danger!

i had forgotten how concerned with danger the chinese are. the topic is frequently discussed as to what is dangerous. things like traveling to the States is dangerous because everyone there has a gun waiting to shoot at you as soon as you step off the plane. traveling in China, to anywhere outside of where one lives and is familiar with, is dangerous.

and yet! the seat belts in taxi's are rarely used and most of the back seat belts are either cut off or completely covered up by seat covers. i have watched pedestrians not even look both ways and wander out into oncoming traffic fully trusting that that big bus will slow, or barely miss them (which they always do!). or like my friend in the photo, and all his construction buddies on the project of my 6 story building, climb around on metal pipe scafolding with tennis shoes, no safety harnesses and no platforms between bars. washing dishes at a public street eatery means rinsing out the bowls and spoons with cold water and leaving them stacked, wet, on the counter top that has been wiped off with a towel that has never been washed - ready for the next customer to use.

over the past week i noticed that the stove top in my kitchen smelled of gas. i told my maid who commented on how dangerous that was. she contacted the landlady who immediately called the gas company. the gas guy sure enough detected a couple of leaks and shut off the pipes telling me all the while that this was very dangerous. then my handman showed up this morning with the stove guy to replace the old stove and fix the problem. the handyman spoke fast and furious saying the work "dangerous" about 20 times.

they were planning on just replacing the stove top since it was old and seemed to have the most obvious leaking problem. but the day before the gas guy had also detected a dangerous leak near the turn off valve on the pipe system, and i wanted to make sure that was addressed as well - since this is very dangerous. to validate that there was a leak there too i showed the handyman the document that the gas guy has written up about the situation (lots of scribbly chinese with gas lines vocab - nothing i could read).

mr. stove guy was all the while busy installing the stove. after hearing our discussion and mr handyman guy saying some things to him, he pulled out his cigarette lighter fired it up and put it right next to the turn off valve where the leak had been detected. "nope, no leak here" - then he put the lighter next to the back of the new stove to test that spot... still OK.

i hurriedly backed out of the room and went to my office, the furthest part of the apartment, and closed the door. about 5 minutes later mr handyman (telling me not to turn on the gas at all cause this was very dangerous and it needed to be fixed properly) informed me that the new stove top also had some leaking problems so he and stove guy would return tomorrow with a new stove top, and new piping to fix the turn off valve area. i'm not sure what changed their minds - but their high tech testing methods must have shown some leaking as they will be back tomorrow to fix my most dangerous situation. no hot oatmeal for me in the morning.