Time: 11:00 AM February 2nd, 2012
Place: Garden Hutong
Character: Uncle Zhu, underserved

At the point where Garden Hutong and East Garden Alley meet is where Uncle Zhu’s sofa is. From afar, the sofa looks old and worn. The legs are askew, the upholstery below the cushions has torn, and the whole sofa is propped by a stack of gray bricks. On top of the seat are a yellow foam cushion and a pile of rags. Both arms of the sofa’s fabric have been darkly soiled.

A wooden cabinet has been placed next to the sofa. On top of it sits a green container with pairs of chopsticks sticking out, a few plastic bags of rice porridge, and a bowl. Peeking through the cabinet’s slightly ajar door is a pile of bowls collecting dust. On the other side of the cabinet is a chair whose wood has begun to rot.

Near the seat is another sofa covered in a pile of junk: a black trash bag, a folded H&M shopping bag, and thrown out shirt. Bits of clothing hang from a laundry line connecting the sofa to the adjacent tree and two laundry racks, one pink and one with wooden siding. At the foot of the sofa is a pile of 7 or 8 green Red Star liquor bottles alongside a lone 2-liter plastic bottle of Ranch Mountain liquor.

Uncle Zhu sits on the sofa, propped up by the grey brick drinking. On this December 2nd it’s 28 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Uncle Zhu is wearing a pair of black trousers, a thin black windbreaker from which his emaciated neck protrudes. His short-cropped hear sticks up stubbornly. His face is lined with deep wrinkles, his whiskers are littered with crumbs, and his face is a bright red. “I’m not cold,” Uncle Zhu bringing a glass of white liquor to his lips. His ungloved hands are exposed to the frigid winter air. His nails are long and dirty.

Most of the time, Uncle Zhu sits on this armchair. His buddy helped him move it there this past April or May. “It hasn’t been here long. Been here since the summer.” Uncle Zhu has been sitting on it since. This summer, the armchair became his home. He sits on it during the day, sleeps on the adjacent sofa in the afternoons, and “goes to another place to pass the night.” By “another place” he means his friend’s, Baomin’s, house. Uncle Zhu loves to drink, “One day without a drink is no good.” Baomin also drinks, “He drinks a bottle a day.” The pile of green bottles of Red Star Liquor lying at the foot of the sofa are the fruits of one week of their drinking.

We got to know Uncle Zhu very slowly. We moved into Garden Hutong in May and saw him drinking each day on our way to work. By July we asked him his name and started to greet him, “Morning Uncle Zhu!” “Have you eaten?”, “See you later Uncle Zhu.” Each day he would respond to these three greetings, “Morning.” “Yep.”, and “Take it easy.” With his friends Baomin and Grandfather Li, Uncle Zhu’s voice was thick and hoarse. When he called out to us, his voice was much gentler. On December 2nd, we sat down with him to chat.

“Since my son passed, I’ve been here,” Uncle Zhu says in a local Beijing accent that also carries notes of inebriation. “He died last April. Drunk driving. He died on April 10th. Then I came here.” He continues, “They suddenly called and told me to come to the hospital”… “said someone had been hit and they needed a several thousand bucks” … “I’m divorced and been divorced for a long time” … “But I had to find her to take care of the documents.” Uncle Zhu does not look at us; he looks ahead and through us. His words are like the opening of a SHUILONGTOU. We don’t ask questions and we don’t interrupt. From these drops of water, we return to his past.

“Watch out, Xiaohei!” Uncle Zhu suddenly calls out between a drink pulling us from his life story back to the reality of the hutong. Cars drive back and forth in the hutong, and Xiaohei scampers around unawares. Uncle Zhu calls out as she steps in front of a moving car. Before Uncle Zhu would call her “Little Thing” but after we began to know him our little dog started to have a name. Uncle Zhu’s sofa would have all kinds of bones beneath it for Xiaohei to dig up, but she usually was too scared to go over. The first time they came in contact was when Uncle Zhu picked up a bone to give to Xiaohei. From that day forth whenever Xiaohei would pass Uncle Zhu’s sofa, he would warmly call out “Xiaohei! Come!” Xiaohei would wave her tail and run over to grab the bone.

Afterwards, we noticed Uncle Zhu began to take care of another dog, “Yellow Fur”. “I picked her up by the second ring.” Yellow Fur looks very small. Uncle Zhu would often pick him up and put him on the table, lean close to him, or hug him. He started to walk dogs each day. He’d walk Yellow Fur as well as help the neighbors walk their dogs. He’d walk three in one go. Uncle Zhu was familiar with the neighbors. For a time, we would see him riding a pedicab to “help the neighbors pick up groceries.” “I used to have a house in this hutong,” he tells us, “then it was demolished and they gave me a house in Shunyi. I rent it out now.” This is why Uncle Zhu spends each day on the sofa, as he puts it, “It’s the government’s subsidy.” The black cloth shoes on his feet have been exchanged for a pair of new grey sneakers that “the neighborhood committee gave out.”

“One year I repaired that house over there,” Uncle Zhu says pointing to an old-looking building across the way. His usually lazy voice gains some energy.

Unlike other sofa sitters, we do not take Uncle Zhu’s photo. He says he doesn’t like being photographed. We think to ourselves that he’s always here and another day he might agree to a photo, so we don’t press the issue.

On December 12th it begins to snow. Uncle Zhu continues to sit on his sofa a usual. When we pass him, we greet him and see snowflakes floating down on his hair and soon his whole head is white. Uncle Zhu sits there peacefully unaware of the snow collecting on his thin windbreaker. It’s impossible not to help him brush the snow from his head and ask if he’s cold. He shakes his head, “No.” He grasps a glass of white liquor in one hand. After two days, the light snow has become a blizzard. Uncle Zhu’s sofa and his other things are covered. He comes less and less often.

By January, we are not around much with vacation and business trips. When we get back to Garden Hutong, Uncle Zhu’s space has been cleaned and emptied. We ask the small restaurant next door what they know. They tell us that Uncle Zhu “has left.” “Where has he gone?” “He’s gone to heaven,” the worker says with a laugh, “Heaven. You understand?”

We hear that Uncle Zhu passed away at Baomin’s house, but do not know the cause of death. Everyone guesses that he probably drank too much. We speechlessly look at his “home” which is now just an empty space of concrete bereft of sofa, wooden cabinet, clothes rack, Yellow Fur, and Uncle Zhu who will no longer appear.

We decide to build another sofa in the place where Uncle Zhu left.