Bathroom Bliss

A while back I was whining pretty hardcore (not once, but twice) about the toilet in my apartment at ZUCC.
I guess it’s the classic case of complaining when something goes wrong but not saying anything when something good happens, but I neglected to mention that the toilet did get fixed. Daily plungings are a thing of the past, I’m pleased to announce. The fix was pretty primitive (chiseling a path through the concrete floor to clear the obstruction) but effective.

Then this past month the new shower modifications were finished. For over a year, the foreign teachers at ZUCC have all been living without shower curtains or anything, really, to keep water from spraying all over the bathroom when we take our showers. (This is fairly typical in China.) I didn’t mind because it meant my toilet was getting cleaned while I showered, and even though the floor was soaked after every shower, it kept the floor clean. I adjusted my routine so I never had to go back into the bathroom for a few hours after I used the shower. The other teachers didn’t like the soaked floor too much, though. The mild grumblings eventually turned to outright demands for shower curtains. Since I’m the foreign teacher liaison, I was right in the middle of it all. Human Resources said they’d handle it, but they had to deal with the ineptitide of General Affairs, which was in charge of the actual labor. Ahhh, Chinese bureaucracy. Meanwhile, I’m daily hearing, “where are our shower curtains?” from the teachers. Although Human Resources initially promised we’d have shower curtains within two weeks , the process dragged on for weeks longer (to Wilson’s outrage). I lost count of how many times they came in and measured my bathroom.

But, it finally got done. And not even curtains, but rather a whole fancy glass case thing with sliding doors. These new showers are great.