I love living in China. Every moment is an experience, every activity an adventure. Even the annoying things are entertaining in their own way. You know, things like stepping over piles of smelly garbage to get to my apartment. Annoying… but good. It’s home.
Speaking of home, my apartment is a great example of how the “made in China” jokes that float around the U.S. are equally valid here. One morning our water heater went out. Just stopped heating water. Not the most pleasant thing in the world, but I will say I was thankful the cold showers were just for a few days during the heat of summer… not during the freezing Shenyang winter. (Although I might could have gotten away with not showering if I hadn’t been sweating so much…) The day after it broke, we dutifully called a repair guy. But of course, living in a foreign country is all about maneuvering the miscommunications. In this case, the guy never showed up. Not sure what happened, but I was really bored sitting at home all day, that’s for sure. Day three we finally got a different company to show up and replace the broken piece. We all took extra long showers that night.
The day after the water heater was finally fixed, my roommate ran into the sliding glass door that goes into the kitchen. We never close that door, but we had a guest sleeping in the main room and she was cold so closed the door. Middle of the night run to the bathroom? My poor roommate definitely ran right into the door, and it shattered. Not pleasant. But the entertaining nature of the entire situation increased exponentially as our guest spent not one, but TWO days sitting at home waiting for a repair person to come. And she’s Chinese! I’m starting to doubt anything that comes from a repairman’s mouth, at least when they say they’re going to come.
So by the time issue #3 came around, we took a different approach. This one was totally my fault. Lightswitches in China aren’t quite the same as those in the U.S. It’s more like a button that you have to push up or down. Well, one morning when I went to the bathroom, I apparently pushed a little too hard, and perhaps at the wrong angle… I pushed the lightswitch completely into the wall. Oops. Three days of no light in the bathroom. Entertaining, to say the least. But we learned our lesson… Instead of calling up a repair guy, we grabbed a screwdriver and some other tools and went at it. Impressively, we now have light again. And nobody was electrocuted.
At least, no one was electrocuted fixing the lightswitch. We won’t talk about the lack of safety standards that result in plenty of electrical cords just hanging in the bathroom, sometimes touching the metal windowsill. And I’m not going to bother passing along the multiple stories my roommate just told me today about her experiences with electrical incidences in bathrooms in China.
So we move on. As of today, the apartment is pretty much functioning normally. You know, door handles fall off when you use them, but besides that everything is fine. Good thing, too, since we’re stuck inside today. It started raining about five o’clock this morning, and in every Chinese student’s favorite expression, it is raining cats and dogs. Glad we live on the fifth floor, since we’re flooded in about two steps deep. My roommate and I went down this morning to see how bad it was, and this was from three steps up at the entrance to our building.
I just wish pictures could capture smell, too. That green thing you see out the door is the lid to the garbage bin, which is dug into the ground. Convenient, usually. Not so convenient during a flood, when all that water is now steeped in garbage. Yuck.
Gotta love it.
