Zhuangxiu Blues

Loading all the flooring into a van

"Zhuangxiu" (zhoo-ong shee-oh, 装修) literally means "to fit up", as in, to fit up a house. Or as we would say, remodel. In China all the apartments are concrete boxes, so when one wants to zhuangxiu an apartment it involves a lot of jack hammers and obnoxious drilling. 

Two weeks ago, the family two floors above us started this process on their apartment. And if the loud noises and constant shaking from the jack hammers isn't enough, our stairwell is filled with clouds of dust and cigarette smoke from the construction crew. Not to mention the level of activity going up and down the stairs has increased dramatically causing Samson to bark loudly and often. Poor Atalie can hardly get a nap in, and I feel like I'm going crazy with all the noise. 

This is just one of those things that is part of life in China. Thankfully, the construction is limited to working hours and there is usually a two hour break for lunch around noon. It could be worse. But it still drives me crazy. My amazing Ayi went upstairs and asked them to be quiet between 12-2 so Atalie could nap well at least once per day.

The amount of stuff that comes out of the apartment is amazing! We've seen woodwork, flooring (with the nails still in it), and bags of debris piled up downstairs everyday. Some of the salvageable things they probably sell or use in another apartment they own. The bags of debris will sit there until they arrange for it to be picked up. It's unbelievable the amount of mess it creates as they cart it downstairs. And they don't clean up after themselves. 

How they get all that debris down the stairs

We're surviving. Today is supposed to  be the last day of construction. Then it's just a matter of time before another neighbor decides their place needs some

updating 

When it all hits the fan, the blades come down

I'm sure you are all curious as to how things are progressing with our neighbors.  Well, they sure are progressing!  Apparently, the neighbors upstairs are so unhappy that they have started spreading malicious rumors about our landlord.  In America, this might happen and we would argue against such rumors.  Since the US is a justice-based culture, rumors that aren't true are argued and proven to be not true.  In China, it's a different ball game.  China is a shame-based culture and the concept of "saving face" runs deep in Chinese culture and defines many of their relationships.  Thus, in China, malicious rumors cannot be met be argument alone.  The person "losing face" (in this case, our landlord) must do what one can to stop the rumors and appease the opposite party.  I do not fully understand the concept of face, but we have decided that this value has prompted the following actions of our landlord.  

The Hubby taking down the fan blades.

On Thursday (two days after this previous post), our landlord came back with her mom and requested that we take the blades off our fans.  The neighbor called our landlord and told her that he can still hear the noise and believed that we were still using the fans (even though we weren't).  He requested that we have the blades removed rendering the fans ineffective.  Our landlord also informed us that she will replace our kong tiao (air conditioning unit) with a brand new one.  The Hubby and I didn't really think either of these actions were necessary, but in light of the recent rumors our landlord had no choice.  She had to save her reputation.  Thursday, our kong tiao was removed and this morning (Saturday) we had a new one installed.  After setting up the new kong tiao (which is totally awesome by the way), I thanked our landlord.  She responded, "Thank my mom."  Whoa!  Her mom bought our new kong tiao in an effort to help her daughter.  Wow.  How much was the new kong tiao?  About $700.  No cheap endeavor.

All that said, we are now waiting to see what happens next.  Do we get to put the blades back on our ceiling fans?  Will the new kong tiao appease the neighbors and help our landlord gain her reputation back?  I sure hope so.  She is absolutely the sweetest lady and I would hate to see her lose more face over this incident (especially since it is over something ridiculous).  

In other news, the coolest thunderstorm rolled through tonight lighting up the sky with bright flashes of lightening and loud thunder.  I wonder if our neighbor is hoping we lose power...

Neighborly Relations

At the Seattle airport ready to check in!

This was going to be a post about our travel to Nanjing, the flight we missed in Beijing because we were delayed out of Seattle and how we finally made it to our apartment at 2:00am.  However, I have a much better tale to tell.  One of a mystery power outage and crazy neighbors who we always seem to live next to!

Right now, our landlord is in our apartment and has just called the police.  Why has she called the police?  Because our neighbors upstairs just now turned off the power to our apartment in protest.  This morning we also lost power around 6:00am.  We were both awake (I was trying to go back to sleep) and the power went off.  Two cold showers later and around 7:30 or 8:00 someone turned it back on (only after us calling our friend to call the landlord).  The hubby investigated the power outage and noticed it was only our apartment that didn’t have power.  After it came back on, we figured it all got worked out.  Apparently, it was our neighbor who turned it off this morning as well and no, nothing is resolved.

What I haven’t told you yet is that yesterday our upstairs neighbor came down while the landlord was here signing our lease to complain that the ceiling fan in the living room was creating too much noise and bothering her husband (who has cancer).  Follow that up with over an hour of the landlord, association president and neighbor going up and down the stairs, turning on ceiling fans, turning them off, etc. trying to figure out where the noise is coming from.  We thought the issue got resolved and it was not conclusive that the noise heard upstairs was coming from our apartment.  So far, everyone who heard the “noise” such as our landlord, the association president and others have said that it is a normal noise and couldn’t be caused by the fans in the living room or bedroom or the air conditioners.   Our friend, Angelina, who stayed in our apartment for a few weeks this summer said it doesn’t matter if we turn everything off, the neighbor will still say it is caused by us.   She even accused Angelina of lying, saying that Angelina would turn off the ceiling fan and air conditioner when she heard the neighbor at the door coming to complain of the noise. 

Our neighbor (left) standing guard as the association president (not seen) checks out the ceiling fan in the bedroom

Fast forward to the present, and now we have the police, our landlord and the neighbors arguing very loudly in the stairwell.   The police told our neighbor that he has no right to turn off our power for any reason.  The neighbor shot back that he would turn off the power every day until this issue is resolved.  Ai-ya!  Meanwhile, the hubby is loving every minute of this and is actually recording the argument from the landing. 

So, we traded one crazy neighbor for another.  In America, we had a trying relationship with our neighbor.  She was an elderly lady who lived alone and complained about us to the association a lot (we owned a condo and had a shared wall with her).  We had many arguments with her over her things in the yard, our dogs, noise and everything else in between.  It was a learning experience.  In fact, we are still dealing with her as now we have tenants in our condo and she has been pestering them as well.  As I’m typing this, the hubby just turned to me and said, “Maybe our situation with our neighbor in the states was really preparing us for this.”  A good perspective check for us.  How are we to love our neighbors in this situation when we can’t even speak the language?  We want to be good neighbors.  What does that look like in this situation? 

The police have now left and our landlord asked us to not use the ceiling fans for a week and see what happens.  Our first 36 hours in country and we have already had the police stop by!  And our neighbor lady just knocked on the door again saying she can still hear the noise.  I guess this drama is far from over.