{"id":37544,"date":"2013-12-06T19:18:09","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T11:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/?p=37544"},"modified":"2013-12-06T19:53:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T11:53:29","slug":"chengdu-compound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/chengdu-compound\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Built My Chengdu Compound"},"content":{"rendered":"
He appeared in a flash of blue smoke while I was on my hands and knees cleaning red paint off of a pair of paint rollers, pink streams running across the concrete floor of my outside patio and into the drain. I looked up and he looked down. He had cop sunglasses on and a blue suit with a white shirt underneath, unbuttoned at the top. He took a long drag off of his smoke and his too long throat convulsed around a too sharp Adam’s apple. I heard the crackle and hiss of the cherry and I thought to myself, Did I inhale too many paint fumes today? Is this an acid flashback?<\/p>\n
But then the apparition spoke.<\/p>\n
“You the laowai looking for some cement?”<\/p>\n
I nodded. He nodded.<\/p>\n
Then he motioned to my front door, which I had closed and locked because I was tired of the two old people next door walking in and out of my house asking me when my house was going to be done, what color I was painting this and that, what I paid for those over there, and so on.<\/p>\n
I heard this grunting and crunching and gibbering through the door, and then it burst open and a troop of four foot tall Chinese workers came heigh-ho-ing across my patio with 50kg bags of concrete on their backs. Eyes pointing every whichaway. Teeth coming out of their lips like the orcs who took Osgiliath<\/a>, like those teeth were still growing. Some were smiling and some looked like they had just been dug up out of an abandoned work site. They dropped bags into my hallway with a thud and a puff, then trooped back out for more.<\/p>\n They did that a few more times while I stood there and let the paint drip onto my shoes. I looked over at the blue-suited overseer, overseeing it all with a sick smile on his face, puffing on a cigarette, and I said to myself,<\/p>\n This man is a Troll, and those are his Goblins.<\/p>\n They’re building my compound.<\/p>\n I’ve been dreaming of a compound for as long as I can remember. I suppose I could trace it back to the scars of growing up an Army Brat, where everywhere is home but no place is Home, but I actually enjoyed re-inventing myself every so often. Problem was I always ended up being Me, still dreaming of a compound.<\/p>\n My first attempts here in China, real attempts, started back in 2007 in Flower Town<\/a>. I named my first place a compound, but it was just a squat on the edge of a doomed village. At least it survived the Wenchuan Earthquake<\/a> in 2008.<\/p>\n My second attempt was also in Flower Town, this time on the other side, in the Hong Sha Cun district. You may have wandered past that compound during a break from the DOJO<\/a>\u00a0festivities. That place was nice, but living in Flower Town is not the same as tripping off fungus in Flower Town. Ok that’s not the best analogy because some fungal journeys may resemble your average day in Flower Town. But anyway \u2026 that place fell apart too, sometime in 2011 as I recall.<\/p>\n For the last two years I’ve been running around in circles (biding my time), waiting for opportunity to strike. It struck in April of this year, but even then I found myself in limbo, with a vast glittering carpet of choice-threads in front of me and no one glittering any more or less than the other.<\/p>\n “Remember Remember,”<\/em> whispered the Homeless Man that sleeps in the Bushes in my Mind. “Seek thee out The Compound \u2026 The Compound \u2026 Remember \u2026 !”<\/em><\/p>\n So I tossed aside ideas of moving to Thailand, trimming weed in California, or busking in Berlin, and drifted off south to Huayang to find an empty shell that I could rent and renovate into my compound. The idea for this had been brewing for a while, but after visiting Will Kerr’s<\/a> artist loft in Music Garden, just inside Huayang, the brew became a drinkable Quest.<\/p>\n My thought process at the time was this: get a long term (2-5 year) contract on a shell for a low rent, and then renovate for 50-70,000 RMB, in order to achieve an amortized rent of around 2,500 RMB per month for a location that a) I renovated and decorated c) was worth at least double that on the market d) could provide me with enough space for my two children e) had enough space for my work studio f) had quiet, clean, beautiful, and safe surroundings.<\/p>\n It took about a month of searching and haggling, but I eventually found what I was looking for.<\/p>\nDreams of a Red Compound<\/h2>\n
The Origins of My Plan<\/h2>\n