September 1999

I hadn’t wanted to go on the appointment. I’ve gone along on enough apartment-hunting jaunts to know that when the real estate broker says, “Zhe bu cuo!” (not bad) it usually means little narrow rooms with a fresh coat of paint over old railings and windows that look out on the trash bins.

So this time I insisted, “Tell me more about it.”

“It' s an old Shanghainese Yang Fang, has hard wood floors and a small garden. You can make a nice home out of it.” He said.

Home. That word did it for me. I don’t remember when was the last time I had a home.

“Just a little work and this can be perfect,” he said as he opened the door.

“A little work” evidently meant different things to different people, I thought. I certainly wasn’t willing to spend 20,000 RMB to put in new plumbing. “No, I think I’ll look a little more,” I told him. Back to square one.

Apartment hunting has always made me uncomfortable. More than finding the right location, I always believed how one furnished their home is a reflection of who they are on the inside.

Take my friend Marie, for example. A lover of pets and dogs and most other living things, she could no more walk past a trinket without buying it than she could kick a wounded puppy. And so her apartment looked more like a memorabilia shop than a living space. Visiting her always made me hyperventilate. I, who preferred stark spaciousness, felt claustrophobic in places surrounded by personal touches.

So each move came with its moment of truth – and its inevitable housecleaning. “But this sombrero was given to me that summer I went to Mexico!” is not reason enough to lug around the extra-wide brimmed hat that can’t be put into any drawer, I told myself. And so those things that were so important only a few short years ago suddenly seemed old and dusty. Perhaps the person I was then was no longer the inhabitant of the home I had now?

It doesn’t help that since leaving New York seven years ago, I haven’t had a home to speak of. When I put my stuff in storage back in 1993, there was already some premonition that I wouldn’t be back for a while. I gave away my CD and VHS player, my microwave, TV and even the Fuji 12-speed bike. I must have known even then that by the time I unlock the storage room door again, all these electronics would be dinosaurs.

What I didn’t know was that I would be living out of my suitcases, literally. Or that I would be sleeping in more living rooms than I care to remember. For one 8-month stint in Paris – okay so I was staying rent-free – I reassembled the pull-out sofa bed by 7 a.m. every morning so that my host could watch the morning news. Even when I was a bona-fide paying roommate, I always seemed to get the futon in the corner.

Finally, when I rented a place of my own here, I thought this was my chance to create my own space. But some unknown lethargy made me turn it into more of a dorm-room than a home. Mattress on the floor, cloths stuffed inside metal crates, what was it that made me avoid creating a home?

Commitment. For years I had the idea that I wouldn’t be in any one place too long. There seemed no need to, well, stay put in one place, a city or even a country for that matter.

Then there was the pressure of what I would put inside this place. The last time I had a real apartment, I was in my steel and glass period. No wood allowed. Anything displayed had to be bigger than a breadbox. So my fore-mentioned good friend Marie, queen of the small finds, would casually slip small candles around the house whenever she visited. “You need some atmosphere,” she would sigh looking around. I would graciously thank her and put all the candles away in a drawer after she left. My apartment was pretty, but it lacked warmth.

I would like to think that my home furnishing tastes have come a long way since then. I noticed that when I flipped through the décor magazines, the sleek chrome chairs no longer appeal to me. Instead it is the pictures with worn wooden doorframes, the stuffed oversized chairs with a throw draped over the arm that makes me want to redecorate. With the right home, perhaps I will stay.

And so I call the broker to see the next find. “Better than the last one.” He promises. He was right. It was roomy with lots of light. A large kitchen, air con in every room and a nice view of the city. But a 7-flight walk-up was not what I had in mind. Oh well, all is not lost. Such apartments do exist.

Now I just have to decide what I want to put in it.