It's Electric

Now that is winter, our apartment is pretty cold. Most mornings the standing water on the roof outside my living room window is frozen. This cold seeps into the concrete walls of our apartment and doesn’t really seem to ever let go. That and the single pane windows make for a great excuse to lay in bed.
Heating these places is a bit of a joke. While some people have caught onto the joys of radiant floor heating, our “old” apartment, (built in 1999) has several wall mounted electric blowers. But in a two-storey place, all the heat goes upstairs. So that’s where Sean and I have been hanging out, going through his dvd collection. Not that he has tried to collect movies, it just happens. Going to the movies in Shanghai will run a guy $10 a ticket. For about a dollar, you can get the DVD. And in Hangzhou, there is only one theater here with movies in English. Thus, a whole pile of dvds.
Problem is, on a really cold night, we have to fire up both heaters and that creates a certain problem, namely, overloaded circuits. Having fixed the problem with the undersized extension cord that nearly burned the curtains off the wall, the issue migrated to the circuit breakers. When the heater overloaded that circuit, they blew. But upon inspection, they were fine. Only the whole upstairs was dark. What the…? I called the neighbor to ask.
Lilly is a 20-something woman whose parents are friends with our landlord. They volunteered to help and thus far, I have called upon them, Lilly really, about five times. (I have no idea how much guanxi I am gonna have to repay, but what can I do?) I texted her a message and she said her dad would look into the problem. Turns out there are circuit breakers on the ground floor, too. Mr. Li showed me where they are and with a hank of aluminum wire and a screwdriver, reinstalled the burned fuse and we were in good shape.
Last night, though, it happened again. Sean was the only one up at 2:30 in the morning so he had a look, but all the ceramic inserts look the same and instead of blowing the power to the whole building, he wisely decided to leave me a note and pursue it in the morning.
Having received said note, I decided to drop off the two pots I borrowed from Lilly’s mom and tell her, oh, by the way, the power is out again. I had my own tools this time, but her dad jumped at the chance. He let me do the work and I marked our particular circuits with a sharpie pen. Only this didn’t do the trick.
On the next trip down five flights, I took a few bags of trash and lucky timing, a friend was dropping by Lilly’s so I could tell her we were still no go. Dad returned with the foot stool and a test light. Upon inspection he found one wire disconnected and above it, two others welded together. He continued poking around, a procedure that got me a little nervous. I’ve played with enough electricity to know it is not so wise to go poking around in a live breaker box, especially when the power is 220v. People die all the time doing this kind of thing. Dad though, continued to prod until FOOOOM!
At the blue flash, I turned and braced myself for the worst. My first thought was that a limp body would be falling on me. That fear unrealized, I figured he was propped against the wall. Still, no sound. My heart racing, I looked up to see him standing in front of the panel, acrid smoke drifting above us. He was completely unfazed and poking around again. Ghah!
At the noise, Lilly came out, saying something about the explosion. Yeah, no shit, I told her. “Can you ask your dad to quit poking around?” He just laughed and kept fiddling but his little experiment had fried a couple more wires. “Um, Lilly? Ya know, this can wait. We have power downstairs. Maybe we should call someone?” Nothing doing. More inspection until he was satisfied that yes, maybe we needed an expert.
“You will have to pay them,” Lilly said. “That’s fine,” I told her. “I’d rather pay for an electrician than a mortician.” Her dad closed the breaker box door and chuckled. “As long as you only use one hand,” he told Lilly, “you don’t have to worry.” Got it.

I love this do-it-yourself attitude, but it comes at a certain expense. There’s not much regard or perhaps I should say over concern about safety the way there is in America. Every day I see people cutting steel and grinding concrete with neither eye nor ear protection. Same for the guys with the jackhammers. There’s also a lot of welding going on in this growing city and I always see people watching the pretty light.

On a personal level, people don’t wear bike helmets but their bikes are so mechanically decrepit that they can’t go much above 10 mph and they have good skill at avoiding wrecks, though at least once a week, I see a bike under a bumper. Ick. I have to say though, I like the freedom of riding without a helmet without fear of getting a ticket. The cops do mind, though, when I ride someone on the back rack. Still haven’t figured out why they care about that.

Alas, the power has been restored. On a fine Sunday afternoon, an electrician dropped by and spent a good hour replacing the ceramic shoes that hold the fuses. The bill was $10. LOTS cheaper than a mortician. And it’s nice to have some heat, too.

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