Author Archives: ericksonsinchina

The Euphoria Lasted About 5 Minutes

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Last night I asked Mark how it could be possible that we have only been back in Shanghai one week.  One week?!  It feels like a million years.  He agreed so I felt a little less dramatic.  I managed to resist using my hands in very theatrical ways so he couldn’t accuse me of making the situation worse.  Yes, our collective excitement has already worn off and we have so many more weeks to go before we leave China again.  I have the added pressure of defending my dissertation in early March, so I can’t do what I would like to do and wallow in my unhappiness while moaning about how hard it is to live in China.  The ayi would never allow it anyway.  She would be unable to resist asking me all sorts of personal questions to get to the bottom of things.  Am I sick?  Does my head hurt?  Have I eaten anything today?  Was I trying to sleep?  That is too bad because she needs to make the bed and I should really try to get some exercise.  But I digress.

The thing that pushed us all over the edge–today is Ava’s birthday.  She is nine now and while birthdays are always a celebration, China can always find a way to make me feel less than celebratory.  In the US, I went all out for birthdays.  As a mom–let’s be honest here—I used to kill it.  We have the family tradition of the birthday boy or girl waking up to fresh cinnamon rolls and streamers festooning the dining room.  I used to plan elaborate parties and bake magnificent cakes.  Suffice it to say, all this is more difficult here.  My oven conspires against me resulting in cinnamon rolls that were today labeled “puck-like” by Ava and her siblings.  I couldn’t disagree.  The proof was almost too difficult to eat.  I am less plugged in to the school situation and so this morning when Ava asked if I would be making or buying treats to bring in for her class today, I was struck dumb by the realization that I had planned to do neither of those things.  I had actually planned to do nothing because I had forgotten all about that!  She was less than impressed.  She wants a slumber party but can’t narrow down her guest list.  My mother rightfully pointed out that this is a welcome change from last year when she was newly arrived and hadn’t had time to make friends in Shanghai.  While this is true, I can only focus on how much harder it is going to be to host a party for a bunch of screaming 3rd graders without the benefit of Party City or Michael’s.  Tough times, indeed.

And this comes on the heels of a China day where there were no taxis to be found so I walked to school (uphill both ways!  in the snow!) cursing every Chinese person I passed along the way.  It was unreasonable, I know, and it was even more unreasonable when I arrived home and was irritated that the ayi wanted to have a discussion about the vacuum cleaner.  How dare she!  And this after she showed up this morning with a huge pack of special cookies and the biggest stuffed bear you have ever seen.  She was late and I think she was concerned that I would be angry with her. I actually love to have even five minutes alone in the house so I had been hoping she would be even later!   She would never have guessed that plan.  When she came in with her arms full of all that stuff my face must have registered some sort of wild emotion.  She blurted out that it was for Ava’s birthday and then seemed to doubt that she had the correct day.  She was right, of course, which only added to my guilt.  How did she know it was Ava’s birthday?  Luckily, she didn’t head into the kitchen and bake a cake—that would have been the last straw.  I am sure hers would have been delicious and a pleasure to eat.

Happy Birthday, Ava!  Your mom is officially crazy.

Back for More…

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December 28th marked the end of our official first year in Shanghai. What a difference a year makes! Last year at this time, we were still figuring out the neighborhood and worrying about starting new schools. This year, we arrived back in China anxious to see our friends and get back to our routine. Shanghai still isn’t easy, of course. I dreaded the necessary return to my hunting and gathering ways when I stared into our empty refrigerator, but this is nothing compared to last year when I wasn’t even entirely sure where I might find groceries at all. Our epic trips to IKEA to outfit an entire house are a thing of the past as well, although I am sure I will soon be back to my once weekly trips to get just one more thing. I have made a truce with the crazy Shanghai townhouse. Maybe. It did feel like home to walk in the door this time even if I did scowl at the kitchen just a little bit.

