Interior Decorating

Wonderful story today. We have had a number of pictures lying around that everyone has been too lazy to do anything about, mostly me. Nothing you could call art - a Rolling Stones concert poster from spring 2006, a ticket from Clapton several months ago and one from James Brown in 2005 (normally I'm not a fan of hanging on to concert tickets, much less framing them, but they are in both Chinese and English and pretty cool, plus James Brown is dead. Could be worth some money some day), a Communist Party tree from 2005 (we are on the ball here) and a few other things.

Rather than go buy a hammer and nails, we figured we'll take advantage of the cheap labor. So my secretary calls the management company for our building who normally does this stuff for free, and they announce a new policy effective last week. No longer will these services be rendered for free, the charge is 60 kuai. My secretary was appalled and flatly turned them down. 60 kuai is less than US $10. I stopped arguing with her long ago.

Not easily discouraged, she called the architectural firm that designed our fit out over a year ago. They agree to send someone down for the price of a taxi ride (roughly US $1.40). The gentleman showed up, almost on time, to scope out the work. After getting a sense of the labor and materials needed to hang 5 pictures, he announced he would need to return to the office to get his tools. This did not make my secretary happy since she was then required to shell out US $2.80.

Thirty minutes or so later he returned with a helper and his tools. I was in the open area of our office talking to an intern and my colleague when we glanced up to survey the work. The gentleman was using a pair of scissors to dig a hole in the wall (he opened them into a V shape and shoved one side in twisting it to enlarge the size of the hole). At this he had our attention. Once satisfied that the size of the hole would accommodate the screw, he took a screwdriver and used the handle to pound the screw in far enough to finish it off with the other side of the screwdriver.

This kept us entertained for the better part of the afternoon. My colleague took pictures which I will post if we can figure out how to get them off his camera. No one in the office thought there was anything unusual about this except us (3 westerners) and we were doubled over in laughter.