A Chinese Apartment Experience

A rare and precious opportunity tonight; an invitation to a meal with Joe and his family in their 20th floor governmnt-owned apartment.

Joe is 9 and quite an English student. His family chose to invite 1/2 of the team for an evening meal in their humble home.  Miss Wong (Celeste) accompanied us as translator.  Michael, Joe's father, works as a McDonald's driver; his mother works at the border crossing between Macau and Hong Kong as a health representative; his 18 year old sister, Yoyo, works as a cleric in a financial institution.

To say the least, their home is tiny: it enters into an small entryway - Yoyo's bed is the top bunk in this entryway.  The next space (there really is no room) is the eating area, TV space, family room (no more than 10X20 - Joe's bed is in this area - folds up into a sofa.  The parent's bed is sandwiched between two walls (no door) off of this room (storage underneath covered by a wooden 4/8 piece of plywood.  The tiny 5X5 kitchen is a room by itself (although I don't think it had a door on it).  At the far end of the room was the entry to the open porch - a 6X4 bath room to the right of this area.

To be honest, it is hard for me to believe that four people live in this apartment.  There is NO privacy - for daughter or for the couple. If you move around, you have to be running into one another.  There were only two slight folding chairs and three metal stools.  Abby and Emily sat on the edge of Joe's bed.  Our dining table was a simple wooden table covered by a clear piece of plastic to give cleanliness to the eating area.

One table for the TV and computer and a large hand built hutch for clothes, etc. were the only other furniture in the room.

BUT, other than the family feeling uncomfortable about our visit in their small apartment, we had a great time.  Shoes off when we entered (we slipped on plastic slippers that we took out of the store plastic bags.

The girls, Joe and Celeste made Chinese dumplings while I visited with Michael.  For the meal itself, we had dumplings, a cold barbeque beef, cold fried pork to be dipped in mustard sauce, bok choy, a whole fish, rice, and the treat was probably the clams (called elephant clams because they have a trunk like protrudence).  Coke was served with the meal.  And slices of melons served as dessert.

How definitely generous of Joe's family to have us over for the meal.  How blessed we are with living space in warm homes (there is NO heat in the apartment - recently when it was 38 degrees outside, it was 38 degrees inside).