The kids and I survived the plane ride with no unplanned diversions to Beijing. Mark met us at the airport and we took the Maglev home. We knew we were really back when a large group of Chinese construction workers surrounded us at the subway station. They admired the kids and talked loudly about us in Mandarin as they walked us out to the taxi stand. A random woman pulled Lucas’ suitcase and he was deep in conversation with her about how old he was and whether Ava was his older or younger sister. I, however, had apparently forgotten everything I have learned this past year because Chinese just washed over me as people tried to ask me questions. I could only smile and nod as they told me how lovely my children were to look at. So many blond people all in one place! And such big eyes!

Once Ava and I got in the taxi she settled back in her seat with a big smile on her face. “I’m glad to be back,” she told me. “I have missed people telling me I am beautiful.” Sorry, China. We’re here for year two and we expect you to show your appreciation!

Fire Chicken

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This November we had our first Thanksgiving here in Shanghai.  I would love to tell you that it was a lovely experience filled with heartwarming memories, but it was not exactly the warmest or fuzziest holiday we have ever celebrated.  Let me start by confessing that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I love all the cooking and the preparations for the big meal.  I can’t think of anything better than planning Thanksgiving dinner and then getting to share it with people I love.  In the United States, Thanksgiving is also the holiday where my side of the family gets together.  The past few years my brothers and my sister and I have all made an effort to spend Thanksgiving together, bringing our spouses and children.  And not just Thanksgiving Day, we spend a long weekend or the entire week hanging out together.  The cousins fight to the death and my parents have to endure hours of revelations about what actually happened when we were all teenagers.  I am sure they appreciate that.  The past few years have seen the addition of a few friends to the mix and I always look forward to Thanksgiving week.

Of course, when you live in China you can’t really just head home for Thanksgiving.  Henry didn’t even have one day off from school.  Lucas and Ava were given Friday so that they had a long weekend, but it still did not compare to the week of Thanksgiving festivities that I have decided is necessary.  The whole holiday got off to a rocky start when Mark announced that he wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday since that was the actual holiday.  He wouldn’t hear of moving dinner to Friday or Saturday even when I argued that in France and Australia we had always celebrated on the weekend.  The kids had school!  He had to work!  He upped the ante by then declaring that he would like to invite his entire staff over so that they could experience American Thanksgiving.  And how many people is that, you ask?  Oh, 60 or so.  Sixty people eating Thanksgiving dinner in our townhouse with one unpredictable oven and my dorm size refrigerator?!  Oh, how I laughed.  This only made things worse because, apparently, he was serious.

Normally I make Thanksgiving dinner for about thirty people.  It isn’t that difficult when you have multiple refrigerators, a giant freezer, two ovens, and an arsenal of American grocery stores.  China is not like that.  Finding ingredients is time consuming and expensive and my kitchen is far from efficient or comfortable.  Could I organize dinner for sixty in the United States?  Sure.  I know where to get things.  I could plan ahead and even get some of it catered.  Here in China I couldn’t fit sixty people in my house comfortably even if by some miracle I could get the necessary food purchased and then cooked.  And catering?  Oh, that is possible.  But for sixty people the cost would have been outrageous.  Only certain people in China find themselves in need of Thanksgiving dinner.  I think you can guess which people I am talking about.  The Chinese are not stupid.  They know an opportunity when they see one.

After I shot down the staff Thanksgiving idea, Mark was less than helpful with the preparations.  He was also unaware of the actual date for the Thanksgiving holiday this year and as a result spent precious time goading me.  He basically squandered a week on teasing.  I don’t think he really regrets this.  Like a busy little squirrel, I had planned ahead and brought some of the ingredients for our dinner from the US when we were home for the summer.  I brought things I had trouble finding or that were exceptionally expensive.  My list included:  cornmeal, Karo syrup, jellied cranberry sauce in the can, dried sage, brining stuff for the turkey, and Crisco.  Next year I will need to add plain canned pumpkin to that because I was too lazy to cook an actual pumpkin after spending so much time on the other things.  Even with some things in the pantry, I spent a few days shopping.  Which brings me to Thanksgiving Day.

