Buying A House in Beijing

Qin Guan went out of his dorm. He was planning on buying an EasyOwn phone number at the convenience store downstairs. Only when he got to the store did he realize what year it was. At that date in time, phone numbers were sold on consignment, not at such small stores.

To buy a phone number, he had to register at a China Mobile business hall. Qin Guan let out a sigh.

Having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Liu Xiaoyang felt frustrated. How could he forget to buy a cellphone? It would make his life much more convenient.

Qin Guan called his parents from a public telephone and told them that everything was settled and there was nothing to worry about. He said he would sleep in his dorm that night and visit the hotel the next morning.

Qin Guan’s roommates had already decided where to have dinner before Qin Guan had finished his call. Diagonally across their university, there was a street where many roadside snack booths were located. It was a good place to have barbecue. They went to the street and found that the booths had just been set up. There were various kinds of food, including kebab, cold noodles, boiled pork giblets with baked wheaten paste, and beef noodles. The boys went up to a kebab booth and ordered 100 kebabs and five draft beers. Liu Xiaoyang was not allowed to have draft beer because he was still underage, so he did not have to bring his ID card.

Liu Xiaoyang wanted to have some beer, but his protests were suppressed by his roommates. While they were waiting for their kebabs to be served, Ye Dong and Mu Lejiang took out two packs of cigars from their pockets and passed them to their other three roommates, ignoring Liu Xiaoyang. Feeling left out again, Liu Xiaoyang started to get pissed off. He yelled, “What about me? Why can’t I have one?” Ye Dong glanced at him scornfully and said, “Grow some pubes first.”

Qin Guan spat out his beer with a puff. “This one’s certainly got a personality! I like that!” Qin Guan and Wang Lei declined the cigars, but Li Jie took one.

Ye Dong took a deep drag on his cigar. He was suddenly touched out of nowhere and said, “You won’t believe it, but I was actually a poor student. I was very naughty in junior high school. I never studied hard and I was always getting into fights with others. All bad boys would smoke at the time. Later on, I was disqualified from high school. My dad took two bottles of wine to beg the help of one of his primary school classmates, who happened to be my high school principal. He hoped that I would get to go to high school, even if we had to pay extra money. When he got back home, I cried. F*ck! He had never begged anyone for help before, but he’d done that for me. At the time, I was thinking that I had to make something out of my life so my dad would never have to beg anyone’s help again.” Ye Dong took another drag and puffed out a smoking ring.

“When I was admitted into this university, my dad had tears in his eyes. Seeing him so happy, I felt that all my hard work in high school had finally paid off.”

The boys did not speak. Their hearts felt heavy. The owner served them their kebabs. Ye Dong pounded his hand on the table and said, “Let’s drop it and have dinner.”

Leaving courtesy aside, each of the boys grabbed a handful of kebabs.

Qin Guan had a bite and found that they were truly yummy. Kebabs and roasted lamb’s kidneys were one of Beijing’s local specialties.

A whole lamb’s kidney was cross cut down the middle and both sides were roasted till they turned brown. Wrapped in thick mutton fat, the kidneys tasted delicious.

The boys were too busy eating to talk. More than 100 kebabs were eaten in a flash.

Qin Guan wondered why Li Jie, a thin little boy from South China, was such a heavy smoker. He asked Li Jie about it.

Li Jie did not mind his asking and he replied, “My family runs a small store and I used to be the keeper. Smoking is a must in business, you know.”

Li Jie’s Mandarin was a big headache for all his roommates. They knew that southerners were bad at learning languages though, so they tried their best to understand his Cantonese Mandarin.

It finally hit Qin Guan that he was actually the most mysterious of his roommates. He was being too deceptive. He just sat down and kept silent, looking like the son of an aristocratic family. His silliness would no longer remain a secret if he behaved or talked normally. It would make for a very funny contrast.

This was the third time Qin Guan had to explain to his roommates that he was really the biological son of his parents, and that there was no chance that he had been abandoned at birth by an aristocratic family. He was at a loss because of his roommates’ imagination.

Bonding over food was the best way to build a friendship. After the meal, they began to pal around with each other. In order to get to know each other easier, they lined up by age.

