Enchanting Angels and the Smell of Bees Wax

Moving to a new country means different things for different people. For some it means an opportunity to learn a language, to be immersed in a new culture and to sample the delicacies of an ancient and delicious cuisine. For me it has always been about work, but for others, like my wife, it is well…quite simply…to shop. But then, I suppose, my wife Rosie is a little unorthodox.

When we arrived in Beijing four years ago we had the prospect of an unfurnished apartment to look forward to. Rosie is an accomplished and energetic shopper and considered the task of filling the apartment exciting. I think she would now say she was not disappointed. Rosie is the kind of person who needs to be undeniably house-proud. And she generally gets what she sets her mind to wanting.

It seems to me, she likes nothing more than to throw a soft mat down on a hardwood, polished floor and spend two hours on her knees scrubbing, waxing and buffing glorious old pieces of furniture. It's never been my thing, but then these days I have trouble getting down on my knees. Rosie says it keeps her mind on an even keel and I take her word for it.

Over the course of 15 years of marriage, I have come round to her way of thinking about many things that ended up making our life together a great deal happier. Initially, we differed on some things, but for the sake of equanimity compromised. With things of mine, she normally let me have my way. About things of hers I usually held no opinion, but sometimes would find myself drawn, if a little reluctantly, as controversy usually followed. This is a good example.

My wife has a theory. You are out idly shopping, perhaps on the hunt for something for the house, like a piece of furniture or a picture for one of the bedrooms, and you find something you like and choose to buy it. Somehow, her theory goes, divine inspiration will have helped you. Yes? Well… apparently.

Rosie will maintain, as do a host of her woman friends, that some things just have a habit of finding you. She believes that if you then buy things when they find you, you do not need to wait until you need them. Yes? mmm…apparently. She never elaborates. Very queer thinking I have told her on more than one occasion.

But recently, muttering to herself in the kitchen, observing at arms length a small gilded wooden box in which she had decided to put Earl Grey Tea and had just purchased that afternoon, Rosie prompted a memory.

It was Cambridge in the 1970s and I was sitting in a first-year undergraduate English lecture at the beginning of term. The lecturer had been pontificating about something, but nobody seemed to be paying attention, until, after a time, he said something that did get our attention.

An enthusiast of Zen and Eastern philosophy, he wanted to give us some advice. If we were predisposed to believe it, when we were in the library late at night, or less likely, early in the morning, struggling with decisions about books and which to choose, as all undergraduates seem likely do, it was worth remembering that we were not alone when we were making a decision. Everybody laughed.

"Library angels," he said, "will help you," and again, everybody laughed.

He became even more passionate. Somehow, as our fingers walked across the titles on the shelves, we would make a decision. We would choose with the help of these library angels, invisible fairies that would magically guide us to the books we needed.

While this may just have been a rouse on behalf of the academic staff to get sluggish, unenthusiastic students inside the doors of the library, let alone pulling books from the shelf, it did provide us with much needed impetus to start the process rolling. Privately, I wondered about this when less than 24-hours later I was standing in line at the library check-out with a book in my hand I had not known I needed.

Perhaps this was what Rosie had been really telling me. If there could be library angels, there could be furniture fairies. Things did not need reasons, but people sometimes did.

We got settled into a nearby hotel, and Rosie got down to the business of buying something for us to sit on. We really didn't have anything to sit on, even though she didn't like me putting it quite like that.

Daily, I went to work and mused about my world of figures and finance, while Rosie dragged a beleaguered friend with perfect Mandarin around the city. At night we looked over her scribbled notes, pictures torn from furniture brochures and pencil sketches she made of the apartment. It was fun. I have to confess it breathed new life into our relationship, being college graduates, and searching for our first home again.

Gradually the scribbled notes and torn brochures turned into invoices and receipts, and at weekends we visited the apartment together. Rosie was excited at the prospect of showing me what she bought but equally at peace with the idea that she'd wait until everything was ready to show me properly. So all I saw were boxes and packages mounting up in large piles in the dust-filled empty spaces of our apartment. It added to the fun and excitement she said. It did make her visibly happy. Looking around at all this over time made me realise we had bought possibly more than something for us to sit on.

So, while we waited for the apartment, fairies or no fairies, we wandered around Beijing in the evening, after dark, becoming accustomed to its sights and smells, and getting to know the districts, the parks and the atmospheric hutongs. We went to black-tie cocktail parties and posh corporate events that allowed us to dress up and laugh a lot. It was not all that we had expected, but it was definitely an adventure.

Two months into that first year, we were ready to move to the apartment. Rosie seemed proud of herself and I was just glad we could finally put a door between ourselves and the outside world and have our privacy back. That never seemed to bother Rosie, but then she didn't share the same concept of alone as most people.

The unveiling of the apartment was a little unfair and, at my expense, something of a joke. We hadn't talked about furniture, the apartment or anything related for sometime. We had both been busy and avoiding the subject the way couples do.  Or so I thought.

On a Friday evening, we arranged to meet at the apartment before going out for dinner. I had been working late and it was convenient. I didn't think anymore about it. After eight, I jumped into a taxi and headed over. It was the end of the week and between you and me, tired as I was, I thought we were due an argument. Well, if the subject of the apartment didn't cause it, something else would. On the elevator ride up to the 15th floor, I thought perhaps I was working too hard, but remembered I should be careful not rely on that excuse again. I was preoccupied. As I rang the bell the door swung open.

Rosie stood with her arms folded, and a look of smug satisfaction lit up her face. The boxes and dusty corners had been replaced by the spoils of her adventure. In those first few moments, as I stepped into the apartment, I saw candle light and smelt incense burning. Images of Asian deities hung in framed groups on the wall. There were man-sized plants, dark polished-wood furniture and the smell of beeswax. I saw books I knew to be mine and other familiar, smaller things, tucked between the shelves, under tables and on surfaces. My delight produced a simple and measured "Mmmm…."

Together, we walked from the sitting room down a long a corridor toward the other rooms. Everywhere Chinese history seemed to cling to the walls. A miniature emperor's horse stood beneath a crimson imperial robe suspended on a pole from the ceiling. Beyond it, the bedroom was festooned in crumpled fabric curtains, an ornamental red lacquer wardrobe and deities in enclosed dark-wood cabinets upon which incense burned. It was fascinating. It was our home.

There was so much detail.

I saw containers in different colours that were tall and round and slender and square and globes made of crystal and of glass. There was an apothecary chest standing 6-feet high on legs with 43 drawers filled and over spilling with string, thread, Sellotape and candle wax. And there were dolls, Chinese porcelain dolls, everywhere.

"My ladies," Rosie whispered, pulling at my sleeve and pointing to the fine features and delicately painted surfaces. Vases, carpets, intricate wall hangings, musical instruments, sheaths of fabric, life-size statues, prayer wheels and cushions in every conceivable colour and texture surrounded us. "Don't look at me," Rosie said.

I can admit even now to not being able to distinguish periods in Chinese furniture, objects of Chinese history or art and still cannot tell my Ming from my Qing, but, nevertheless, I live with someone who can. In those early enchanted days in Beijing, when the fairies must have chuckled at my lack of faith, and Rosie delighted in the secrets she was keeping from me, I didn't know how rich an experience Beijing was going to be.