Ridiculously Badass in ShanghaiLife experiences as a foreigner in Shanghai and how you can learn from them – including my shortcut techniques for studying Chinese.

Unfortunately, I’m yet to buy a house. Hopefully sometime in the next 5 years I can afford to do so. In the meantime, I need to keep on good terms with the landlord. For the past couple years the landlord and I have never had any problems – mainly because nothing serious in the house has ever gone wrong.

For the past month, however, our washing machine and fridge have been broken. Not exactly a small problem. The landlord sent her “friend” who she called a “professional” repairman to fix these two appliances. After 3 weeks and 3 or 4 attempts to fix the washing machine, it was finally fixed.  The fridge, however, was not fixed yet (which was particularly annoying because I like to cook).

Apparently, after the 4th attempt to fix the fridge, the repairman (professional?) reported back to my landlord saying that there’s actually no problem with the fridge and there never was a problem. I found this hard to believe, seeing how the air inside the fridge was warmer than the air outside (and it’s been 15C these days in Shanghai).

It was obvious that she didn’t really want to help me fix the fridge. Or if she did want to help me, she sure wasn’t moving too fast.

So the fridge was still not fixed and now it was time to pay rent and I came up with a plan to light a small fire under my landlords butt. I planned to hold out on giving her all the rent money until the fridge was fixed. She tried to feed me a bunch of reasons why she thinks there’s nothing wrong with the fridge, so I told her to just come by here and see for herself.

She finally agreed there was a problem, called the fridge’s manufacturer repair men, they come by, realize what the problem is in about 30 seconds, and fix it in about 15 seconds (the just replaced a small sensor on the freezer door). And they fixed this all before my landlords eyes. So much for her friend the “professional repairman”.  I absolutely loved that moment – the landlord “losing face”  - it looked good on her and I think it sent the point home that she should really believe what I say to her (I think for some reason she originally thought I didn’t want to pay rent so I made up some excuse such as the fridge being broken).

So now, no more milk going bad! And cold orange juice with my eggs in the morning!

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Some key phrases:

冰箱有问题 bing1xiang1 you3 wen4ti3 = there’s a problem with the fridge

房东 fang2dong1 = landlord

洗衣机 xi3yi1ji1 = washing machine

房租 fang2zu1 = rent money

修不了 xiu1buliao3 = can not be fixed

修得了 xiu1deliao3 = can be fixed

丢脸 = diu1lian3 = lose face