Sleeper Cell Contractors

It’s amazing how some things are the same, regardless of location or culture or even the space-time continuum. Like pyramids built by both ancient Egyptians and Mayans (both undoubtedly under the influence of extraterrestrials). So, too, as I’ve learned in the last 3 months renovating my new apartment, are evil contractors -- they live in every corner of the world, sharing the common trait of unscrupulousness wherever you find them. (Maybe evil contractors are sleeper extraterrestrials living in our midst?)

Ok, to be fair, the contractors that are working on my apartment are very professional, and pay attention to every detail thought up by my architect extraordinaire, Joy Hou. I’m talking about the contractors attached to the vendors here in Shanghai.

The way it usually works, when you buy something for home improvement here, is that the vendor will send out their guys to deliver and install. And the general rule is that they suck.

My most recent experience in how much they suck was getting my new kitchen installed. I spent about Rmb14,000 on a new kitchen, which was installed a few days ago. It turns out that the sons-of-worms managed to scratch the hell out of my new wood flooring, hung the upper portion of the cabinetry too low, used cheap screws to attach the cabinets (making them unstable), got the alignment wrong so that the height of the handles don’t match, and used the wrong color trim on the cabinetry.

I’ve screamed bloody murder twice now to the kitchen vendor. The only thing I got out of these calls was finding out that my Chinese gets really bad when I get angry -- I start to stutter and forget words and so I keep saying “that that that that thing” / 那个那个那个东西, as in “I’m going to beat you with that that that that thing if you don’t fix that that that that other thing tomorrow."

Ok ok, some contractors are evil and this whole renovation process almost killed me. But in the end, property ownership has turned out to be incredibly rewarding (never thought I’d agree with John Locke on anything), and I’ve found a new indicator for China economic well-being: the amount of activity in the home improvement centers.

Home improvement is aspirational: you dream of a more beautiful life for you and your family through new flooring or new bathroom tiles or a new closet. (Or, in my case, a new Japanese toilet with temperature-controlled seat and water spray with an automatic deodorizer option. What can I say, I’ve got a bit of the hyper antiseptic Japanese in me.) (But a spraying toilet seat is better than using wet baby wipes, as my favorite actor Terrence Howard suggests.) (While I’m on the subject of favorites and buttock hygiene, here’s my favorite Confucius quote: “Confucius say, man who goes to sleep with itchy butt wakes with smelly hand.”) (Ok, I get side tracked, no more parentheticals.)

And home improvement is an expression of belief in a better tomorrow. You don't sink a big chunk of disposable income on home improvement as opposed to basic rice and beans unless you have confidence in not only a secure economic future but also a better one. (Although this probably does not apply to me: I went way over my budget not because of confidence in my ability to earn; it was more a matter of unstoppable inertia -- if I want floor heating, I have to get new floors, which means a change in the color scheme/palette of the entire apartment, which means the previous kitchen and closets have to go, which means an opportunity to install a state-of-the-art water filter system, which means new pipes, which means digging up walls, and so on and so forth, although I'm not sure this explains why I have to re-do the bathrooms... In other words, my home improvement was driven by an inability to stop taking one simple assumption to its logical end.) (Well, ok, I mean it now, that was the last of the tangential parentheticals.)

If home improvement is indeed a leading indicator at the grass roots lao bai xing level, then there is no bubble here in China. In fact, we're just now getting started on the elevator ride.

I went to Ikea here in Shanghai yesterday, to buy a few necessities and a ton of other things that I don't need and didn't want to buy but could not help myself, and was overwhelmed by the thousands of people buying Ivar shelves and Svalov side tables. There were so many people stuffed into this ginormous Ikea and sucking air that I could feel oxygen availability dipping well below safe levels.

And I love it. I love seeing young Chinese couples snapping up bright red plastic hangers and faux brass candle holders. I love the 50,000 people getting off diesel-fume-spewing public buses everyday at the Shanghai light textile market in Putuo District haggling over prices of roman shades and rattan rugs. I love walking through the hundreds of stalls in the home improvement malls off of Yishan Lu with their 10,000 varieties of bath & shower fixtures. I just love it.

I'm usually a pretty cynical dude, but I get slightly emotional when I see people here going gaga over home improvement, taking pride in their homes, confident in a brighter future, aspiring to a life more beautiful (and in some cases a butt more clean).

Next time, I will post pictures of my new home, with magic toilet.