Do I Really Want All This Stuff?

And where did it all come from?

“What is this?” Lisa, my Shanghainese wife of not quite four months, hoisted a bulky, cylindrical piece of crystal she’d pulled from a packing box. Easily large enough to hold a small watermelon, and with a distinctive pattern deeply etched around its circumference, it looked like something the Sun King himself might once have owned.

“It’s a vase, I guess. Or maybe to hold a plant? Not sure.”

“It’s very heavy.”

“I think it’s a Tiffany. I worked for this woman who used to give her staff Tiffany gifts every Christmas. There’s probably more stuff like that.”

“But we have so many vases already.” Her tone suggested she had passed the point of resignation and arrived at exasperation.

She was right, of course. Right that we had too many vases. Right to wonder, without actually saying it, what possible use we could have for all of them. For half of them.

I scanned the dining room, taking in the clutter of candlestick holders, decorative plates and bowls, wine decanters, framed paintings, glass sculptures. Where in the world had it all come from? If we were suddenly buried in a Vesuvial eruption, what would archeologists a thousand years hence conclude about us?

An overseas assignment late in my career occasioned a six-year stay in Asia. I returned late in 2012, and when Lisa’s fiancée visa came through a few months later, she left her home and family in Shanghai to join me in Portland, Oregon. A few months later, we bought a house and took delivery of my household goods, which had been in a corporate storage facility since 2007. We were now hip-deep in the trappings of my prior lives – furniture, knick-knacks, books and papers, whatever – extending back over a 40-year period that included a prior marriage, a grown daughter, a large extended family, and several jobs.

Over the next few weeks, we opened every box. My favored phrases during this period were, “I don’t remember that,” and “I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen that.” This was neither comforting nor amusing to Lisa, who opened box after box, removed the first layer of packaging, and whispered “Jesus Christ.”

In truth, the unpacking unearthed a bonanza of personal possessions that was, if not quite breathtaking, at least jarring. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like I led a Spartan existence during my six years in Singapore. I had a nice condo, with comfortable furniture, lovely artwork and mementoes from my travels, and so on. But for the most part, I had what I needed for function and comfort – not more. I might have owned a vase, for example, but probably not two. My shipment from the corporate warehouse contained no fewer than fourteen vases. Fourteen. Even accounting for the occasional urge to scatter flowers in multiple locations about the house, or to sometimes use an everyday container and other times a fancy one, it was difficult to imagine ever needing so many vases.

Would that it were just a matter of a few spare jars or pots. In truth, every room accused me. When Lisa insisted we had at least 20 chairs, I protested vigorously. When we toted them up, the count blew past 30. There were three desk chairs – not just chairs you could conceivably use at a desk, but actual desk chairs, the kind that roll around on wheels, lean back, adjust up and down. There were at least seven bookcases, and many thousands of books, only a tiny fraction of which will ever be picked up again (save to pack for the next move). Our kitchen brimmed with all manner of pots and pans, a panoply of electrical gadgets, enough dishware for a dozen or more guests, cabinets crammed with glassware, a huge array of coffee mugs. Lisa claims we have four different whisks. I haven’t had the heart to look.

Some of this perhaps seems unremarkable. But after operating quite comfortably for six years with a much more limited set of accoutrements, the experience was altogether unsettling. To Lisa, it was surreal. Our conversations typically went something like this.

“Jesus Christ” (sotto voce).

“I heard that.”

“What’s this for?” (holding up a fancy-looking glass with multicolored rings down its stem).

“It’s a martini glass.”

“A martini?”

“Yeah. It’s a cocktail made with gin and vermouth and some other stuff. Actually, I’ve only had one in my entire life. I don’t like them.”

“Then why have a set of glasses for them?”

“I don’t really know. Maybe they just seemed cute at the time.”

“And what are these?” The distinctly-curved glass with a faint green hue was unmistakable.

“Margarita glasses. You’ve had a margarita before.”

“Sure. But I didn’t know you had special glasses for them.”

As it turned out, of course, we had special glasses for everything. Glasses for drinking water, for juice, for champagne and white and red wine, and then again in alternate sizes and shapes for different varieties of red wine, beer glasses sporting the Lite beer logo, an assortment of shot glasses, a gigantic beer stein brought back from a memorable Oktoberfest in Munich some years ago. Then there’s the collection of “special” stemware – for wines and waters and whatnot – to be used with the fancy china and the fancy silverware whenever we decide to eat in the fancy dining room instead of the regular eating area some ten feet away.

