Catshanghai

Our appartment was flooded after a badly fitted bathroom pipe snapped at the end of August.

The water gushed out during the early hours of the morning while we were sleeping. It was a shock to be woken by a knock at the door and a realisation that the floor was covered in 4mm of turgid water, which we had to scoop out using buckets, bowls and towels.

There was some damage to wooden floor tiles and paint work, but it could have been much worse. The contractors repaired the paintwork over this past weekend. We had to wait for a few weeks while it dried out.

The contractors took full responsibility for fixing any damage. You would have a difficult job finding obvious signs of flooding. Some events should be left behind without any reminders. I could have got sulky about this minor catastrophe, but our appartment has been repaired by contractors who were helpful and responsive.

Such reasonable stoicism is falling deaf upon our downstairs neighbours’ ears. The flooding came through their ceiling in two places. The water dripped through over a couple of days. They were unhappy, which is quite understandable. Immediately, they made an arbitrary demand for 3000 RMB compensation to cover compensation to their damaged belongings. Later they changed the story to say that paint was bad for the wife’s blood. This was later modified to a tale about the unbearable smell of paint. It is worth noting that the only consistent part of our neighbour’s story has been the figure of 3000 RMB.

We have been polite and helpful by promising to repair any damage and compensating them for any genuine losses. The contractors inspected the ceilings at the beginning of the month and informed our enterprising neighbour that the damage was very easy to fix. We were willing to pay 500 RMB as a goodwill gesture and the contractors were happy to fix the damage that the faulty pipe had caused. No other compensation would be needed.

The wife was not happy to learn that her hopes for 3000 RMB would not be realised. She became hostile by pestering Jenny and spreading rumours that we were colluding with the contractors. Maybe we should not have sent her an SMS saying that the problem was entirely in her head, but the matter was referred to our building’s neighbourhood committee. The committee is made up of two very nice old Shanghainese women.

The old women have been wonderful diplomats. They patiently heard both sides of the story and mediated a settlement between us and our unreasonable neighbours. The committee told our neighbours to refer problems to them rather than to every resident and security guard she can moan at. The workmen will fix our neighbour’s ceiling and we will pay them 700 RMB compensation. We are happy to get on with our lives without any more fuss.

The trouble is that our neighbour is still trying to play the situation like Prince Machiavelli. The neighbour refused to allow the contractors to fix her ceiling over the weekend in case we doublecrossed her and refused to pay her any money. She instructed the neighbourship committee to draft a contract guaranteeing that we honour our agreement to repair any damage and to pay her 700 RMB compensation, which they are holding in escrow. Now we are contractually obliged to honour our agreement. We would have honoured this agreement anyway.

I feel sorry for our neighbour. Walking around with so much distrust and cynicism must be quite a burden. I’m sure she lost a few nights sleep worrying how she was going to get us to pay her 3000 RMB. She could have saved herself this trouble by thinking about the concepts of quid pro quo and being neighbourly. I would have happily paid 5000 RMB to repair her ceiling, but it doesn’t warm your heart to be confronted with an arbitrary invoice making demands that have no basis in reality. Americans call this a shake down. The going rate for goodwill compensation is 500 RMB without getting the contractors to make good any damage. Did she look at this laowai and see dollar signs?

I wonder how our neighbour would have responded if she came across an hysterical woman demanding 3000 RMB as compensation for a minor house repair.