We were gone the day China turned the heat on in everyone’s house, so our heat was never turned on. For us, this means we have to get one of the HR people at Christian’s work to call the building maintenance people at our apartment complex who in turn have to call the management office in charge of heating matters to make sure our landlord paid the heating fee before turning the magic knob that lets the hot water into the magic tubes in the floor that heat our apartment. For all the phone calls that have to be made, the physical process is fairly simple. As is the case for most things in China.
The maintenance guy who showed up at our apartment today was nice enough. He clicked at Nico until he smiled and made the necessary phone call with some difficulty as our apartment has some dead cell reception spots. After turning the all-important knob and preparing to leave, he shyly made a motion at the bowl of money I had sitting on the dining table in the middle of the apartment, took a ten out of his pocket and mentioned something about wanting to change it. In the bowl was my collection of coins from random countries that had previously been housed inside the International Golden Money Pig that Christian had broken the night before. Most of the coins American but there’s a fair showing of currencies from pre-Euro France, Germany, Italy, England, and Austria.
The maintenance guy in a few brief, shy, sideways glances, had figured out that the coins in the bowl weren’t Chinese and decided he wanted to buy a few off me. Once he finally got his point across, I accepted the ten (so as not to offend him) and tried to encourage him to pick out whichever coins he wanted while trying to explain that the coins were mostly old and not good anymore. I don’t know if I got my point across, but rather than pick out particular ones, he took a modest pinch of coins and cheerfully dashed away.