Lisa finds this kind of duplication utterly nonsensical. Nor is this attitude a product of some terrible, poverty-stricken existence she’s had to endure. In reality, Lisa and her family members are part of that massive, rising middle class China has managed to create over the past three decades. Until her move to the States, she lived in a modest but comfortable condominium, which she still owns outright. The furnishings were decent, if unremarkable. She could boast of her large-screen TV, had nice clothes, ate out from time to time, belonged to a fabulous gym. She took occasional trips, both domestic and international, and had a modest amount of savings invested, all on a monthly salary of maybe $700. But like hundreds of millions of her countrymen, she managed this feat through a nearly fanatical brand of frugality. In China, no one would amass a collection of coffee mugs (or tea cups), to say nothing of multiple types of wine glasses. They have one mug, or rather one for each person in the family. With their family of four daughters, her parents own at best five or six mugs. Would they buy an extra set – say, another four or eight mugs – in case they have company and need more? Not a chance. If mugs are scarce, glasses will be substituted. Or paper cups. Separate glasses for wine and water? Nope. Mugs for hot drinks, glasses for cold ones? Nope again. In China, the temperature of the beverage is irrelevant. And even for the most honored of guests, it is not the quality of the container that matters, but the quality of the food and beverages being proffered.

The Chinese approach to basic necessities is even more remarkable. Our home in Portland, like millions of others across the US, has central heating and air conditioning. In Shanghai, by contrast, the condos housing most people have individual heating/cooling units in each room. During the winter, outdoor temperatures will be near freezing, sometimes colder, for about two to three months. But you would be hard-pressed to find a Shanghainese who turns on a single one of the wall units unless it is brutally cold outside. Instead, the Chinese wear multiple layers of clothing indoors – a couple of pairs of pants and heavy socks, a winter coat, possibly a scarf and gloves. They take their meals, watch TV, entertain guests and go to sleep so attired, and never once will they consider turning on one of the heating units attached to the wall. To the Chinese, indoor heat is an unnecessary luxury. Why would anyone spend money heating the condo when he could just put on more clothing, or add another blanket to the bed, and use the money saved for some productive purpose? This may help to explain why the personal savings rate in China is somewhere north of 50%, while that in the States is 5.8%.

With this kind of attitude toward extravagances like indoor heat, it was inevitable that the Chinese reaction to our new house and its contents would be astonishment. In an email exchange, Lisa described the layout to one of her sisters, identifying the living room, dining room, kitchen, eating area, family room, and office. Her sister was perplexed.

“If there is an eating area, why also a dining room?”

“To show off when guests come.”

“Wow . . .”

As I later learned, “Wow” followed by an ellipsis is best translated as “I’m speechless.” Lisa sees “Wow . . .” in a lot of emails these days. She gets it when she explains the tools in the garage – the hammers and saws, power drills and screwdrivers. Ditto when she describes all the shirts and pairs of pants in the closet, the assortment of jackets and coats for any conceivable weather pattern, the multiplicity of duvets suitable for differently-sized beds.

I acquired these things slowly, and over the course of several decades. Many of the purchases were undoubtedly sensible, like the electronic coffeemaker we use every day. Others, like the Tropitone patio furniture too big for our Portland deck, were somewhat extravagant. Even the less expensive items, though, often elicit a kind of “why do I have this?” reaction. I don’t feel too badly about owning an assortment of screwdrivers and hammers and wrenches — I enjoy doing a certain amount of handyman stuff around the house. But I have to wonder what made the power miter saw seem like a wise investment. That second stepladder. The gangled heap of extension cords. Was it important to have all three bathroom scales? Do guests really expect to be able to weigh themselves when they stay over?

Moving to a new city, with a new spouse, was bound to be in some ways traumatic. More unsettling for me, though, has been moving back from Asia and taking stock of material possessions neither seen nor missed for the past six years. The Salvation Army truck has already been here twice, and no doubt we’ll be regulars on their route for years to come. Donations to SA are fine, but that feels like putting a band-aid on a mind-set that may need radical surgery. Perhaps Lisa’s approach, with its laser-like focus on making only those purchases that are necessary and sensible, is a bit too rigid. There ought at least to be room to splurge occasionally on something just because it makes you happy. On the other hand, do I really want to keep buying things because they’re cute, or because they look cool, or because I’ve always wanted to have one, or for a thousand other impulsive reasons? At a minimum, it seems time to start asking the two questions the Chinese start with: Do I really need this? And even if I do, am I going to get enough use out of it to make buying it sensible? I wonder if I can train myself at this late date to approach potential purchasing decisions in a whole new way.

There is another worry somewhere on the horizon, though. And that is whether Lisa, now happily planted on American soil, will maintain the Chinese discipline herself. It seems entirely possible that, ten years hence, her purchasing habits will have veered sharply toward mine, rather than vice-versa. When I asked if she thought we should get rid of some of the vases, her reaction was a bit telling.

“Of course!” But pausing a moment, she added, “Not this one, though. I like Tiffany.”