Tap water in
Boiling water is an option, but not in the quantities we need, so bottled water is the answer. Our apartment came with a water cooler, which heats water too, and an empty water bottle. The key is to ring the company listed on the bottle and get them to deliver a new one to replace the empty one. Difficult! My Chinese is just not up to it.
I enlisted the help of a young Chinese women, who worked with me, to ring and arrange a delivery time. The problem was my instructions seemed to get confused by the two layers of communication. Often the delivery just never happened, or occurred after the time agreed. On one occasion, after the third attempt to get water delivered and finally having to leave the flat, I received a phone call. I dutifully explained, in Chinese, that I did not speak Chinese. I received a second call; again I explained, in Chinese, I only spoke English. A little while later there was another call from a young man speaking accented English asking if I wanted to buy something. No, I don’t want to buy anything over the phone!! He persisted until I finally realised he was asking did I want to buy water, and was trying to communicate that the delivery person was at our apartment and I should let him in. It was 4 hours after the delivery time and I was on the other side of town! I found myself resorting, again, to lugging home a couple of days’ supply of 3 or 4 1.5 litre bottles, at ¥3 each.
(Click for a larger image)
With this theory in mind I decide to take another approach; find a new supplier locally and build a relationship with them face-to-face. I walk the streets around the vegetable market in our emerging neighbourhood. Many of the new shops are vacant, but I find a place with both gas and water bottles piled up, a motor bike and very little else. I pull out pre-prepared notes of what I might have to say, or be asked, laboriously written in characters as well as pinyin. The lithe women looks at me blankly when I ask for water, her plumper husband looks at me blankly. I pull out my written notes and the man walks away. Maybe they only understand Mǐnnánhuà, the local dialect, maybe they can’t read? I feel utterly defeated, but I can’t give up and am about to start an elaborate charade when the man returns with the young women from the tea shop next door - she can speak workable English. It looks like we will have water after all. I buy 2 new bottles of water; ¥30 for each bottle, refundable on return, and ¥8 for 18.9 litres of water. The wiry woman follows me to the apartment on the motor bike and carries both bottles up 4 flights of stairs. I can barely lift one on to the cooler.
As we got used to each other I find we can communicate through my poor Chinese. I have to remember that in this part of
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