Fires and Feng Shui

I am getting a little taste of Chinese culture. The people in Macau (SAR) China are, I think, some of the nicest people in the world. At least the nicest I have met, and I’ve traveled a fair amount. But I’m getting a little taste of the culture gap now.

I had a fire in my apartment last week. There was spotlight underneath a storage space that I put blankets into. I turned on the spotlight one evening and it started the blankets on fire within about 30 minutes. Of course at the time I didn’t realize that this is what was happening (the storage unit goes into a seperate room where the light was). I just smelled smoke. Then saw smoke coming down from the lighting fixtures. Had to get the building supervisor to understand what was happening (he only speaks Cantonese Chinese). After 20 minutes I finally got him to call the fire department. By this time my apartment was full of smoke and I couldn’t even walk inside. The firetrucks came and they brought the hoses up. They tore a hole in the ceiling with their axes and sprayed water – took them about 30 minutes to get the fire out. In typical Macau manners, the firemen apologized for the mess and hoped I was not mad about it. Hey, I was glad to be alive!

If I had know what was happening I could have put it out quickly. But it could have been much worse. If I had been gone I’m pretty sure the apartment would have been lost in addition to several other units. If I had been asleep – well, I don’t want to think about that.

Now comes the yucky part. I contact the landlord’s representative about repairs. He says, “Owner not know about problem, so cannot be her fault. Why you try to make owner fault?”

“Face” is very important to Chinese. They do not like to lose face. And if you lose face, it’s not just you – it’s your whole family that loses face. I think this falls into the “losing face” category.

I was going to just pay for it myself, not wanting any problems. Until an interpreter told me she overheard one of them say “The stupid American put a blanket on top of a light and left it on for three days straight, what did he expect to happen?”

That made me into an unfriendly person pretty quickly. I got semi-legal papers drawn up in English and Chinese showing in the contract where the owner is responsible for all structural elements, including all cabling – and they have to repair within 7 days.

So THEN the landlord representative says the fire has altered the “feng shui” of the apartment and brought the value of the apartment down. How could I ask the landlord to repair when I lowered the price of her apartment?

I SHOULD have said, “Hey, how about I do a little feng shui on your face” – But I just mentioned that I didn’t see feng shui mentioned anywhere in our contract and left it at that.

Silly thing is, it’s only about $1,000 for the repairs which really isn’t that big of a deal to me right now. I just got real offended how they passed the buck on this and seem to make up any silly excuse they can. It’s like being part of an OJ Simpson trial or something.

Life in Macau – Priceless.
Calling me a stupid American – cost you about $1,000