I found frozen turkeys in a few places and took a chance that one might fit in our oven.   I wanted a small one since it was only the five of us, but guess what?  In China you don’t get a choice!  You buy what you find and turkeys are all one size and imported from the United States.  And they cost around $70 because ladies like me need to buy them.  My ayi was shocked when I brought home the giant bird because the Chinese don’t eat “fire chicken.”  This is the actual translation for turkey in Mandarin.  But she didn’t use the word.  She chose to make loud turkey noises instead.  You know, so I would really understand her.  The bird didn’t fit in the fridge, of course, so I had to order take out to get bags of ice delivered and put it in the kitchen sink.  This also meant I had to buy a “half frozen” bird and wait until the day before dinner to rush to pick it up.  Organizing this meant a lengthy discussion with the woman at the butcher shop and turning a local taxi into a salmonella factory as I hauled the dripping thing home.

I started cooking dinner as soon as all the kids were at school.  The oven was on all day.  I took a break to attend Ava’s concert at school and then came right back to the kitchen.  When it was time to put the turkey in, I had to put the oven rack as low as it would possibly go.  Even then the bird almost touched the top of the oven.  But it fit.  By the time Mark came home from work everything was almost ready.  He was disappointed that I had only made cornbread dressing (my side of the family) but hadn’t made stuffing (his side of the family) so we waited while he made this from scratch.  Add a box of Stove Top to next year’s list, I guess.

Once the turkey was carved, we all sat down at the table.  I had spread out one of our handprint tablecloths from a few Thanksgivings ago.  Every year the gaggle of kids all put their handprints on a new tablecloth and then we use them to decorate the tables every year.  I have a collection of them now, and the tiny handprints get bigger and bigger on each one.  But there isn’t one from last year or this year, now.  So the tablecloth made me happy and sad at the same time.  The kids were a little solemn as well and Lucas finally announced that we were “missing a few people.”  And he was right.  We were missing quite a few people.  Really missing them.

Catching Up

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So, helloo….  Here in China many things have been happening.  But basically after Bali, it has been school, school, and more school.  Henry is chafing at the possibility that he might actually have to finish out the year at his current school.  Why he thought he would be moving to Lucas and Ava’s school in the middle of the year is anyone’s guess.  He has been telling his teachers since August that this week is really his last.  Enjoy his wit and wisdom while you can, suckers!  Henry isn’t going to be here for you to kick around much longer!  Of course, he eats those words every Monday morning as I march him right back to his classroom.  He has begun to parrot back to me all the things we tried to say so diplomatically when it became obvious that Ava would need to make a change last year.  “It just isn’t a good fit for me!” he will announce as he attempts, once again, to have a sick day.  No dice, little buddy.  Every day he asks how much longer until summer vacation and scowls when I inform him that it is a long, long way away.

Ava is thriving at her new school.  This is a big deal for her after last year and I am relieved.  So, so, so relieved.  Her most recent parent teacher conference involved me seeing her progress and then bursting into tears.  Ava was leading the conference so I was forced to explain that they were ”happy tears”.  I looked less ridiculous when her teacher started crying too.

And Lucas is, well, Lucas.  He likes his school but complains in the morning.  He likes riding the bus.  He does well in his classes.  He is playing the clarinet.  He loves the swim team.  He likes China but sometimes wishes we could move back to Maryland and settle back into our cozy yellow house.  But usually he is happy.

They are all speaking more Chinese than I ever imagined.  Henry mumbles to himself and sings Chinese songs.  Ava and Lucas argue over the pronunciation and meaning of characters.  All of them love correcting me, of course.  I am the Mandarin idiot around here, still struggling with the most basic things.  Lucas has needed to translate for me with workmen more times than I would like to admit.  Even Henry congratulated me a few weeks ago after a trip to the wet market.  It had been so smart of me to bring him along.  He had helped me so much with his “translating”.

