Shower Power
I am naked, balanced on a tiny pair of brown plastic sandals in a little cement box. All around me, the sounds of water springing from the rows of identical cement boxes. But in my box, nothing. I look around again. 4 metal hooks on the left. Two shelves. Two pipes leading to a standard metal shower head on the wall. 2 metal valves, neither of which works. I turn and turn and turn. Nothing. I poke my head out of the box, look up and down the row of other boxes. From each one, steam rising. Clearly I am missing something. Who would ever have thought that taking a shower could be so difficult??
Our flight from Shanghai arrives in Chengdu just after lunch time, 3 hours and 18 minutes to cover just over a thousand kilometers of land. Is it my imagination, or is that really slow for a plane? The flight is smooth and uneventful, but wearying in the way that commercial flights always are.
To get to Pudong International Airport in plenty of time for our 8:45am flight, Timothy and I meet at the gates of Fudan University at 6am. I spent the few previous hours sleeping in the rain-wet dorm bed of his colleague, waking damp and congested and very, very tired. He spent the few hours of night with his old classmate 20 minutes walk away. We take a taxi (such luxury!) to Pudong, mostly I think because after missing our train from Hangzhou to Shanghai the day before (hour long bus ride took 90 minutes, getting us to the platform just in time to watch the train pull away) he is worried about missing the plane.
From Chengdu's airport to his dorm in Sichuan University, Timothy and I take an hour long bus ride. And then ask several people for directions to the university, which we find on foot about half an hour later. The temperature is considerably higher than in Hangzhou or Shanghai, leaving us both sweaty and exhausted in our layers of winter clothing. Along the streets, flowering trees are in full bloom, weeping willows already green. Even the breeze is warm.
First order or business, food. Second order of business, clean up.
After last year's earthquake in Sichuan, all the students spent two weeks sleeping under plastic tarps on the university sports field. Campus housing across China is row upon row of cement apartment blocks that look sturdy but are not particularly shake-friendly. Timothy shares a 5-room apartment with 15 other men - 4 rooms with 4 men each, identical bunks mounted above identical desks, a common room (with nothing but stacked boxes and a door to the balcony), and a 3-stall bathroom area with 2 sinks. There is no hot water. To shower, all of the students (and there are approximately 70 000 at this university, a number that boggles my imagining) go to a central bathhouse open between 4 and 10:30 every evening. When we walk over (me with a borrowed student card from one of his classmates), it is 4:20.
'Ooh, bad luck,' says Timothy to me as we approach the building. He is smirking. It takes me a moment to realize that there is a line of women snaking about 15 meters out the door, while there is no line at all for men. The men's area is on the first floor of the building, while the women's is on the second. The line continues all the way up the double set of stairs and around the corner out of site. 'I'll meet you back here,' he says, skipping off into the steam, fully expecting me to still be waiting in line when he gets out.
The line moves quite quickly, faster than I expect. As I approach the front of the line I watch the other women carefully to see what they do. Each one holds her student card to an electronic screen mounted waist-high near the door, and then watches a series of numbers flash onto the screen like a crazy lottery. Each woman who does this seems very intent on the numbers displayed, and quite a few seem surprised that anything appears at all. Since all of the other bathhouses I've been in so far are just big common rooms with a row of shower-heads around the edges I'm confused by the numbers. Is it showing how many people are currently inside? Is their a maximum capacity? I memorize the 26-05 that flashes after my card (just in case) and step inside.
This is not like any other bathhouse I've ever been in. Instead of a common shower area, it is row upon row upon row of identical cement booths. Each one is numbered - first by block, and then, within the blocks, by individual stall. 26 is the final block. 05 is the last stall. Which means, I realize, that everyone in the line after me is waiting for one of us to finish. No pressure! Now, if only I could figure out how to turn the water on!!
Just as I am about to intrude upon some stranger's shower, suddenly I see the tiny white box mounted to the wall behind the shower head. It is flashing 'PASS' in red letters. Do I need to scan the card again, in here? I flash my card skeptically at the box, still holding the coat from whose pocket I have just taken it, and am immediately drenched from above with scalding water. The taps don't turn ON the water, they just adjust the temperature. And I have turned off the cold and turned the hot on all the way.
Aah, the beauty of hot water! For approximately one minute. Unitl it occurs to me that 1. I have no idea how long the water will last - is it on a timer? 2. I have no idea how to turn off the water if it's not on a timer. 3. Once I have turned off the water, how much time do I have before another woman comes barging into my little cement box? And, 4. Is my borrowed card being charged by time or water volume or both? I have never had such a stressful shower in my life!
