The Eight-Tatami Room Where I Lived, Danced, and Fought with a Germaphobic Mongolian

Seven years ago, I lived in an eight-tatami room with an incredibly germaphobic Mongolian woman.
This was back when I was studying abroad at a university in Changchun, in Northeast China.

In Changchun, February and March are so cold that the temperature drops below minus 15 degrees Celsius even during the day. I headed to my room in the international student dormitory, shivering from the unexpected cold and feeling nervous about my first time studying abroad.
The dormitory had shared rooms, and my roommate was Saran, a Mongolian woman in her late twenties.

The room was a simple studio of about eight tatami mats, with two single beds and two desks lined up, offering no privacy. Still, I thought the environment was sufficient since each room had its own toilet and shower.

Saran had been studying Chinese there for about half a year, could speak English, and said her native languages were Mongolian and Russian. On the other hand, the only Chinese I could speak was 'Ni hao' and 'Xiexie.' My English was also as shaky as a two-year-old's. At first, we managed to talk by making full use of translation apps on our smartphones.

Saran was a lovely woman. However, she had a somewhat troublesome personality.
'What do you think of this outfit? Is it cute?'
This question would continue every day until she got the answer she was satisfied with.

Saran was extremely fond of cleanliness, which is a good thing, but the standards she demanded were, to me, quite high.
Keeping things clean every day was a given, but we also had to thoroughly clean the bathroom together once a week. Well, I could understand that.
Washing the curtains every few days. Curtains, too?!
I suppose it might be better to wash them than not, but for a lazy person like me, it was a surprising world.
I worked hard to clean to follow Saran's rules, but it never seemed to reach the level she was satisfied with, and I was often scolded for being 'dirty.'

Saran was a good singer.
A little while after we started living together, she said, 'I'm going to enter a university singing contest,' and began to let her beautiful voice ring out in the room every night until around 11:00 PM. I protested that it was 'too noisy,' but she begged me, 'It's only until the contest, please!' so I reluctantly agreed.
When I warned her because she was still singing the day after the contest ended, she happily reported, 'The judging moved forward, and there's another contest next week!' and I was left stunned.

Just as I had complaints about Saran, I think Saran had complaints about me, too. Especially about me coming home dead drunk in the middle of the night.

We weren't particularly close. While there were other rooms where roommates would go out or eat together, the only place we talked was in this cramped studio. We often had fights and clashes over things like what time to turn off the lights.

But sometimes we talked about famous people we knew from each other's countries, about sumo, about songs, and about love. There was even a night when we sang, danced, and made a racket to Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe' together.

One day, when I returned home, Saran was sobbing. She said she had been dumped by the boyfriend she had been with for many years. It's tough for me when someone is crying in a small room for a long time.
I comforted her as she made a scene saying, 'I have no choice but to die!', and bought her the Russian chocolate she always ate at the shop. Saran hugged me and said, 'Masa, you are so kind.'

The next day, she said with a bright smile, 'We got back together!', and I was stunned all over again.


Thinking about it now, even though we couldn't speak Chinese or English well, how did we manage to talk, fight, and live together?
After continuing this life for half a year, Saran returned to Mongolia in the summer. The empty room after she returned home felt as cool as if it were announcing the end of a chapter of my youth.