I am still less settled in than the children, I think.  Being a tai tai* is less exciting than one might think.  I go to my Chinese class twice a week.  I spend an obscene amount of time procuring food for the family.  I go to the fabric market and the fake market and the flower market to buy more crazy things. I have lunch with my new friends.  I work on my never ending dissertation.  I try to wrap my head around daily life in China and usually fail miserably.  Why do Chinese people do that?  I have no idea.  Don’t ask me.  I am thinking about next year and how I want things to be.  I am considering going back to work but I am unsure of how that will pan out.  We will see.  So things are fine.  Things are good.  Thanks for asking.

*Tai tai means wife, but since I am White and unemployed by choice it is the equivalent of “ladies who lunch.” Yes, this is killing me.  Let’s never speak of it again.

Chinese Halloween

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Halloween in China looked like this:

And like this:

And like this:

The kids got to trick-or-treat twice because while the North American parents thought we should hit the houses on the 31st, the management office thought we should all beg for candy on Saturday night.  Not surprisingly, none of my children complained!  Two nights of trick-or-treating thoroughly confused everyone.  Some of our Chinese neighbors had decorations up unaware that this meant kids would be ringing their doorbells looking for candy.  They certainly weren’t expecting it on two different nights.  Ava was surprised to be given three large grapes by one perplexed Chinese woman who apparently thought this was either the equivalent of a chocolate bar or better than nothing.    The kids were also less than excited by some of the other items that ended up in their bags.  Many, many things here are individually wrapped for no good reason which resulted in things like fancy looking prunes being part of our Halloween treat mix.

I planned ahead and made the kids pick costumes over the summer when I could order them easily.  There was less selection, but I didn’t spend weeks running around looking for things.  Henry was supposed to be a Power Ranger, but since he needed to dress up as a pirate for school (the reasons for this are still less than clear for me), he opted just to wear his pirate things for one round of trick-or-treating and his other costume for the Saturday round.  I try not to ask too many questions.

Other than the expected difficulties of missing our house and all of our Halloween decorating– this would have been a knock out year for our political jack o’lanterns!– the one thing that turned out to be the most difficult was the candy.  I had a hard time finding bags of candy and ended up traipsing around on the hunt for fun size candy bars.  I ended up with some questionable Chinese candy from the bulk bins at Carrefour mixed in with some teeny tiny Dove chocolate bars.  By the second round of trick-or-treating I had some bags of Chinese candy and a few of these cookie bar things.

How can you go wrong with “Classic Candy”?

It was the first time Lucas was able to go out in the neighborhood with his friends and NO ADULT SUPERVISION!  Are you surprised that this resulted in one kid needing stitches on his face?  Of course you aren’t!  Luckily, it wasn’t Lucas but one unhappy family had to make a Halloween trip to the Chinese hospital.

Ava and Henry went around the neighborhood with a friend since Mark was delayed at work.  I handed out the candy and actually missed the days of Hawthorn Road with the fog machine and the glow in the dark eyeballs.  The kids came home to sort their loot and ate the imported candy first, followed by the Chinese candy made by foreign companies.  Now we are down to the Chinese candy that none of us recognize.  Almost half of these experimental tastings result in a run to the nearest trash can.  At least their dentist can’t complain.

 

 

 

 

More China Hijinks!

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It has been brought to my attention that on this blog I often complain about Shanghai.  What?!  Me?  Complain?  Certainly that is not the case!  There is nothing to complain about over here.  The weather, for once, is reasonable.  Sunny, even!  Although I have been told the air quality is horrendous and we should not be outside breathing the toxic air.  I ignore these warnings!  I step outside and breathe with reckless abandon.  The construction noise from across the street has started to sound as soothing as birdsong.  Who can complain about the rhythmic hum of a jackhammer?  I am surrounded by an army of helpful folks who have absolutely no understanding of what I want or why I am even talking to them in the first place, but I am not complaining!