The card turns the water off. No one else barges in. The stall does not become available for another woman until I click the card AGAIN outside of the building. My shower has cost 1 yuan, the minimum possible. And despite waiting in line for half an hour and taking forever to figure out the water deal, I am still finished before Timothy. And feeling pretty damn good about the universe too, both clean and triumphant over the system.
Our flight from Shanghai arrives in Chengdu just after lunch time, 3 hours and 18 minutes to cover just over a thousand kilometers of land. Is it my imagination, or is that really slow for a plane? The flight is smooth and uneventful, but wearying in the way that commercial flights always are.
To get to Pudong International Airport in plenty of time for our 8:45am flight, Timothy and I meet at the gates of Fudan University at 6am. I spent the few previous hours sleeping in the rain-wet dorm bed of his colleague, waking damp and congested and very, very tired. He spent the few hours of night with his old classmate 20 minutes walk away. We take a taxi (such luxury!) to Pudong, mostly I think because after missing our train from Hangzhou to Shanghai the day before (hour long bus ride took 90 minutes, getting us to the platform just in time to watch the train pull away) he is worried about missing the plane.
From Chengdu's airport to his dorm in Sichuan University, Timothy and I take an hour long bus ride. And then ask several people for directions to the university, which we find on foot about half an hour later. The temperature is considerably higher than in Hangzhou or Shanghai, leaving us both sweaty and exhausted in our layers of winter clothing. Along the streets, flowering trees are in full bloom, weeping willows already green. Even the breeze is warm.
First order or business, food. Second order of business, clean up.
After last year's earthquake in Sichuan, all the students spent two weeks sleeping under plastic tarps on the university sports field. Campus housing across China is row upon row of cement apartment blocks that look sturdy but are not particularly shake-friendly. Timothy shares a 5-room apartment with 15 other men - 4 rooms with 4 men each, identical bunks mounted above identical desks, a common room (with nothing but stacked boxes and a door to the balcony), and a 3-stall bathroom area with 2 sinks. There is no hot water. To shower, all of the students (and there are approximately 70 000 at this university, a number that boggles my imagining) go to a central bathhouse open between 4 and 10:30 every evening. When we walk over (me with a borrowed student card from one of his classmates), it is 4:20.
'Ooh, bad luck,' says Timothy to me as we approach the building. He is smirking. It takes me a moment to realize that there is a line of women snaking about 15 meters out the door, while there is no line at all for men. The men's area is on the first floor of the building, while the women's is on the second. The line continues all the way up the double set of stairs and around the corner out of site. 'I'll meet you back here,' he says, skipping off into the steam, fully expecting me to still be waiting in line when he gets out.
The line moves quite quickly, faster than I expect. As I approach the front of the line I watch the other women carefully to see what they do. Each one holds her student card to an electronic screen mounted waist-high near the door, and then watches a series of numbers flash onto the screen like a crazy lottery. Each woman who does this seems very intent on the numbers displayed, and quite a few seem surprised that anything appears at all. Since all of the other bathhouses I've been in so far are just big common rooms with a row of shower-heads around the edges I'm confused by the numbers. Is it showing how many people are currently inside? Is their a maximum capacity? I memorize the 26-05 that flashes after my card (just in case) and step inside.
This is not like any other bathhouse I've ever been in. Instead of a common shower area, it is row upon row upon row of identical cement booths. Each one is numbered - first by block, and then, within the blocks, by individual stall. 26 is the final block. 05 is the last stall. Which means, I realize, that everyone in the line after me is waiting for one of us to finish. No pressure! Now, if only I could figure out how to turn the water on!!
Just as I am about to intrude upon some stranger's shower, suddenly I see the tiny white box mounted to the wall behind the shower head. It is flashing 'PASS' in red letters. Do I need to scan the card again, in here? I flash my card skeptically at the box, still holding the coat from whose pocket I have just taken it, and am immediately drenched from above with scalding water. The taps don't turn ON the water, they just adjust the temperature. And I have turned off the cold and turned the hot on all the way.
Aah, the beauty of hot water! For approximately one minute. Unitl it occurs to me that 1. I have no idea how long the water will last - is it on a timer? 2. I have no idea how to turn off the water if it's not on a timer. 3. Once I have turned off the water, how much time do I have before another woman comes barging into my little cement box? And, 4. Is my borrowed card being charged by time or water volume or both? I have never had such a stressful shower in my life!
The card turns the water off. No one else barges in. The stall does not become available for another woman until I click the card AGAIN outside of the building. My shower has cost 1 yuan, the minimum possible. And despite waiting in line for half an hour and taking forever to figure out the water deal, I am still finished before Timothy. And feeling pretty damn good about the universe too, both clean and triumphant over the system.
posted by Roberta | 4:40 PM
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