The reason there have been no new posts for two-and-a-half days is not only that I've been out rocking and partying all week (though that would certainly be enough to explain my silence), but because I managed to get my phone (and thus also my ADSL Internet link) cut off for non-payment of the bill.
I may have commented on this before in one of the disguised 'China rants' of the my old 'Where in the world am I?' strand. You don't actually receive a telephone bill in this country: you're just expected to know when the bill is due. It's quite hard to remember, because they are extraordinarily inconsistent as to how much leeway they will give, sometimes not cutting you off for two or three weeks after the final due date, other times cutting you off ahead of the due date! It's quite mystifying. My unscheduled trip back to the UK in January further deranged my usual monthly schedules. And in fact, the last two months I have been so busy that I asked one of my former students to pay the phone bill for me. So, that's why I forgot this time. Mea culpa.
At least paying the bill went remarkably straightforwardly this time. And I was reconnected within a couple of hours. Woo-hoo!
It is not always thus. There's still no mechanism for the easy transfer of money in this country. As far as I'm aware, there is no such thing as a personal cheque. And credit cards are still something of a novelty, and really available only to the hyper-rich. No, the vast majority of transactions are still done with cash. Including paying your utilities bills. Since the banks here don't really offer any worthwhile banking services, the facility to pay household bills through them is about the only thing that keeps them in business. At times, it keeps them very busy indeed. The queues at my tiny local branch of the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China often snake out of the door and into the street. Ah, but on a Friday lunchtime at the end of a holiday week, the place was nearly deserted. Hurrah! It still might not have been a swift or easy operation. Sometimes the clerks, for devilment, will ask a lot of idiotic questions, they'll try to insist that you prove your right to pay the bill, they'll ask for all sorts of corroborating details about your address, how long you've lived there, what your landlord's name is (I feel sure one day they'll even ask me what his ID number is), sometimes they'll even try to get you to fill out a payment form (entirely in Chinese) yourself. Deep breath. "Look, I've come in here at least 20 or 30 times before. You know me. You know I don't speak much Chinese, and I don't read or write it at all. Could you just take my money and give me a receipt? Please."
This is the essence of the China experience, the reason why a lot of expats living here get so stressed out: even the most simple, everyday tasks can be unexpectedly, needlessly, infuriatingly difficult. But then, the flip side of that is that sometimes - like today - things turn out to be not as much hassle as you'd expected, and for the rest of the day you have a song in your heart and a skip in your step.
3 comments:
You DID have us wondering. But as it is MIDI week, and you mentioned you wanted to slow down on the prolific posting, and I am limited to dial-up and hence not on the 'net more than once or twice a day... I figured this was as good a time as any for you to take a break from writing.
(Yes, my ability to read your stuff does factor into my overall concern about your lack of writing - Froogville is much like Jianghu - an intimate experience with the artist/author in residence.)
Congratulations on the easy phone reconnect. What song was playing in your heart?
The song has no name. It hasn't been written yet. It is not so much music as an impulse of delight that might result in music.... if I were musically literate enough to give it expression.
"It is not so much music as an impulse of delight that might result in music...."
keep that one in your notebook for later use. very well said.
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