Dorm Life

When I first arrived in Shanghai, I was staying in a dorm that was slightly more accomodating than Bobb-McCulloch at Northwestern (notsaying much, I know). My single room on the 13th floor of a student dormitory at East China University of Science & Technology was pretty nice.

Apparently the 13th floor has some bad luck associated with it- that's why the Chinese tend to place the international students there. How welcoming - as if the 50 ft Mao statue at the base of my dorm wasn't enough. Besides the midnight curfew (which I broke 80% ofthe time), the announcements and horrible music that blares through loudspeakers at 9 am, and the occasional strange odor, my room was fantastic. Really. I had my own bathroom, complete with a shower, sink and functional toilet; My twin bed came fitted with sheets and blankets; I even had my own deck where I can see hundreds of apartmentbuildings, an expressway and a giant Ferris wheel.

The strangest part of the campus, though, was the music they played through the loudspeakers. If anyone has ever played Final Fantasy or a Japanese video game from the early 1990's, this is what it sounded like. Not bad, just very strange to hear at odd hours of the day.

Actually the strangest part of the campus might have been the washing machine. It had a simple warning on it: "Do not use the washing machine in the wrong way and save water." Fine enough, I'm all for proper usage of appliances and conservation. The only problem was that the directions for this device were entirely in Chinese. I stared at thething for awhile and then walked away, befuddled.