Let's Go To Bed

There are 18 million stories in this city; these are just some of them.

Mr. OK came this week to repair our showers and to see what could be done about our lack of hot flowing water. The whole experience played out like some vaudeville routine or a Chinese version of the Marx Brothers with Mr. OK, our diminutive and hyperactive handyman, in the starring role. He ran, literally, from bathroom to bathroom, from Kristen’s to Olly’s to mine with nothing more than a small monkey wrench, adjusting the shower heads and continually repeating his professional mantra (and I believe, the only English word he knew), “OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK”! He seemed pleased with his level of craftsmanship as he made illusory adjustments to the water flow. Poor guy, he seemed so excited that I didn’t have the heart to tell him the water flow had not changed at all. Well, actually I did, but he couldn’t understand a word so I just nodded. I’m now resigned to the fact that for the next 5 months I will have a shower that sputters and spits and takes five minutes to produce a drizzling of hot water. And so Mr. OK waves goodbye, totally bemused at how these wanton westerners can complain about such trivialities, and well he might, as someone who probably has to fetch his own water each morning in a bucket from a well.

Be careful what you ask for…or point at. I learned this particular lesson at a local restaurant this week, as I indicated that I would like “this one, please”. Perhaps the concerned look of the waitress was a telltale sign, but it didn’t really register. Soon after, a hot, steaming plate of boiled fat was laid before me (think the line of oily fat that runs down the side of your lamb chop and imagine a kilo of it piled on a plate). One piece was definitely more than enough and suffice to say, I filled up on the Chinese greens and rice.

Ain’t it funny how we talk to people who do not speak or understand our language. Well, yes and no. Yes if you’re me and no if you’re Oliver. I must admit, I love the confidence Olly exudes each time he chats to the locals here. He could be walking down the high street in Putney or sitting in his local…approaches the young Chinese waitress, “Alright, luv? How’s it going? Any chance of a few pints and some hot grub?” Meanwhile the Jury way is a little more standard, but by no means any more successful. I simply repeat myself, getting progressively louder each time I’m not understood. “We would like some food and beer…FOOD and BEER, FOOOOOOD and BEEEEEEER! Um…Tsing Tao, Burger? Xie Xie.”

After six weeks in any foreign city one likes to think of oneself as a semi-local. But every now and then something brings you squarely back to tourist status. We hailed a cab the other night in the Houhai district after eating in a great little hideaway restaurant. We nonchalantly showed the driver the address of ‘Bed’ (a cool little bar nestled among the hutongs). But something about this address sent him off into an animated Mandarin rant that had us more than a little bemused. “Yeah, that’s right, tiger” said Olly, “that’d be grand, fella. Away you go”. Meanwhile I am repeating the Mandarin for ‘bed’, “Chwang fang, Chwang fang!” getting progressively louder knowing this is the only real way he’d understand our destination. He ranted, we implored, and after a few more minutes of negotiations, he shook his head, put the taxi in gear and we were off! We drove down the street for 100 metres before swinging a u-turn, drove 100 metres back and came to a sudden halt. We looked at each other, we looked at our driver. He pointed to the small sign pointing down an alleyway… “Narr, Narr!”. Yes, he was right, we were the crazy westerners too lazy to cross the street.

On Saturday morning the first visit from our new house cleaner almost clashed with a very late Friday night. After returning home at 5am, the cleaner’s arrival a few hours later went totally unnoticed as I slept right through the doorbell. Fortunately Kristen was semi-conscious and managed to let her in. When I finally woke and walked into the hallway, my initial reaction was that our place had been ransacked by a marauding pack of Beijing cat burglars. There was stuff everywhere, strewn down the hallway, puddles of water, pieces of rag and a pair of shoes that had no business being inside our door. Then I remembered it was house cleaner day and the penny dropped. Sure enough she was busying herself in Olly’s bathroom, an enormous challenge and a brave place to start. I was out of my bedroom relatively early (11am) when you consider both Olly and Kristen each managed to hit the snooze button till around four in the afternoon. With an enormous hangover I nestled on the couch and moaned while our dutiful new house cleaner went vigorously about her job in the most unorthodox, hotchpotch fashion I’ve ever witnessed. From room to room she hopped like a startled rabbit. Polishing this, scrubbing that, back to the bathroom, move the couch (sorry, I’ll get up), back to the kitchen, and so it went. At one stage she passed me four times as I ambled to the bathroom. Perhaps a little unfairly, my early diagnosis was this woman is a fruitcake and has no idea what she is doing. After intermittently eating, walking outside and snoozing, I was awoken by the cleaner charading she was finished and it was time to pay. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was in the real world. The apartment was sparkling. Amazingly spotless! Like a battalion of rampant domestic help had staged an all-day cleaning romp. While you may think seven and a half hours of cleaning is excessive, and our place might be a pig-sty, it’s just not true. She simply didn’t rest until it was to her satisfaction. I felt somewhat embarrassed when she wrote down the amount to be paid. 75 yuan (less that $12). She wrote down the numbers 17, 24 and 31, which I decoded to mean she’d come back every Saturday. I paid her (plus a healthy tip) and waved goodbye until next week.