Trying to get into hot water in China

Since moving to China last month, one of the hardest things to get used to has been the shower situation. First, in Chinese bathrooms, the shower, toilet, and washing machine are all on one level surface with nothing dividing the spaces, but that’s not the real problem. The main issue is that the water heater in my apartment is solar powered (fairly common here), which presents a problem when there may only be a handful of sunny days  between October and March. My roommate has told me horror stories of going through weeks last winter without hot water. Already, I’ve had a stretch of eight days where the best our solar powered heater could muster was luke warm.

Enjoying the clout of being the “new guy in town” and having Chinese bosses that were to eager to help welcome me, I decided to play my card before my new guy shine had worn off. My apartment is being provided by my employer and I politely told my boss that not having hot water would be unacceptable and asked that they work quickly to amend this situation.

After a week or two of repeatedly pestering my Chinese bosses, they finally agreed to purchasing an electric hot water heater and having it installed in my bathroom. They arranged a meeting at my apartment between them and my landlord this past Tuesday and the results were too hilarious not to document. Enjoy:

Tuesday: The meeting is scheduled for 4pm. At 3pm, I hear someone pounding on my door. I open it to find Chris, who handles the day-to-day needs of the American employees, along with two other Chinese coworkers Tiffany and Cherry, who is also my neighbor. Chris tells me that the meeting still isn’t till 4pm, but they wanted to get here early. No reason, they just wanted to get here early. I invite them in and they end up sitting around in my living room for the next hour talking to each other in Chinese. After about 10 minutes, I retreat to read in my bedroom and just leave them be.

At 4pm sharp, my landlord shows up. He immediately lights up a cigarette –

And here’s where I give a brief aside about Chinese culture: In China, every man over 18 smokes. A good percentage of women do as well, even if it’s only when drinking. Most of the men, especially older ones, can’t even grasp that someone would chose not to smoke. The only reasonable excuse seems to be if you’re Muslim, which there are a few here and they seem to be given a pass. Also, it’s considered completely normal to light up a cigarette in someone else’s house without asking permission and would be rude for a host to ask them to extinguish their cigarette or abstain from smoking while in the house.

Okay, back to our story:

My landlord lights up a cigarette. Chris lights up a cigarette. They start arguing (I believe) in Chinese. After five minutes of this, in which time both men have finished that first cigarette and have lit up a second, I decide to retreat back to my bedroom and my Kindle.

I listen from my bedroom as they continue to argue (again, I’m guessing) for 45 minutes, both yelling over each other, only shutting up when they have to take another inhale. Finally, I hear my front door close and I get up to check back in on the action. I open my bedroom door to a plume of cigarette smoke. Carbon monoxide flooding into my lungs, I ask Chris about the result of the palaver. He tells me that after much debate, my landlord has agreed that if my boss buys an electric hot water heater, he will install it.

Chris offers me a cigarette to “celebrate.” I decline. He insists. I decline again, explaining yet again that I don’t smoke. I look across the room through the clouds of smoke and see my roommate, John, holding a lit cigarette that he’s quite obviously not smoking. I find out later that Chris stuck the cigarette in his mouth and lit it over his polite protestations that he didn’t want to smoke. Luckily, Chris never makes it that far with me as after my third hard no, he finally relents. He tells me that he will order the heater that night and we’ll get it installed in a few days. He, Tiffany, and Cherry leave. My apartment reeks of tobacco. We open all the windows despite the 40 degree weather.

Thursday: The hot water heater arrives. They actually paid for overnight shipping! It’s set to be installed on Sunday, while my roommate and I are working.

Sunday: I arrive home from work eager to test out my new hot water. I switch on my bathroom light to see pure absurdity. Because rather than replace the solar powered shower system, my landlord simply just installed the electric water heater (which comes with its own shower head) on the opposite wall of my narrow bathroom. The result is my already tiny shower space has grown even smaller, yet I now have two shower heads – one solar powered and one electric.

Monday: The absurdity continues. Today, I notice another issue when I go to do my laundry. As I said, the laundry machines in China are located in the bathroom. Apparently, when my landlord installed the water heater he also had to replace the electrical outlet, which of course means that our washing machine will no longer plug into the wall it’s nestled against. The solution: dragging the washing machine across the floor to where it can reach the next closest outlet while still being able to use a hose extension so that it can reach the drain, and then pushing it back when the laundry is finished.

But at least I’ll have hot water this winter.