This really did happen the on Wednesday night. In hindsight it’s funny. At the time it was anything but.
My room has an en-suite bathroom with a hot water tank so
you can have a hot shower which is very welcome after a long, cold day. Rural Chinese plumbing not being quite up to
Western standards, I’ve had a few drips and leaks since I arrived. The first was when the pipe carrying hot
water to the sink developed a leak. To
avoid having a permanently wet floor, I started turning the hot water off with
the mains tap and turning it on when I wanted to wash. It turns out that Grandmaster Chen is a bit
of a plumber in his spare time, and last week he put in a new pipe. Great, I thought, now I can leave the tap
on. Unfortunately, another drip soon
materialised so I still had to turn the water on and off with the tap.
Thursday was a good day. I felt my practice had gone well, I’m getting
used to the idea of being here as the only student (more about that in another
post), and I was feeling pretty happy. I
enjoyed a lovely hot shower and planned what to snack on before bed (very early
dinners at the moment). Once I was clean
and warm, I turned off the shower, then turned off the mains tap. Obviously I had turned that tap once too
often because it came away in my hand and a blast of freezing, slightly gritty
water erupted out of the hole. In a
horrified panic I tried to put the tap back into place, but the force of water shooting
out was too strong and there was no way I was able to put it back.
Realising I would need help, I pulled on some clothes and
went looking for someone. People go to
bed early in Chen Jia Gou and downstairs was pitch dark. I really did not want to have to knock on all
the doors until I found Master Chen’s bedroom, wake him up and try to explain
that there was a flood in my bathroom. Thankfully, I saw a clink of light through a
slightly open door so I knocked. It was
Mrs Chen who was in bed. I appologised and
did my best to explain the situation, though I think all I said was ‘big water’
while pointing upwards. Possibly my damp
and bedraggled appearance may have helped her see all was not well. She got dressed (very slowly I felt, making me wonder if she understood the gravity
of the situation) and went off to find her husband. Meanwhile I ran back upstairs and found the
bathroom was flooded and the water, which was still shooting out of the pipe,
was on the verge of overflowing into my bedroom.
Grandmaster Chen arrived and looked pretty surprised to see
his room full of brown, muddy water. He
speaks two words of English (‘OK’ and ‘hello’), and my Chinese doesn’t quite
stretch to emergencies. He said
something in Chinese so I agreed, and he ran off, presumably to turn off the
mains because the flow started to stutter and became even muddier. He came back and we stood in stunned silence
as the water spluttered to a stop, staring at the mess and filth that now
covered every surface. Some more Chinese
followed to the effect of ‘there will not be any water in this room tomorrow’,
and I was told to pack some things to take to another room for the night. Sha Wei, Grandmaster Chen’s son, turned up
with a new tap, and from my new room I could hear them talking and going back
and forth up the corridor until quite late at night.
I felt extremely foolish and bad about the whole thing,
especially when I peered into my room the following morning and saw a thick
layer of sludge covering the bathroom floor while muddy water was splattered
all up the walls. After breakfast I went
to clean up the mess, but just as I was wondering how best to go about this,
Grandmaster Chen arrived with a spade and an old broom and wouldn’t let me help
until the bathroom was clean and all that remained to be done was mopping the
corridor and my bedroom floor. And
nothing more was said about it.
