Apartment 14F: An Oriental Ghost Story (Uncut)

by Saunders, C. M.

  Apartment 14F:

  An Oriental Ghost Story

  UNCUT

  By C.M Saunders

  © Copyright 2017. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form without explicit written permission of the author.

  Chapter 1

  The fortune teller was renowned throughout Beijing. Not officially, of course. The Chinese government didn't officially endorse any recognized religion, let alone what amounted to nothing more than superstition. History decreed that they had to tolerate Buddhism and a small Muslim population, but despite a growing number of proponents, Christianity was virtually ignored. The Bible had even been banned until relatively recently, the penalty for smuggling copies into the country being death. Any existing copies recovered during the Cultural Revolution were burned by the tyrannical Red Guard in symbolic acts of oppression and conformity. A strike against the west, and a simultaneous show of support for Chairman Mao's 'New China.'

  Of course, the little-known irony of all this is that China is now the biggest manufacturer of Bibles in the world. Just one of the many facts Jerry Strand had accumulated during his three months in the country.

  And it wasn't just organised religion. The Ruling Party really had it in for Falun Gong practitioners, if the reports in the world press were to be believed. False imprisonment, beatings, torture, there were even outlandish rumours that they were being kidnapped and having their organs harvested and sold on the black market.

  Or maybe the rumours weren't so outlandish. That was the thing. In China, you could never be sure. No smoke without fire, as they say.

  And there was more. Largely because of their aversion to anything remotely spiritual or supernatural, the 'G' tried to implement a blanket ban on horror movies and books. This category comprising of anything containing elements that so much as hinted at the existence of some other realm beyond what we call this life, and even extended to Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

  Unofficially, however, fortune telling in its various guises was hugely popular. Especially in the northern provinces, where people had a reputation for being more in tune with their spiritual side than their more pragmatic southern counterparts. This particular fortune teller was so popular (or so 'hot' as the trendy young English-speaking Chinese said) that Jerry had to make an appointment to see her over a week in advance.

  “She don't just tell future, she tell truth. Best in country!” Yin Tao, his teaching assistant and allocated right-hand man told him excitedly in his uniquely Chinglish way. No matter how well Chinese people learned to speak English, because of the fundamental differences between the languages, most of them were prone to making the same basic errors in grammar and pronunciation. That was why to many Chinese, Jerry would always be known as 'Jelly.' Foreign learners can spend a lifetime trying to master the subtleties of the English language. It's no secret that even some native speakers struggle with it.

  Yin Tao could quite possibly be the happiest person Jerry had ever met. He was small and very thin, emancipated even. But a broad, toothy smile was permanently plastered across his impish little face. He'd been hired by the company supplying teachers to educational establishments in the city to not only assist Jerry in the classroom, but in every facet of his new life; from paying his telephone bill and doing his laundry (deciphering those Chinese characters on the washing machine in his apartment was practically impossible) to dealing with his non-English speaking landlord and making appointments with backstreet fortune tellers.

  Jerry was in no doubt that one of the reasons Yin Tao was so helpful was because he wanted to form what the Chinese like to call a 'social relationship' with him. That basically meant that Yin Tao would do whatever Jerry asked of him, on the unspoken understanding that if he should ever ask a favour of his own, Jerry was obliged to help. Since he'd arrived in Beijing, Jerry found an endless stream of students and colleagues wanted to take him out to expensive restaurants. At the time he thought people were just being friendly, blissfully unaware that the majority of them viewed the meal as a kind of investment.

  To outsiders it can appear a superficial, even cynical attitude to personal interaction. But these social relationships, what they call 'guanxi,' are considered vital in China. People spend entire lifetimes building them, and some were nurtured between families for generations. To an extent, the same is true of Westerners. They're just a little more subtle about it. No matter which country you are from or to what culture you belong, everyone realizes that good connections help you get what you want in life.

  Jerry's success in making the appointment with the fortune teller was aided by the fact that he was 'laowai,' a foreigner. Or, to give a more accurate translation, someone who isn't Chinese. He had come to realize that there was a definite 'them against us' attitude prevalent in the Middle Kingdom. Something constantly reinforced by both the communist mentality, and the government-sanctioned media which only ever shows various forms of feelgood propaganda.

  Despite this, or maybe because of this, the majority of Chinese folk are keen to impress foreigners any way they can. It's their perverse way of doing their bit for their country. One way they try to give foreign visitors a good impression of the Motherland is by giving them preferential treatment wherever possible. For their part, their public image is given a considerable boost, the logic being that if a foreigner likes your product or your service, then it must be good. As a result, more trade will follow. To even be seen talking to a foreigner in public provided a considerable amount of social proof. The last time Jerry had gone for a haircut, the barber had actually picked up the chair and placed it in the window so passers-by would be able to see that he was cutting the hair of a foreigner. He was willing to bet that the barber had left his blonde hair on the floor long after Jerry had left. The bottom line was that laowai were good for business.