The management office is currently staffed with many of these helpful people.  They are very eager to answer the phone and then proceed to explain to me why something that should take five minutes is about to ruin my entire day.  Take for example, my current light bulb situation.  I have no problem changing light bulbs.  This is something I do all the time.  Never before have I paid someone to change light bulbs for me.  But China is different, and after spending far too much time searching for the light bulbs I needed and then being unable to change them without electrocuting myself, I had the management office send someone over.  I paid him 5rmb per bulb!  After I supplied the bulbs, naturally.  He was also kind enough to show me that in many cases the problem wasn’t my ineptitude, but our house’s faulty wiring.  He repeatedly pulled singed wads of wires out of the ceiling to demonstrate just how “bad” certain parts of the house happened to be.  He fixed these, and contorted himself and his ladder into various spaces until he had managed to replace seventeen bulbs.  Seventeen!  But the lights were working again so I am not complaining!

The bulbs in the living room require a special ladder.  When they put the drapes up, they actually built scaffolding inside the house to reach the top of the windows.  When the management office mentioned an extra charge for the “tall ladder” I was pretty sure that was what they were talking about.  I am willing to pay a fee for this, of course.  No complaining here!  But I need to provide the light bulbs and I have no idea which ones to buy.  They are up in the ceiling, you see, and they require a special ladder!  Can anyone from the management office tell me which bulbs to buy?  No.  Can they sell the bulbs to me?  No.  After multiple phone calls they find a solution.  What they can do is have the guy come, take down the bulb, hand it to me, and wait while I go and frantically try to find the bulb.  At some mystery store, apparently, because nothing thus far in my hours of searching resembles these crazy bulbs I see in my living room ceiling.  Then, when I return from my shopping excursion, he can climb the ladder again and put the new bulb in.  Very simple.

Well, I hate to complain, but this is not so simple.  This is ridiculous.  This made me yell at a nice little Chinese woman who was baffled that I could not understand why no one had saved the packaging from these light bulbs.  I cannot possibly be the first person ever to need these bulbs to be changed, can I?  Every townhouse in the compound has these light bulbs!  So now I am waiting.  I have arranged for the special ladder to come today and will pay for one of the workmen to go and buy the light bulb for me.  I will also pay the ladder fee and maybe overtime while we all wait for him to return with the coveted bulb.  I will then wrestle him to the ground to ensure I have the packaging that might help me when another one of these bulbs decides to stop working.  I can almost guarantee that another one will need replacing tomorrow.  Not that I am complaining or anything.

The Annoying Trip to Bali!!!!!!!!!

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We finally got out of the house.  I never thought we’d get out.  We were heading to Bali, a wonderful place.  Except the ride was a little bit obnoxious.  Why don’t I tell you about it?  It started one morning, we were getting in the taxis to go to the Maglev.  For those of you who don’t know, the Maglev is this big floating train that goes as fast as you will ever go on land.    We went up to 400 miles an hour.  It made my head dizzy it was so fast!  Finally we stopped.  We got off at the airport.  Little did I know there was a big problem ahead of me.  We got on our first flight.  I took out my IPad, my headphones, and I took out one small polka dotted piece of pink fabric.  I put it behind my pillow. The fabric is my lovey, my blanket, my beloved Pinky!  I have had her all my life.  They discontinued this blanket the year I was born.

