Little Sister Xie Rui

This post was written when I was still living in Old Nanjing and I’m going to keep it written that way. In fact, I have a couple other posts on backlog that I will publish later in their original form. 

Little Sister Xie Rui* is my 18-year old roommate. I met her one afternoon in October. I was at Big Brother Guo’s house eating lunch on a Saturday and she was there being adorable. She didn’t say anything except that she was in her first year of veterinary school.

Xie Rui and I in our living room

Xie Rui is the type of girl who is so shy and quiet, she almost seems rude at the first impression. She’s too cool for school, but once you get below the surface, you find out that she’s just like every other shy, self-conscious 18-year old trying to make their way through the first year of college. 

In December, Big Brother Guo suggested that I move in to the house next door and be Xie Rui’s roommate. He called her Mom, and we all got together one night to talk everything out. The house belonged to Xie Rui’s now-deceased maternal grandparents. I moved in a couple weeks later and the rest is history.

The happiest memories I shared with her happened during her 5-week winter vacation over the Chinese New Year from January through February. We bonded over the freezing cold, love for The Big Bang Theory, boy gossip, and the fact that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in our house broke at least once (including blowing the electric fuse three times). If we weren’t eating with Big Brother Guo and his family, I’d make dinner (usually a meatball stew) and we’d eat it standing up because we only had one chair in the kitchen. I think I’ll make a good mother someday because there was some weird maternal instinct that gave me great pleasure in making dinner, feeding her, and cleaning up afterward. 

Sometimes we’d make midnight runs to the street vendors catering to the drunks, and we’d buy barbecued squid and fried rice to bring back and eat while we watched TV. One late night in January, I was sitting at the kitchen table emailing back and forth with the editors at The Tribune-Review (it was day time for them, and we were discussing edits and photos for my article), and she came downstairs to go out to the bathroom. She’d asked if I’d eaten and I said no. She came back with dinner for me.

Living with her is great. She is hilarious. She spends most of her time watching American TV shows while simultaneously Instant Messaging her friends. She will break out into fits of laughter every few minutes or so in response to one of both of these entertainments. One of the best things about it is that, at least towards me, she doesn’t use any of the normal Chinese habits, formalities, and niceties that sometimes drive me crazy. AKA: she gives me my space, doesn’t tell me what to do/how to feel/what to eat/when to eat/what to wear. She does what she wants and makes it clear that I can do what I want. In the process, some normal courtesies are overlooked, but that also means I have the freedom to do what I want. Since she is used to having 9 other roommates at school, she made it clear I could eat/do/read/play/listen/watch whatever I wanted whenever I wanted as long as she could do the same. The only rule: No boys allowed. It is a very relaxed and casual atmosphere. We share a bed. This shocks some people. It feels normal to me. Anyway, you do kind of bond with someone in a certain way when you sleep next to him or her every night. You don’t really need too many formalities after that. 

My favorite times above all, are the days when we go over to Big Brother Guo’s house together. Big Brother Guo makes us laugh through dinner, then retires to the bedroom to watch TV while Big Sister Chongyang, Xie Rui, and I read the newspaper and just have some female bonding time. There’s really no other way to describe it, except that we just chat about everything and anything, while Xie Rui and I look up to Big Sister Chongyang as the older, mature female role model every woman needs.

Xie Rui lives in the dorms at school and comes home just about every weekend. I got lonely when she didn’t come home for a couple weeks once—she had a test on Saturday morning and couldn’t come back. She is a good friend and I’ll miss her. 

Map of our second floor

Map of our first floor

Our bed. :-)

Home sweet home

Xie Rui with her glasses- at her desk on QQ and watching soap operas, her favorite activities. 

This is her story, told in her own words.

I didn’t grow up in Old Nanjing. I grew up in a different neighborhood, about a 15-minute walk from here. My paternal grandparents still live in that neighborhood. It hasn’t been demolished yet, but it probably will be soon.

While I was growing up, we lived in a small, two-story house. It wasn’t an apartment building, it was a house, but not like the style of the old house we live in now. It was just a regular, small, two-story house. I guess now it would be considered an old house, but when I was growing up it was normal. My family only lived on the first floor and we rented out the second floor to another family. We had a kitchen, a toilet, and a bedroom. I slept in the same bedroom with my parents. 

My favorite neighbor when I was growing up was a girl who lived next-door. She was one year older than me. Whenever we had time, we would go over to each other’s houses to play or watch TV. We’d eat dinner together all the time. She’d eat at my house, or if my family wasn’t cooking that night, I’d eat at her house. It was really fun. We were really, really close friends. I’m not in contact with her anymore since she enlisted in the army.

