Shelved Stories: The Pyros

One afternoon early in the spring semester, we faintly heard the familiar swish-swish-swish of the Chinese long bristled brooms. It is a sound so intrinsic to our Chinese life soundtrack that at first we thought nothing of it. Yet, after a few minutes, it caused us to pause because on our current campus it is not the norm for street cleaning as the usual deep hum of a yellow-clown-ish-leaf-sucker car that bebops around leaving a wake of quivering leaves in its wake the king of campus cleaning. The change of sound instigated some sleuthing.

I made the rounds of the hutong windows, discovering the source to be two older men attempting to deal with the barrage of fallen leaves around the football field. I smiled. I was happy to see a couple of local residents take an interest in the upkeep of the area since, during school holidays, ground workers disappear and are slow to return once the semester begins.

I should have known better.

Fifteen minutes later, our hutong was filled with billows of noxious smoke. We rushed to the back windows to discover that a calm cleanup had turned into a horrific bonfire. Quickly attempting to close windows to stop the black clouds from continuing to engulf our hutong, we also screamed a few cuss words in multiple languages. The Chinese definitely resulted in a casual glance from the pyromaniacs.

In a sea of dry brush and leaves, the men thought it smart to start a fire in an effort to burn the leaves. Obviously they had grown tired of the work of actually sweeping - their task was daunting. Nonetheless, billows of black, nasty smoke continued to permeate our hutong and our entire building. Zach ran to the guard house by the gate to raise the alarm.

Within minutes, the comrades had been summoned and the men were ambushed with bureaucratic figures. Our yells and curses had been noted, for as the men tried to explain their fire ways, gestures and pointing was directed towards our hutong. (I was watching from the balcony to see how this would end.) During the heated exchange, a groundskeeper appeared to join the fray.

The groundskeeper seemed to be miffed that they were encroaching on her job.

The men were aghast that their quest to eradicate the stairs of leaves was thwarted.

The bureaucratic comrades were upset to have been disturbed from their afternoon slumbers.

It was a grumpy lot all around.

With slumped shoulders and hung heads, the fire was stamped out and a bucket was fetched.

As we worked to de-smoke our hutong, I commented that the mundane always tends to turn into mayhem in this country. Though, a piece of me felt for the gentlemen. I feel they were lulled into a memory of days long gone when the campus was mere farmland and they could burn anything and everything. In their quest of helping, they were swept away by the way things used to be done and eagerly pursued that path. I wonder upon hearing our yells were they yanked to the present and stunned to see buildings hovering around them.

However, I also feel that these two would have made an excellent showing on the evening news - eyebrows singed, smoking clothes, and a blazing football pitch behind them - spouting phrases such as: "we don't know what happened", "...and with a big whoosh it all went up in flames", and "we just wanted to clean up the leaves." 

First Week

Under the cover of darkness on a day we did not live, we landed in our adopted motherland. Engulfed in a haze of jetlag, we resumed life on this side of the globe. Of course, it has been eventful because that is just how our life seems to roll. Thus, in the words of John Oliver: Let's recap the events of the past week.

Costco became the new MMA fighting arena for Chinese. Nothing shows one's prowess like hand chopping and kung fu fighting over pieces of pork, detergent, an cheap moutai.

The current events in our port of entry caused us to find a new route to the mainland. The gathering of people at the airport was not mayhem, but did cause disruptions in transportation which meant we could not get to the ferry port. Therefore, last year we saw the massive HK to Zhuhai bridge from the sea; our first day in country, we sat comfortably in a van as we rode across it.

Our happy dance on the front porch quickly turned to verbal cussing upon opening the front door and flicking a light switch. We were without power. The multiple attempts at our breaker box were futile. Our fridge and freezer reeked of what was lost. In the week that our plant sitter had gone on holiday, tragedy had struck and left a stink.

A few hour later, a logistics worker showed up quite confident that he would push one button and resolve the issue. His efforts were as successful as ours had been. He paced the hutong. He rewired, lights flickered on, but he cautioned us to be careful.

At 4am, pop went the box and the electrical hum fell silent. Zach was able to get electricity to return to our bedroom so we could finish our slumber with the air con. Hours later, two logistic guys returned (one from the night before, the other new to the puzzle.) After more pacing, lots of gesturing, and a handful of phone calls, the electrician from the start translated this message: You have a big problem.

Over the course of the week, we have had around seven different guys show up in a quest to solve the electrical mystery. Each stepped across our threshold with an overzealous confidence only to depart dejected and baffled.

The bright side is that we are at a half-functioning status. Currently, our front room, bedroom, and kitchen are with power; the bathroom, office and balcony are without it. Unfortunately, we have lost a couple more outlets in the front room. We do fear that we will end up frying all circuits since we are having to plug electrical devices into such a select few outlets. The extension cord draped through our kitchen, passed through the window, and wrapped around the building into our balcony is a comical sight and a reminder that things could be much worse. On Thursday, Zach devised the system so we could shower with warm water (because bucket bathing is such a great reminder that flowing showers are a gift from heaven!) Plus, laundry is important.

For the record, no resolution for power has been presented and we have not seen a logistics person in a couple of days. We think it will be an all semester endeavor.

It must also be noted that thrown into this electrical snafu is the discovery of termites. While we were gallivanting the world, they moved in and began chomping their way through our door frames and (our suspicion) electrical wires in the walls. I have always had a suspicion that we had a few, but in our absence, the few seemed to have invited every termite within a 100 kilometer radius.

A Chinese version of pest control showed up Wednesday afternoon. Wearing a flimsy surgical mask, he hand puffed powder into the holes he created with a screwdriver. His overseer constantly told me to not touch the poison, but I questioned the validity of such statements since pest control man had the stuff smeared all over him and the flimsy surgical mask seemed not the best choice against life endangering poison. Nonetheless, our doors and door frames appear to host some weird pox thanks to the many holes and gashes left in the wake of termite killing and I stayed well clear of the powder. 

While I was entertaining Chinese pest control, Zach was battling the bank. In a stroke of unfortunate luck, the US Bank ATM in America ate Zach's Chinese bank card in mid-August. Their policy is immediate shredding of the card, which instigates a massive headache for us. Getting a replacement bank card in America is a luxurious process - just call and order a new one. In China, it means many hours at the bank. Which is why when termites were dying in the hutong, Zach was on his second time at the local bank. It was every debacle imagined, but he did walk away with a new bank account and a new card after a total of five hours spanning two days.

This coming week is my turn for a bank visit because my pin number is not working. I am so excited.

Amidst the chaos of hutong life, we started school on Tuesday morning. Our semester schedule is delightful (no Monday classes - yeah!) and our students seem to not be axe murderers. Week one is always interesting because everyone is trying to navigate the unfamiliar rhythms of school and break the fun habits of summer. Plus, we are jet lagged which always adds a weird mind messiness. 

Our department heads decided to have a meeting Thursday afternoon - held in the room well adorned with sickle and hammer paraphernalia - to inform us that we were not to mention nor discuss anything happening on the small southern island. It seems that every effort to say that HK is a part of the mainland has been aborted and the crazy child is now being shunned. Whatever the stance, we were told that if we were found to be in discussion of it, immediate deportation would most likely occur. The spies will be working overtime this semester.

Intermingled within the big moments are the small - returning to our favorite markets and shops and being greeted with excitement, menu planning, exploring a new street, cleaning, reading, catching up with Chinese friends, celebrating our sixteenth wedding anniversary, and becoming cat sitters for the next ten days.

Though parts of life are a bit hectic (because that is our normal), we are still happy to be back and starting another semester in this amazing life we get to live.