The water bill is easy to fathom. Mr Xiu or another neighbour comes knocking on the door and then I have to take their torch, get on my knees and read the meter under the sink. When all the meters in the building have been read, someone divides the house bill up according to what each house has used and then a neighbour hands me a scrap of paper with a very small amount of money written on it.
Possibly the only good thing about having terrible water pressure is the fact that it’s impossible to use a lot of it and so the bills are miniscule. Each month I pay less than £4.
The internet bills are easy – always £15 each month. But it’s the electricity bills I am suspicious of. They don’t seem to come regularly and vary wildly in amount.
Several days ago I was given a bill for electricity for £6 and today I have another one for £10. All the mail for the whole house comes together and goes into a wooden holder on the ground floor.
Because I cannot read Chinese, a helpful neighbour sorts mine out for me and hands me it, “This is your electricity bill” they say in Chinese. “This is your water bill”. Sometimes they say “This is your phone bill” although I always throw it away without opening it as I unplugged the phone and do not want it (I had hoped they would disconnect me but it doesn’t seem to have happened!). I even get mail for previous foreign tenants which I also throw away without opening.
But it’s the electricity bills which make me wonder whether I am being taken for a ride. They hand me a bill, I look at it, understand nothing but the amount, walk to the shop and pay it. It would be so easy to give me all the bills or just the big ones and I would happily pay them without question. Perhaps they are all having a laugh, “Hey look, we’ve got our monthly electricity bill, it’s really large, let’s give it to the foreigner to pay.”
I doubt it, but it makes me smile – the thought of what they could get away with. In truth my neighbours are a lovely bunch – helpful and always smiling and I am glad I live in a house where they are always looking out for me and hand me my post and I would happily pay all the big bills to have this nice bunch of neighbours around me. But don’t tell them that!