  Of course, there were some less scrupulous Chinese who were simply keen to extract as much money from perceived 'rich Westerners' as they possibly could. Some shopkeepers operated with two different price scales; one for native Chinese customers, and one for foreigners. Take this fortune teller; a local Chinese person would pay only ten RMB to see her, while Jerry was told that he would have to pay fifty.

  No problem, he thought. If this woman is as good as everyone says she is, it would be money well spent. The Chinese economy was rapidly catching up with western economies, but there was still a marked difference meaning that in spite of the seemingly permanent financial crisis, fifty RMB would still barely buy you a sandwich in London. A visit to a reputable fortune-teller, assuming there was such a thing, would probably cost five or six times that. It would be worth the outlay just to witness the spectacle. Something to add to Jerry's swelling reserves of life experience and another bizarre story for the folk back home. Most of them were still struggling to come to grips with the concept of squatter toilets. As was Jerry.

  It would be such a spectacle because apparently, the fortune teller was completely blind. She'd supposedly been blind since birth, yet her chosen method of divination was palm reading. Jerry wanted to know how the hell she read palms with eyes that didn't work.

  To say he was sceptical would be a huge understatement. But he was also excited. One thing was for sure, China offered no shortage of potentially humorous stories and anecdotes.

  Yin Tao led him through the sprawling maze of single-story courtyard hutongs radiating out from the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Past the old men drinking baijiu and playing mahjong or chess on rickety old wooden tables set down in the narrow cobbled streets, past a small half-naked child unashamedly shitting in the gutter, past the food
stands selling aromatic steamed bread and spiced meat on sticks. The cacophony of sights, sounds and smells was both bewildering and overwhelming. There could be nothing like it anywhere else on earth. This was real China, as far removed from the dazzling array of shiny new buildings that comprised most of central Beijing as it was possible to get, yet still within spitting distance.

  A place where two worlds collided.

  Rising phoenix-like after a chequered and largely chaotic past, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century China stands on the cusp of a wave. In many ways it is a land of confusion, and the paradoxes are striking. High-flying city workers rake in bundles of cash doing business with foreign companies eager to cut themselves a piece of China's booming economical growth and huge untapped markets, while lowly factory workers still toil in sweat shops, working twelve or fourteen hours a day to satisfy the global demand for cheap Chinese goods. Shoes, clothes, toys, electronic gadgets, you name it.

  Have you ever played the 'Made in China' game? No? It's easy. You sit down with a group of friends and examine the tags attached to your clothing and possessions. The first person to find something NOT made in china wins.

  It's more difficult than it sounds.

  The shiny new buildings in China's major cities are designed by world-famous architects commanding astronomical fees, yet fashioned with the blood and sweat of non min gong, poor migrant workers who earn only a few dollars a day but still manage to send half their income home to feed and clothe their families in the provinces.

  Early each morning, almost every street corner in the city is packed with jovial wannabe workers, talking and laughing amongst themselves as they stand shoulder to shoulder and wait in the hope of being picked up by one of the many buses and open-back trucks sent out by building contractors to trawl the streets for cheap labour. The young and strong are taken first, the old and weak are left until last. Sometimes they are lucky and get a day's work here or there. Most of the time they don't.

  The ignorant still think of China as being one of the last remaining communist outposts, but in the modern age the country is communist in name only. In practice, it's the land of free enterprise. Would-be entrepreneurs set up stalls in the streets selling everything you can think of, people turn the front rooms of their humble ground-floor, three-room dwellings into window shops selling cigarettes and bottles of warm mineral water to passers-by. And seers read palms from the comfort of their living rooms whilst paying customers travel from miles around to queue expectantly outside for hours on end.

  When they finally arrived at the address Yin Tao had scribbled on a piece of crumpled paper, Jerry was led directly to the head of the scrummage that passed as a queue, such was his apparent right as laowai. The Chinese don't fully grasp the concept of queuing, and sooner or later most attempts at forming one degenerate into a free-for-all. There were a few displaced groans of disapproval from those behind him, and everyone shuffled a few steps forward to close any remaining gaps. But no one dared speak out to question it. Their attitude was one of grudging acceptance, such is the Chinese way. Most of the older generations, especially those alive during the Great Famine of 1959-61 when upwards of twenty million people died, had witnessed such deplorable hardship that someone cheating a line wasn't going to get a rise out of them.

  As Jerry waited at the door, people stared at him as they passed; either on foot or carefully steering dusty old bicycles that looked forty years old or more. The staring was something he was slowly growing accustomed to.

  At first, he took it personally. He was mildly offended, and somewhat disconcerted by it all. What was wrong with these people, had they not seen someone with pale skin and blond hair before?