The oldest one was Ye Dong, the wild boy from Northeast China, who was very much like a bandit leader.

The second oldest turned out to be Qin Guan. Although he did not like being the second oldest boy in his dorm, he could do nothing about it. He could not change his age.

The third oldest was Mu Lejiang, a rough boy from Northwest China. He had denied the rumor that kids went to school by camel in his hometown the moment he had met his roommates.

The fourth oldest was Wang Lei, a man of letters from the South of the Yangtze River. Qin Guan found that Wang Lei talked the least, but he looked very smart. Devious was the best word to describe him.

The fifth oldest was Li Jie, a small shrewd businessman from Guangdong Province, whose ultimate goal was to achieve academic excellence and turn his family-run store into a listed company.

The youngest one was Liu Xiaoyang, a rich tsundere local who was difficult to deal with, indicating that his status in the dorm would be as low as his age rank among his roommates.

After wining and dining, the boys returned to their dorm. They took a quick shower, turned off the lights and went to bed.

Qin Guan lay in his bed in the dark. His thoughts drifted to his past life. By this time, he had been admitted to a technical college. His rough looks had made people think he had retaken his courses many times. Usually, most of the students in a technical college were taciturn boys who were immersed in their own world. Qin Guan had lived in the same dorm for four years, but he had talked very little with his roommates.

Now, he’d been admitted to one of the best universities of finance and economics. Students majoring in finance eventually became articulate, whether they had that inclination or acquired the ability by hard work. Qin Guan had a lot to talk about with his roommates and he believed that was a good start.

The next morning, he got up early according to his timetable. He picked up a towel and went to the washroom.

Yes, it was a washroom. At the time, dorms were not equipped with a private bathroom, so there was a public washroom on every floor.

The row of taps above the long washing sink looked quite spectacular.

Facing the sink, Qin Guan squeezed some toothpaste out and started brushing his teeth. While he brushed, he thought about his plan for the day. His courses would officially begin tomorrow. His parents were staying in Beijing for a very short period of time and would go back home that night.

Qin Guan’s plan was quite tight. Thinking of this, he spat the foam out of his mouth. He had to be quick and go meet his parents early.

Qin Guan walked out of the washroom and went back to his dorm. It was quiet there as all his roommates were still asleep. He walked on tiptoe and put away his toiletries. Then he closed the door carefully, went downstairs and headed for the canteen.

Inexpensiveness was the best characteristic of university canteens in 1998. Qin Guan arrived there very early. The senior cooks had hardly opened the sales window when Qin Guan passed his meal ticket to them.

The second canteen was very big. There were two metal buckets in the hall. The workers opened the lid and a blast of hot air floated up. This was the free soup served by the canteen. When finishing the meal, students could take the ladle and scoop some up for themselves. Qin Guan bought three standard breakfasts: soya-bean milk, deep fried dough sticks and tea-boiled eggs. It only cost him 3.6 yuan in total with a free takeout plastic bag. Qin Guan put his breakfast into the bag and strolled toward the hotel where his parents were staying.

No four-star hotel had yet been built near the Capital University of Finance and Economics. There were only some small bungalows in the area and the hotel where Qin Guan’s parents were staying, which was the nearest one to the University. It was humble, but clean enough.

After breakfast, Qin Guan took his parents to Xizhimen, just like they had planned earlier. Seated at the second ring of Beijing, it was only three kilometers away from his University and the first stop of the day.

There were not many cars on the street. Yellow minibuses came and went. You always needed to pay the driver 10 yuan, regardless of the mileage.

They saw no high-rises on both sides of the street. Residential quarters here were all six-storey high. Qin Guan knew his way around well and led his parents to the sales office.

At the time, Beijing was going through an era of a large-scale development. The city’s population was not soaring and migrant workers had not swarmed in yet.

People could be allocated a house by their employers and commodity houses were still an unfamiliar concept for them. Beijingers did not want to buy more houses because they already had a free house to live in.

Qin Guan’s parents though did not hesitate in buying one. Perhaps it was because they were not locals and owned no house there, but they did not reject Qin Guan’s proposal to buy a house near his University.

They took a look at all the houses for sale and excluded high-end flats and prism high-rise buildings out of their purchase plan.