After thinking it over, Xu Huiqing knew the bedroom had to be sorted out first for sleeping. That meant tackling the bed, and getting the bed ready meant the wardrobe, desk, and floor in the room all needed a scrub-down too.
The bed was a standard five-foot double. Old but sturdy, it wasn’t the Simmons mattress style popular in future generations but a solid frame of nailed wooden planks, now covered in a thick layer of dust.
She didn’t have a dust mask, so Xu Huiqing tied her hair up with a newly bought towel, fashioning it into a sort of cap, and wrapped a new scarf around her nose and mouth. She started by sweeping the dust off the wooden bed boards with a broom, then used an old towel she’d brought to wipe down the bed and headboard until they were clean. Next, she laid a bamboo mat over the spotless boards, meticulously wiping it down herself. After checking with her hand to ensure there were no splinters, she picked up Xiaoxi, settled her on the mat, and turned on the electric fan to let her sit in the cool breeze.
It was only then she realized she had no toys. She’d have to buy some for Xiaoxi later, and there wasn’t even any drawing paper or colored pencils. Otherwise, she could have let Xiaoxi amuse herself by drawing.
Left with no choice, she coaxed her daughter, “Be good, Xiaoxi. Sit on the bed and watch Mama clean. You absolutely must not touch the electric fan, understand? It’s very dangerous!”
Xiaoxi was indeed very well-behaved. As long as she was near her mother and could see her, she was content.
Even so, Xu Huiqing couldn’t fully relax her guard. As she wiped down the desk and wardrobe, her gaze flicked back to Xiaoxi constantly, terrified the child’s curiosity might lead her to fiddle with the fan.
In this era, fan blades were made of iron, and the gaps were wide. A child carelessly sticking a finger in could easily lose it.
But with no air conditioner and the stifling heat, going without a fan simply wasn’t an option.
As she worked, a knock on the door interrupted her cleaning. The gas delivery man had arrived.
Opening the door, Xu Huiqing found two people standing there. One was the delivery man, and the other, a young man in his early twenties who’d helped carry the cylinder part of the way, had his hair styled in the ‘Four Heavenly Kings’ look popular at the time. Seeing her open the door, he smiled brightly and explained, “Ran into Master Li downstairs. Said he was delivering gas to Room 701, so I let him into the building.” He jabbed a thumb toward the neighboring apartment, Room 702, and added, “My surname’s Zhou. Zhou Huaijin. I live in 702. If you ever need a hand with anything, just come knock on my door at 702.”
Xu Huiqing recalled the landlady and boss lady mentioning the neighbor was a public security household. She assumed the young man was the police officer’s son, and her smile gained a touch of extra warmth. “Hello, hello! Actually, I really do need a hand with something!” She didn’t stand on ceremony and hurried back inside to grab a pen and paper before coming back to ask Zhou Huaijin, “I want to fix the floor and the kitchen. Do you know any handymen who repair flooring?”
The delivery man had already hoisted the gas cylinder onto his shoulder and gone inside to hook it up. Zhou Huaijin stood in the doorway, taking a look at Room 701’s floors.
He’d been a neighbor of 701’s occupants for many years and knew the apartment’s condition even better than Xu Huiqing did.
He wasn’t sure about the current state of the inner rooms, but as for the living room floor, the main issue was an irregular, oval-shaped patch about the size of an iPad where the surface had worn away, exposing the concrete underneath. There were also a few smaller, egg-sized pits where the flooring had flaked off. Without filling them, they’d be a constant source of dust, demanding constant sweeping.
Seeing there was a small child in the household, he recognized a potential hazard. Those shallow pits might not trouble an adult, but they could trip a toddler easily.
Gesturing toward his own door, he said, “I’ve got some leftover material from when I patched my own floor. If you’re okay with it, I could help you fix this up while I’m at it?”
The job truly wasn’t a big deal, not worth the hassle of hunting down a professional repairman for such a small area.
If the neighbor weren’t a young woman—and a seemingly inexperienced one at that—he’d just give her the materials. After remodeling his own place, he’d gotten quite handy at this stuff and even had the tools ready.
Xu Huiqing truly didn’t know how to do it herself.
And deep down, she was a little reluctant to trouble a neighbor, because while cleaning the rooms earlier, she’d discovered similar damaged flooring there, too, exposing concrete patches. It was especially bad near the bedpost and the wardrobe, where the floor’s veneer had been worn completely away, looking quite ugly.
She gave him a slightly embarrassed smile. “I couldn’t possibly impose. It’s not just the living room floor; the kitchen needs work too. I should probably just hire a repairman…”
The kitchen floor was bare concrete, blackened and visibly damp.
The stove and washbasin inside were all standard but coated in a thick, greasy layer of black grime. Xu Huiqing felt cleaning it herself would be impossible. She’d rather shell out some money to have new tiles laid on the countertop and the walls.
The bathroom, too, was terribly dark. She needed to replace the bulb with a higher wattage. She wondered if hourly housekeepers even existed in this era. If so, she’d hire a move-in deep cleaner to give the whole apartment a proper deep scrub.
And the living room walls—she wished she could repaint the pale green surface entirely in stark white, but that was too massive a project. Besides, freshly painted walls release formaldehyde, making them unfit for immediate habitation.
If the residential compound itself hadn’t looked so pleasant and seemed so safe, an ideal environment for raising a child, she would have really aimed to find a place in better condition.