  Then one day, it dawned on him. Some of them hadn't. Despite living in one of the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world where more than twelve million people work, eat and sleep, some migrant workers or visitors from smaller towns had never seen a real, honest-to-goodness foreigner before in their lives. They may have seen pictures in glossy magazines, or grainy images on TV screens, but not many had seen one in the flesh. They had lived so long in a country whose borders had been closed to the outside world that they had been literally starved of ethnic diversity.

  Then, of course, there were the Chinese who interacted with foreigners all the time, and hated their guts. The animosity was obvious. They looked at you and wanted you out of their country. Especially if they saw you with a pretty girl. Racism and prejudice was another side-effect of rampant patriotism combined with the huge social experiment that was the one-child policy. This reaction was born of pure, unbridled racism, proving that prejudice based on the colour of someone's skin was still alive and well in the 21st century, and didn't only apply to one ethnic group.

  Jerry liked to amuse himself by trying to read the expressions on the faces of the people who stared at him. Sometimes he saw suspicion, sometimes curiosity, occasionally he saw outright contempt. Mostly however, he saw fear.

  Fear of what? That was the question he asked himself. Fear of the unknown? Fear of change? Fear of the future?

  The ancient Chinese believed that China was the centre of the universe, and most of the avid starers invariably belonged to the older generation, the traditional breed that suffered through not only the Great Famine, but also the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. Those who remembered only too well the bloody reign of Chairman Mao, and the long years of isolation when China shunned the rest of the world and looked inward, effectively segregated and closed to all outside influence whilst millions of her people starved to death in the streets.

  When China emerged from that voluntary exile and took the blinkers from her eyes, she was amazed at how far the rest of the world had progressed in her absence, leaving her behind like a wallflower at a barn dance. Vast strides had been made in almost every sphere of man's existence; science, technology, education, warfare, but China was still shackled by the ties of her past and stuck in a bygone age. The Ruling Party understood that they had to catch up before it was too late, and the first stage of this process was to open up her doors, for better or for worse.

  Consequently, the younger generation seemed altogether more accepting, more Westernized in their attitudes. Most of them studied English at school and idolized Western celebrity culture. They didn't think change was coming, so they weren't afraid of it. They knew the future had already arrived, and it was fast becoming a case of 'change or die'. Most of them, by choice or necessity, were dedicated to adapting, knowing they had to be progressive in order to survive.

  The euphoric sense of optimism sweeping through China's young at the dawn of the new millennium was almost palpable. China was entering into a new Age of Enlightenment and was rapidly evolving on virtually every level and their dated, restrictive education system was destined to become one of the first casualties of change.

  If it wasn't for the younger generation of Chinese all wanting to better themselves by learning the 'international' language of English, and the comfortably well-off parents willing to pay overseas teachers up to ten times the Chinese national average salary to come over and teach them, Jerry wouldn't even be here. He would still be trying to scrape a living under the grey skies of Britain. God bless the British Empire and their resounding success at making vast swathes of the rest of the world play cricket and speak their language.

  It was never his plan to become an English teacher. In fact, he'd never even entertained the thought until he stumbled across an ad on the Internet, quite by chance. But Jerry counted himself very fortunate to get this particular job. The package was by far one of the better ones on offer. A fixed salary that instantly afforded him 'upper middle class' status, plus additional benefits like free health insurance, travel allowance, and generous bonuses. Initial email correspondence revealed that the school had already filled their quota of foreign teachers, but were left in an embarrassing situation when one of the people they hired abruptly did a moonl
ight flit. No explanation, no excuse, nothing. He just up and left.

  To the Chinese, nothing is more important than maintaining face, or 'mianzi.' In other words, avoiding embarrassment, or 'losing face,' as they call it. For that reason, the company was reluctant to tell the schools they outsourced teachers to that they were short-handed, it would be bad for their reputation, so suddenly there was one more vacancy to fill. A vacancy that had to be filled quickly and with the minimum of fuss. Jerry saw the ad whilst browsing online, and hurriedly applied.

  The company arranged everything on his behalf; work permits, visas, insurance, medical examinations, various other paperwork, flights. It didn't even matter that he had no previous teaching experience, such was their desperation. All Jerry had to do was turn up at the airport with a suitcase and get on the plane.

  When he got off again eleven hours later at Beijing International airport, there was a contact waiting for him in the arrivals lounge holding a large cardboard sign with his name written on it. Then he was whisked away in a private car, a silver Mercedes no less. Again with the face thing. His employers even provided a furnished apartment in the heart of the city with all mod-cons and deducted the cost from his ample salary.

  It sounded too good to be true. And it was. Because therein lay the problem. Not the usual kind of problem with a busted air conditioner or a leaking roof. This was one issue no workman in the world would be able to fix.

  His apartment was haunted.

  It sounded so stupid when he said the words, even just in his head. But there could be no other explanation, and Jerry needed answers. That was why it had become so important that he made an appointment with this famous blind fortune-teller.

  “She don't just tell future, she tell truth. Best in country!”