We got off the plane and I got off without a small piece of pink polka dotted fabric.  We sat in the airport for what felt like a long time.  We finally got on the next plane.  I went to reach out for Pinky but I realized when I put my hand in my suitcase… SHE WAS GONE!!!!!  I cried for the first three hours of the flight.  In case you were wondering, the flight is more than six hours.  I finally got over that I might not get Pinky back and so my crying calmed down.  And then my stomach didn’t feel so good.  So I got up and went to the bathroom about five times and then I said, “Mom, I think I might need a throw up bag soon.  Like NOW!”  I threw up six times on the plane then finally we got off in Bali.  My mom went back into the airport to see if they had found Pinky.  Meanwhile, we waited.  After what felt like a couple of hours, I threw up again.  Mom had the supply of throw up bags so I threw up on the ground in the middle of the waiting zone.  Finally, my mom came back.  She didn’t know that I had thrown up on the ground and she was shocked that me and my dad were across the street in the grass in case I threw up again.

Then we got in the car.  I threw up again and luckily my mom had one more throw up bag. The bad news was that this was our last one– the last one of them all!  We got to the hotel finally, the hotel where we were going to stay one night.  We got in our room after what felt like a hundred and sixty miles of walking.  Mommy had to stay with me and she was the one who had to put up with me throwing up the entire flight.  But luckily, I didn’t throw up again.  The next morning I woke up the latest of anyone even though my mom is usually the lazy bird.  Me and my mom went down to breakfast.  The boys had already had breakfast and were now swimming in the pool like little fishies.  My dad called to see if anybody had found Pinky.  Unfortunately, no one had.  My mom was looking at the Korean Air website at pictures of lost things.  She looked through pages and pages and pages, but Pinky (my beloved!) wasn’t there.

When we got to our villa, we first started picking out our rooms.  Then we looked again to see if anyone had found Pinky.  Still, unfortunately, no P-I-N-K-Y!!!!!!  We looked for three days and still nothing.  Finally, my mom did something smart.  She looked on ebay!  She looked at one hundred pages of pink baby blankets.  She found three identical Pinkies!  I was saved!  All that time crying on the plane– it wasn’t worth it.  We ordered two of them and my grandmom is sending me one of them.

We went to another villa where we spent one night and then we went back to the airport.  We got to Seoul, Korea, our first stop.  Our wait there was four hours and that is the same city where I lost Pinky.  My mom and I went to the information desk to see if we could find the lost and found.  They sent us on a wild goose chase.  They told us to go upstairs.  We went up and we asked.  They asked for our flight information and stuff like that.  It was pretty annoying but I had to deal with it.  We went back downstairs.  My mom was generous enough to let me stay at the gate with my dad and she went on the rest of the wild goose chase to see if they had found Pinky.  Of course, they hadn’t.  We got on our next flight empty handed with no special piece of pink polka dotted fabric.

We finally got back to China and I am waiting for my replacement Pinky.

P.S.  Don’t read this when you are eating.

Dictated to Gwen by Ava

Wet Market!

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Have I mentioned the wet market?  Have I mentioned my fear of dying due to some ailment that I might catch there?  Surely I have!   Since moving to Shanghai, I have been given many, many lectures about food safety in relation to the wet market and anything one might decide to buy there.  Henry’s school even gives a tour of the place that I have been told mainly consists of scaring people to death.  Of course, I have been making judgments based on what I have been told because I have never actually ventured out to the wet market myself.  Ahem.  Up until now, I have confined myself to the supermarket and the occasional fruit truck parked on my street in order to feed Team Erickson.  I must admit that the things I buy from the fruit truck are far superior to the things from the supermarket.  The cute little lady at the fruit truck helps me pick the best watermelon and gives me free stuff because I am a good customer.  The supermarket could never compete with that!  To top it off everything I buy at the supermarket is more expensive than the fruit truck.   And it frequently tastes like sawdust.

When we returned from our Bali trip, there was absolutely nothing edible in the house, not even of the sawdust variety.  Faced with the prospect of spending the day going to multiple supermarkets only to arrive home with nothing I decided to put off the inevitable by staying in bed as long as possible.  This only made the natives restless and more dangerous.  By the time I drug myself out of bed they were all “starving”.  A neighbor friend called to see if Lucas wanted to come over.  They had just arrived home as well and the mom invited me to come with her to do some food shopping.  Her driver was working (yeah!) so we could hit a few places and have it be relatively pain free.  She knew I hadn’t yet made it to the wet market.  She apparently goes twice a week and, in her words, “hasn’t died yet” so we decided that would be our first stop.