My favorite memory from growing up is celebrating the Chinese New Year. It was really awesome; everything is so lively (renao 热闹)! You get new clothes, and candy, and red envelopes full of money! The adults take you out to play and eat delicious food. And then at night everyone, all the relatives you haven’t seen in awhile, sit around a table stacked high with plates of delicious food. I really like getting to see all my relatives again. After dinner, you set off firecrackers in the street. It’s so renao 热闹! I still really like the Chinese New Year, getting together with friends, relatives, and classmates, going shopping, and playing cards.

I moved into our current house in Old Nanjing during my last year of junior high, during chusan 初三, about three years ago. [Note: She was fourteen at the time. This would be the equivalent of 9th grade in the US. In China only 10th, 11th and 12th grades are considered “high school”]. My parents were getting a divorce, but they still lived together. My grandma died, so they decided to move in to this house, where she lived, in Old Nanjing. My Dad moved out and later, my Mom moved out too. Regardless, it doesn’t matter because my Mom works all the time anyway, it was as though I had been living on my own all along.

As for my life right now, I like to do all kinds of things, except for sports. I like to do more calm and motionless things. For example, surfing the web, reading books, playing cards, and hanging out with friends. Sometimes I also like to go shopping and go out with friends.

I decided to become a vet because my college entrance exam scores weren’t that great, so not only did I not get into university, but I only had a select list of majors I could choose from. So when I was deciding on which major to choose, I went over to my older female cousin’s house. She already had experience with this, so she had some advice. We were talking and she said, “How about becoming a vet? You could make money with that.” And I said to myself, “Well, I don’t really hate animals that much, actually I really like animals!” People make fun of me a lot for choosing this major, especially because they think that girls shouldn’t be vets. But I think it’s really interesting. You can take care of dogs, and cats, and pigs. It’s really not so bad hanging out with animals all day. I think your life and your mood can be spent more relaxed this way.

My degree right now is a 2-year associate’s degree, but I do have the option of continuing on for two more years and get my bachelor’s so I might do that. My ultimate goal, my dream, is to open my own pet shop. I’d also like to do some traveling within China someday. I’d like to visit the beach someday.

About Old Nanjing? I’ve only lived here for three years, so I’m not an expert, but I’ll tell you what I think. My favorite neighbor is Big Brother Guo. His family is so hospitable, they have such good hearts. No matter what bad things happen, we can always call him to come fix it. We have that type of relationship that you see often in Old Nanjing- the kind where you can walk in the door without knocking.

If I had the choice to live in Old Nanjing or live in a high-rise apartment, I think living in Old Nanjing would be more fun and more interesting. If you live in a high-rise, you can’t have such good neighbors. No one really knows each other, and everyone keeps their door shut. In Old Nanjing, everyone is willing to help everyone else out. You can go in other people’s houses without knocking, sit down and have a chat. In a high-rise, it’s a real cold feeling among the neighbors.

Old Nanjing is significant because life here is a type of culture, a culture from the past that’s been preserved and passed down through the generations. It represents at least a part of Chinese culture with really important significance. I’ve lived here for three years and I’ve met so many good neighbors, everyone is so good to me. Oh, it’s hard to describe. Everyone just really likes everyone else. It’s a warm feeling.

Old Nanjing is special because it’s a type of place that’s been preserved, has been passed down, and should be passed down to future offspring. It’s hard to describe. I don’t want to use the word “old,” because that has a bad implication, but I’m just saying this place has been around for a long time. It has an ancient taste to it. It’s completely different from all the high-rise apartment buildings!

I really care about this neighborhood, what happens in it and what happens to the people in it. This neighborhood will always remain in my heart and I’ll always want to come back and see it after I move away. This area is very quiet, some would even say dull and ordinary, but I think it’s great.

It would be so hard to part (shebude 舍不得) with this house and this neighborhood if it gets demolished! After all, we’re all neighbors here, everyone else has been neighbors for several years, there’s no way I’ll be able to find such good neighbors anywhere else. 

I really hope this neighborhood doesn’t get demolished. I think we should conserve it. It is, after all, a part of history, a part of our civilization. This place should be preserved, not demolished. China is full of high-rise apartment buildings now, people have no way of really feeling the culture and the history that our ancestors have passed down to us. I think it’s better to preserve these kinds aspects of China.

*I don't actually call her Little Sister. I just call her Xie Rui (a pseudonym by the way). I'm not sure why, but you usually don't call people little sister and little brother... those are the only family addresses that are not used when talking to people.