Live and Learn

It all started when the power went out...that's when I decided to start blogging. I had been living in China for a year and a half and stuff like that had just become too normal. So, it's going on the record now. This way, in a couple of years when I move away from this place I can remember everything, good and bad, that I saw and felt and was a part of.

I had been living in my apartment for 11 months with no problem, well no big problems. (The heat did barely work in the winter - to the point that I would turn a blow dryer on at night to warm my bed up and then jump inside and try to fall asleep before it got cold again, and then the air conditioner in my bedroom broke at the beginning of summer and was not replaced for two weeks.) But my landlord was a nice guy and we got along okay. Until July. I was away for work when my boyfriend told me that the electricity had been shut off in the apartment. I pay my electricity bills, so he just figured I was delinquent and went down to the management office to get things sorted. It was then that he discovered the landlord had not paid the management fee since October 2005. The management company did the only thing they could: shut off the electricity.

Logic works differently in China. You would think it is the same the world over, or at least I used to think so, but it's definitely not. Somehow turning off the electricity, without any notice, in an apartment they know is rented out, punishes the landlord, who is in reality, at home enjoying air conditioning and light. When I asked him what was going on, his reply was that he was "stuggling" with the management and that it would probably not be resolved any time soon.

There are laws against this sort of thing, but I was told that they are "hazy" and that calling the police would be ineffective, because they would come, but would do nothing. That's nice.

So, I basically walked around my apartment at night, sweating my ass off in the middle of summer, with a backpacking headlamp on my head. My freezer full of rasperries, blackberries and blueberries defrosted all over the kitchen floor - which left a purple stain that will never be removed. My neighbors probably thought it was a little weird when they saw me sitting in the hallway reading, with my two cats and a pillow. (However, they did not respond two weeks later when, out of desperation, I put a note on their door requesting to pay them in advance for letting me run an extension cord to plug in my air conditioner at night.) Every time I saw a security guard, I was quick to inform him that #1353 had no electricity and he would scurry off the tell the management of this emergency, but nothing changed.

Situations like this are always exaserbated here in Beijing, because of the communication gap produced by not being fluent in Chinese. I study Chinese, but unfortunately "Electricity Crisis" hasn't been the topic of any of the chapters in my books. This results in trying to use other words to talk about the problem, which leads to a lot of frustration on both sides - and some laughing, thank goodness.

The strange thing is that if the same situation had been taking place anywhere else, I would have been mad, really mad. But you can't get mad here. The people you brush shoulders with every single day have either been through so much more in their past or are going through so much more right now. While I was without electricity in my nice, comfortable, expensive western style apartment, migrant workers were living in a building made of cardboard on the property behind mine. They had no electricity, plumbing, and were walking around on a dirt floor. The security guards I was informing of my situation were living in a small room with twelve guys sleeping in bunk beds in the basement of my building and getting paid $100 a month for working 12-hour shifts. And this is modern China, in the capital, a huge international city. These guys count themselves lucky compared to the people in the countryside. And that's to say nothing of the insaneness of some of the historical events they have lived through. So I complained some to my friends and colleagues, who were all very sympathic but not at all surprised, and then just let it be.

I started looking for an apartment and finally found one three weeks later. In the meantime I stayed some hotter nights with very generous friends. It worked out though, because I love my new place.

The first question asked: What's the landlord's status with her managment fee?

Live and learn, right?