You know what?  It was awesome.  And not in the sarcastic way, it was really genuinely awesome.

In Baltimore, I love the farmers market.  Thirty minutes after Henry was born I was calling a friend, not to announce the happy news, but to tell him to make sure he went to the market to pick up our CSA share since I was going to be busy for the rest of the day.  I famously risked public scorn by packing up my two week old and heading to the Waverly farmers market.  My mother insisted on coming and sitting with him in the car, but the next Saturday I was there with him in the stroller so great is my love of the fresh veggies and fruit.  My children have been known, particularly in the summer, to turn up their noses at something “from the supermarket” when they suspect there is the possibility of really fresh stuff from the farmers market or our garden.

So why, oh why, did I not check out the wet market?  I have spent the past few years loving a farmers market that takes place under an overpass, but I was sure there was nothing for me at some urban veggie market in Shanghai?  For shame.  The wet market was actually very similar to the Baltimore market downtown only with fewer homeless people.  No one was selling designer dog treats, but there was pretty much everything else.    There was a slight smell as we walked in, but it wasn’t anything worse than Carrefour, and, let’s be honest, the underpass farmers market has its own odor at times, if you get my drift.  Would I buy meat there?  No.  But I never bought meat at the Baltimore farmers market, either.

I was surprised that the produce was really gorgeous and so cheap!  I bought bags and bags of stuff for what I would normally have paid for a few apples in the supermarket.  They had great tomatoes and all sorts of mystery items that I had never seen before.  I was able to walk around thinking about what looked the freshest and then decide what I could make rather than glumly considering whatever was available at the supermarket.  My friend showed me the places she normally frequents and I wandered around the aisles a bit.  Was it organic?  I have no clue because shopping there required using Mandarin and sometimes I had no idea what people were saying to me.  But all in all, it was a positive experience.  Can I make it there in a taxi once a week?  Not sure.  But I will have to find a way to make a trip or two to the wet market happen because so far, even in my tiny kitchen, cooking with nice vegetables is really making a difference.   Score one point for Shanghai, finally.

The Shower Debacle (or Why I Have Been Spending More Time at the Gym)

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A few weeks ago, the shower door came off its hinges.  Lucas was the unlucky one taking a shower, and just as he pulled the door handle to get out, the top hinge snapped and the entire door fell forward.  In this house we have only one shower so this was bad news for anyone else who was interested in personal hygiene.  Well, not entirely.  We do have two bathtubs here, but for those of us who prefer a shower, we would have to wait until the guys from maintenance could come over to fix it.

Our Chinese bathrooms, like much of Shanghai, are decorated in what can only be described as excessive sparkle.  They might not be showcases for usable space, but they glitter like nobody’s business.  These bathrooms are an appropriate place for jazz hands if ever there was one.  The shower is one of the many things in the bathroom that, at first glance, looks fantastic.  It is a rectangular glass box with all sorts of jets and nozzles–a certifiable fancy shower.  Once you step in, however, you immediately notice a few shortcomings.  The space inside is surprisingly small and the door has these strange plastic pieces all around it that are intended to keep the water inside the shower.  These pieces fly off frequently, and rarely if ever become a barrier of any kind.  This means that showers, particularly ones taken by the under twelve set, result in large lakes being formed on the bathroom floor.  Using the fancy jets only exacerbates this problem, so we have had to use the shower’s most exciting features sparingly.

