Isolated

Every night, I go home to a concrete floor in an empty living room with no heat. It has been this way for a little over a month now.

There is a bed and some blankets, but this is still uncomfortable. There is no heat because only one room in the apartment has heat (the room where I paid to have heat installed before I left Nanjing last year). I have returned now. The room with heat belongs to someone else now.

Chinese people do not always use heat. I do not understand this.

Two of the three Winters I have had in Nanjing have been the worst single Nanjing Winter in the last 50 years of history.

I have experienced sleeping with a coat, long sleeve shirt, 3 sweaters, 3 pair of pants, and blankets... but it is still so cold that you shiver uncontrollably. If there is a draft, it can be so cold that you can only sleep for 3 hours in a night.

When you dress this way during the day, your armpits will sweat and you may begin to stink. But the rest of you stays cold. If you go to work and there is no heat at work (very common), then your fingers may hurt.

Sometimes I do not take showers because it is so cold. Sometimes I do not go home. I stay in the office because it is too cold to sleep. At about 3 or 4 AM, I will finally be so tired that I can sleep even if I am cold. This makes me late for work the next day, however.

I tried sleeping in the office. This made someone upset.

Right now, I have clothes on the clothesline that have frozen solid. It is cold.

I have paid money and rented an apartment that will belong to me for six months.
This apartment has heat, but is is empty.

I have had the apartment for a week now, and it will stay empty. I can not live there right now.

I need to move things to the new apartment, but I do not speak Chinese.
At work, I have an assistant. But when I asked for her to help me find an apartment, someone else got upset because they had given the assignment of that to someone else that does not speak my language. The other person was not doing a very good job and we could not talk to each other about getting an apartment.

I would like to have my assistant help me to move things out of the apartment.
I am worried that people will complain or get upset because they do not think she should not do things like that.

I am now looking for a stranger that I can pay money. They will help me to move my things.
I had planned that I would do the move during work time. I thought that others might understand that this is about life. If I do not have a good place to sleep, then how will I work well? I am not so sure that they will understand now.

For the Chinese people. They can go home to warmth, they can sleep comfortably. They do not feel pain because of Winter. I am different. I can not speak Chinese.


This is not the first time that I have had a terrible experience when I tried to get help from a Chinese employer when I needed basic survival things like warmth or shelter.


Anyone that goes to China should make friends quickly, get phone numbers. When work fails, your friends can help you survive and help you take care of your comfort.