Ultimately, this apartment was just a temporary stop. Her real plan was to settle in first, then quietly search for her own house. She’d likely move out within a few months.
Knowing the neighbor was with the public security bureau, Xu Huiqing was less guarded around the young man. She carried the new gas stove she’d purchased—still in its box on the table—into the kitchen and had the gas delivery man remove the old, rusted one. It was so caked with thick, blackened grime that its original color was long gone. She had him toss it aside and install the new one.
Inspecting the old stove, the delivery man chided Xu Huiqing, “Buying a new one was a waste! This old stove works perfectly fine. Doesn’t affect performance one bit.”
To prove his point, he gave the knob a sharp turn—pop!—and a flame roared to life.
Xu Huiqing just shook her head. Out! Toss it!
Even as he dismantled the old stove for her, the delivery man tried to dissuade her. “What if the landlady comes after you for compensation when she sees you threw her stuff away?”
Xu Huiqing didn’t bother explaining she planned to leave the brand-new one behind. She simply smiled, said nothing, and insisted he make the swap.
Zhou Huaijin had often visited the neighbor’s apartment to play as a kid and knew 701 as well as his own place. But he was equally familiar with its state of disarray, a place where you hardly knew where to step. He asked Xu Huiqing, “I’ve got a few tiles left on my balcony. Want them? I could bring them over. Instead of tearing everything out and redoing it, just lay the new tiles right on top. As for these walls…” He reached up and, with a few sharp tugs, ripped down the thick layers of newspaper adhered to the wall by black grease. Beneath them, the wall was still pristine and white. “Just paste up a fresh layer of newspaper. If you don’t like that, buy some plastic sheeting to stick on. Easy to replace when it gets dirty!”
As they spoke, the gas delivery man finished hooking everything up.
The gas was twenty-five yuan per cylinder, with a ten-yuan deposit on the gas canister itself. The man gave her a receipt and explained that if she ever moved out and didn’t need the canister anymore, she could bring it back with the receipt to claim her deposit.
Since he had other deliveries to make, the man collected the money and headed downstairs quickly, leaving Xu Huiqing alone with the young fellow.
As he was a neighbor from a public security household, Xu Huiqing had no real wariness of him. Besides, the young man was clearly a warm-hearted person. Seeing the abysmal state of her kitchen, and noting how someone like Xu Huiqing—who seemed rather fastidious, carefully laying old newspaper from the apartment under the new gas stove to keep it off the floor—might feel about it, he simply said: “Hold on!”
He opened his own door and bounded up to his terrace a few steps at a time.
Several square, white ceramic tiles had been sitting on the terrace for a long time, now covered in a layer of dust.
Young and strong, he bent down and hoisted a tile easily, carrying it over. A few trips later, all the idle tiles from his terrace were stacked in Xu Huiqing’s living room.
Since 701 and 702 shared the exact same layout, the leftover tiles from his own renovation fit the kitchen countertop dimensions perfectly, without any need for remeasurement.
When Xu Huiqing moved to help, he refused. Glancing at Xiaoxi, who had toddled out at the commotion, he said, “Keep a hold on your little sister. Don’t let her come over here and get hurt.”
Tall and powerfully built, his arms bulged with muscle as he carried the tiles. He was constantly afraid of missing a small child and tripping over or stepping on her. Him taking a fall was no big deal, but stepping on a child would be a disaster!
Xu Huiqing hurriedly scooped Xiaoxi up. She didn’t dare leave her alone on the bed in the room either, with that electric fan running.
She stood in the living room, watching him haul loads up and down. Beads of sweat traced paths from his forehead down his cheeks. She wanted to offer him a glass of water, but having moved in only half a day ago, she had none. All she could do was stand awkwardly to the side, acting as a one-woman cheering section. “You’ve worked so hard! Thank you so much, Little Comrade Zhou! I don’t know what I’d have done without your help. I’ve got nothing here right now, but I’m taking you out to dinner later to thank you!”
Zhou Huaijin’s original thought was just to give his neighbor the tiles that had been cluttering up his terrace for over half a year, solving her problem and getting rid of his excess building materials in one go. But Xu Huiqing’s profuse thanks right beside him wore him down. After setting the last tile down, he took one look at her—a slip of a girl who clearly couldn’t manhandle eighty-by-eighty-centimeter tiles—and decided to keep going. He tore away the supermarket flyers she’d laid on the countertop and hoisted the tiles onto it one by one, arranging them together. Spotting a hemp rag nearby, he rinsed it under the sink tap, wiped the dust from the tiles, and revealed a beautiful, clean, milky-white glazed surface.
Even without mortar underneath, the substantial weight of the tiles held them firmly on the original countertop. Though there were fine gaps at the seams, they didn’t affect usability in the slightest.
After laying the pieces, Zhou Huaijin surveyed his work with satisfaction and told Xu Huiqing, “When I come back later to fill the floor, I’ll trowel some mortar under these for you. It’ll dry fast in this weather—ready to use in just a couple of days!”
Seeing him drenched in sweat, Xu Huiqing shifted Xiaoxi to one hip while unplugging the table fan from the bedroom with her free hand. She carried it out to the round table in the living room, plugged it back in, and angled it directly toward him.
The round table was filthy, covered in dust, as were the folding chairs tucked beside it, too grimy to sit on.