, more lighting. Tuesday, oh bliss, I do sinks.
I learn to dread the afternoons again. There's no more failure, no more 27 second scribbles, but it's so tedious. Still, I find myself looking at lighting, at sinks, at stairs. The Wuxi Complex isn't enough, I use the schematics from the organic architects and observe what they did with doors, with windows, with stairs. I never really thought much about landings or mezzanines. Li Jian-fen used a lot of mezzanine areas at Wuxi complex, but her use of stairs isn't particularly inventive.
Still, by three-thirty, there I sit at my desk, haunted, trying to invent another sink and hoping that Woo Eubong won't come by and see me sitting there not doing anything. She never says anything, but she notices.