Doorman

Doorman, this job has not disappeared yet. Maybe you live in an apartment, which has a doorman at the lobby. He receives packages, checks in with strangers, or even helps you move your luggage when you have too much for you. However, it is not necessary for every apartment to have a doorman in it. In New York City, usually only luxury apartments offer a doorman service. I visited my friend living in Sky (one of most luxury apartments in New York, priced at about $5000 per month,) there were even five doorman and doorwomen working at the lobby, they all dressed very formal and had extremely polite manual.

However, when clock ticked counter-clockwise for 20 years. In China, Doorman was necessary for every single community, and the duty was quite different from current ones. At that time, people had not started living in condo or apartments; usually people who worked for the same company lived together in a community. The reason behind this was that usually a company would give big discount to its employees on buying the apartments it has partnered with.

In my situation, my grandparents and my mom all worked for a manufacture company, I grew up in a community where people around me all worked on engineering, material, architecture and etc. We had three doormen consecutively before we moved to a new place.

I would talk about the last one for today, we kids all called him “Grandpa Yue.” Yue is his last name, he was about 60 years old. Grandpa Yue was like a steward of our community. He knows everyone living in our community, he greets with everyone passing the community gate by saying, “Hey, have a good day at work,” or “Don’t be naughty at school, be a good kid!” Every one of our residents would greet him back happily too.

When some infrastructure was out of control, for example, once the old well in our community was damaged after a heavy rain. Grandpa Yue called every family and collected money to pay some workers to repair the well. Grandpa also had a role as a broker agent. If some residents wanted to lend the apartment, they would register on Grandpa Yue’s file. Usually when people pass by our community would ask Grandpa Yue, “Is there any available room to rent here?” Grandpa knows this clearly. Another important role for Grandpa Yue is a gossip camp, he knows everything (Things that you are desperately to share and things you would kill to keep them secret) in the community. Grandpa Yue knows whose kid gets a first grade in class, he knows whose husband had hangover last week, he also even knows which household gets a new piece of new furniture.

Grandpa Yue, sat in his little booth, saw everything, heard everything. He kept our community running by doing little things. He added fun to community by listening to everybody. He lost an arm, that was why he became our doorman. Unfortunately, his disability did not allow him to finish any skilled work at a factory. Fortunately for us, we had Grandpa Yue.

Photo courtesy of Weibo Account: Renren love Zhengzhou.