My house was actually an illegal construction. My grandmother (my grandma said that "grandma" sounded old, so she preferred the southern way of calling her) and my mother's brothers and sisters lived in a big courtyard near Peace Gate. Later, we were relocated to Zhongguancun and moved into an apartment building.
Zhongguancun was really a village back then. There were loudspeakers in the village broadcasting at 7:30 am and 5:30 pm. After 7 o'clock, there would be no one on the street, and there were no streetlights either. It only took about 10 minutes to walk from our place to Qianmen, but it was still considered the countryside compared to the city center. We all disliked this place, never expecting it to become so prosperous today.
Let me get back to the point. My home was a 2-bedroom, 1-living room apartment with only 57 square meters, and what's more, it was on the top floor, the 6th floor. After 20-odd years of living, plus our habit of collecting junk and never throwing anything away, the house had become unbearably crowded.
My husband (then my boyfriend) came to Beijing, and I started looking for a rental place for him.