Not reading Chinese will make your milk go sour
I have less than half of my iBook battery left — 49 percent to be exact — so I will keep this short.
Power went out in my building at around 7:30am. This has never happened before. It’s been nearly three hours, and I still have no power.
This is not good. My office is in my apartment. It requires electricity to live. So do the apartment’s air conditioners (the low temperatures in Shanghai have been around 80 recently). The refrigerator requires electricity, too (I think I can actually hear the milk curdling as I write this).
But there didn’t seem to be any panic in the building this morning. No one else really seemed to notice or care about the blackout. As my girlfriend left for work, and walked down thirteen flights of stairs — no electricity, no elevators — she passed not one sweaty soul doing the same thing. She didn’t see anyone working to fix the problem downstairs, either, even though everyone in the building, including those responsible for maintaining it, obviously had to realize we had been without electricity for more than an hour. Weird.
It’s as if they weren’t surprised by the problem. It’s as if they expected it. It’s as if they knew it was going to happen.
I sent a text message to my former student Chris, who lives in the same apartment complex: “My home has no electricity. Does yours?”
She called back several minutes later.
“Didn’t you get the notice?” she asked
Oh God, I thought. I’m sure I did get the notice. And I’m sure I threw it away, just like every other piece of paper written in Chinese that gets stuffed in our mailbox or shoved through our gate. Junk mail, I usually assume. And I’m usually right.
Usually.
“I think they are doing construction on the street. We will be without power until 6pm,” Chris explained.
“6pm?” I gasped.
“But that is the latest. Maybe it will be better at 5pm.”
“Oh.”
“You must be hot. I went to my uncle’s place. It is comfortable here.”
So that’s my story for today. I must go now … and search for a place with air conditioning.
It’s starting to get stuffy here. I’m sweating. My legs are sticking to my desk chair.
And my iBook only has 38 percent of its battery left.
07.09.2004, 11:53 AM · Observations
10 Comments
Ok, so the power is back on … six hours earlier than expected.
Perhaps the headline of this entry shoud be: “Don’t believe everything written in a Chinese notice.”
Battery power at 75 percent.
so…Dan~~learn Chinese~!!
the power was back earlier than expected…shouldn’t u be happy about it~?hehe…seems they always give u surprise :=P
Bonny,
I think you’ll be impressed.
Today, I actually made a reservation and ordered two jugs of water over the phone … in Chinese.
Baby steps, I know. But steps.
Dan
wo, I’m catching up on so so so many stories!
Shanghai and most part of China are experiencing energy crisis following the economical boom. This year Shanghai municipal government is doing whatever it can to conserve the energy. New policies has been introduced to save electricity, including all the department stores and malls (There are only like thousands of them in Shanghai) must maintain thermostats no lower than 26 C (78.8 F), Enterprises to rotate off days from the weekend to week days to balance the weight of manufacture energy consumption etc. Visitors to Shanghai mostly are surprised how bring the night is due to the reflections of projecting lights from all the buildings. Well, all the projecting lights will be shut down as soon as the temperature reach 35 C ( 95 F ) to conserve the energy. That might not be too bad considering how much light pollution the night sky of Shanghai has. Hopefully, this will result more birds to return.
Beijing turned off the power in the area where I am staying from 9am-5pm a few weeks ago. We knew about it ahead of time and quickly removed our selves from this house at about 10 am. US and California have better policy ( I am joking). Don’t turn off the power, the electric grid overloads, and most of California is without power.
It is my understanding that this little power outage that I wrote about was not due to the energy crisis, but rather some sort of construction in my neighborhood. (If I could read Chinese, I would likely know exactly what happened.)
Here’s a story that sheds some light on Beijing’s power woes:
Darkness descends over the Forbidden City
nothing to say , but I do have an ibook , if u want to chat ?? in Chinese ?? oh, how fun would that be ? chat with a person in Chinese whose first language is English !!
Of course, Chinese is essential in rural China. Maybe you need a 24/7 translator!