The door isn’t the first thing to go wrong with our super shower.  At one point Mark made the startling discovery that the shower only provided cold water no matter how far you turned the temperature nozzle.  The kids had taken showers the night before and the rest of the house had plenty of hot water so the problem appeared to be only in the shower.  Off to the gym went Mark while I was left to deal with the workmen and the shower situation.  After a lengthy discussion involving elaborate hand signals, the problem was fixed.  Hooray!  Hot showers for everyone!  There was one glitch, however.  The workman informed me that someone adjusting the water temperature had caused the problem.  What?  No one had done anything to the water heater or any of the complicated controls on the wall in the kitchen.  I was sure of this because none of us could read what any of the buttons said.  We were afraid to touch them.  Oh no, he explained, someone had adjusted the temperature of the water inside the shower.  That was a no no.  No more changing the temperature to suit personal preferences.  He had set the temperature and we were not to bother the handle in the shower.  I had pressed him a little on this.  What if it was too hot for the children?  That was crazy!  No, he insisted, it was not.  If we wanted to shower we would need to use the water the way it was.  No more fooling around!  Needless to say, we all ignored this and haven’t had problems with the water temperature since.

The door was another matter.  It was heavy and I was afraid to try to move it or reattach it by myself.  The glass hadn’t broken, but there was always the possibility that the bottom hinge would snap and the whole thing would come crashing down.  Mark moved it a bit when he came home from work, but other than that we left it and I called the management office in the morning.

While many things are frequently left undone by our management company, a shower door hanging by only one hinge apparently sounds some sort of alarm.  A workman was sent over right away to get the door reattached.  I showed him the problem and he immediately decided that it was a job requiring more than one person.  The door was bulky, and it took one person to hold the door and one person to fix the hinge.  He got on the phone and management sent one more guy over.  Together they started the work and I went back downstairs.

A few minutes later there was a loud thump.  No crashing, no cursing, and no screaming– just a very loud thump.  I thought about going upstairs to check, but wedging myself in the small bathroom as two guys tried to fix the shower had been unpleasant the first time I tried it.  And once I joined them in the bathroom, I would need to try to explain myself in Mandarin.  I decided that if there was a problem I would certainly find out.  No need to rush bad news by going upstairs and poking around, right?  Not five minutes later one of the workmen scurried down the stairs.  He had wrapped his right forearm completely in toilet paper and was holding the mummified appendage above his head.  He didn’t make eye contact with me.  He just walked out the front door, got on his bicycle, and rode off.  He was steering with his good arm.

Now I was forced to go upstairs and investigate.  Sure enough, the shower door was broken and the other workman was three inches deep in glass shards.  His arms were cut, but apparently he thought his wounds weren’t serious enough to warrant leaving the job site.  He asked for a broom and some bags and started shoveling the glass bits off the floor.  I got the vacuum in an attempt to contain what had exploded out onto the bedroom carpet.  The management office called.  The developer was on his way over.  Ten minutes later five new guys appeared at the door and rushed up to the bathroom.  They didn’t even bother to remove their shoes, which I took to mean this was serious business.  Of course, it could just mean they were jerks that didn’t care about tracking dirt in my house.  Either way, they brought glass downstairs with them when they left, spreading it all over the stairs and into the dining room.

Only the lone workman remained and he stayed all day.  Once I thought the mess was reasonably taken care of I encouraged him to leave.  I tried to explain that I could clean up the rest.  He deemed this absolutely unacceptable and kept right on running his bare hands along every surface.  He winced whenever he found another tiny glass shard, would pull it from his flesh, and immediately go back to sliding his hands on the floor again.  He took everything off the counters and shook the glass loose.  He moistened an entire roll of toilet paper and used it to basically mop the floor.  When he was finally finished he apologized profusely.

We waited two weeks for the replacement door to arrive.  When it did they delivered it at night, and left it lying in the tiny strip of grass between our house and the neighbors’.  Mark only noticed it when he went out to make a phone call.  It wasn’t in a box, just a long sheet of glass propped up on thick wads of paper.  Luckily, no one stepped on it.  The door was finally installed on Sunday morning and we are now back to flooding the upstairs bathroom every night.  Unfortunately, even after all that, my triceps are still a bit flabby.