And then the man climbed out my window
I heard a noise the other day as I worked on my computer. It came from over near my window. I looked and saw a man outside. This startled me — I live on the 13th floor.
The man was dangling from some kind of rudimentary window washer’s apparatus and appeared to be interested in the tube attached to our wall-mounted air conditioning unit. The tube, from which condensation drips, hangs out our window. (Actually, as you can see in this photo, the tube along with a bundle of wires from the AC are bound together and forced through a hole that was rather hastily cut through one of our windows. It’s “sealed” with masking tape — no wonder our apartment is frigid in the winter — and looks really nice. Ah, Chinese craftsmenship.)
Soon, the man outside my window disappeared from view. A couple hours later, however, he was ringing my doorbell. He looked rather young and wore a blue work suit and carried a bundle of new plastic tubing. I led him to my office and he went to work. He was very friendly, and asked if I had any newspaper he could lay down on the shelves beneath my window because he didn’t want to get them dirty. I gave him some newspaper, and he still made the area dirty. But it’s the thought that counts.
I had no idea who asked this guy to do the job he was doing. I wondered if it had anything to do with the old ladies who woke me up rather rudely at 7 a.m. one Saturday morning — the Chinese never ring a doorbell just once, or even twice, it’s again and again and again until you arrive at the door. They lived downstairs and wanted to ask me if I had a habit of throwing water out my window.
I let this guy do his work, assuming it would be quick and that he could do what needed to be done by simply reaching outside the window. I glanced over at him and the wide open window and wondered if he was small enough to fall right out. I started to get a little nervous.
And then the man climbed out the window — and we don’t have a balcony, either. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He straddled the air conditioner, betting his life on the fact that another worker he didn’t know had done his job properly and fastened the unit securely some indefinite number of years ago. This is never a safe bet in China.
He obviously had done this before and showed no signs of fear. But just watching him, my stomach tightened. I started to sweat. It was as though I was out on that ledge. I was rather worried — but not too worried to forget about my digital camera sitting nearby. Here’s a Flickr set of the whole ordeal, with captions and everything.
I told a Shanghainese friend what had happened, and he wasn’t surprised at all. “Those guys die all the time doing that,” he said. I asked how much he thought this guy got paid to risk his life like that.
His answer? Less than 120 bucks a month.
06.18.2005, 12:37 PM · Observations
8 Comments
Hey Dan, kinda reminds me of that scene out of Brazil, when Robert De Niro appears in Jonathan Pryce’s apartment. Interesting story…Cheers from the Kong, don.
Is that 120 RMB or 120USD???
120 USD or around 1,000 RMB per month. But that was just an estimate.
Life at risk for 1000 rmb meager living, Sad.
I can beat that!
Same thing happened to me at the Somerset Grand Shanghai Appartments, except I live on the 21st floor and it was dark at the time!
My friend was moving flats. The workmen came to dismantle the aircon unit. He SAT ON the compressor, several floors up, while he was unscrewing it from the brackets.
My other favourite is workers who stand on the brick wall, while in the process of hammering it to pieces directly below them.
Life is cheap.
Are Westerners the only ones who really value life? It’s a good thing. At least someone in this world values life. :p
Yup, can understand why your stomach tightened, I get woozy leaning on the balcony rails on the 9th floor. I don’t have vertigo, I just take a look at any of the rusty bolts and my mind takes me down the 9 flights of stairs, in the most direct way possible.
In Shanghai this isn’t so much paranoia as the countless stories of how concrete supports have been filled with garbage to cut costs.
Has no one else given any thought to where all that waste is? It’s not All out in the alley next door.