No Hot Water?!

Last week at about 10 PM on Wednesday (October 28) we got a note under our door from the building's management: effective immediately there would be no hot water. Hot water service would resume on Saturday, November 1. Thanks for the advance warning!

After suffering cold showers for a couple of days, we left for a long weekend working in the mud in the middle of nowhere with no showers at all (post coming soon). By the time we got home on Monday night we were exhausted, dirty (ok - we did get showers of sorts on Sunday night, but not exactly optimal), and sore. I was dying for a hot bath.

Surprise! There was still no hot water. Ben called the office. Sorry - no hot water until November 5. He called back to ask if the gym had hot water. Nope. He called back again to ask what alternative arrangements had been made for showers. Huh? We don't know.

I had a tantrum and enough points for a free night at the Grand Hyatt. I checked online and there seemed to be plenty of rooms available. Around 10:15 PM we headed out. I didn't want to wait in the cold for a cab so we went to the office to get them to call us one. Ben explained that we were so upset at not having hot water that we were going to spend the night in a hotel. The office staff (explain to me why there need to be three people in the office in the middle of the night!) dutifully noted in their log book that we were unhappy at not having hot water and we headed out. Much to our dismay, the Hyatt, despite showing rooms available on the website had no rooms available. Back we went to our cold, hot-waterless apartment.

By the time we headed back I was so exhausted I just wanted to get to bed. Ben stopped in the office to demand that they make arrangements for us to have hot showers by the time we got up in the morning. After much dithering they finally had to get the manager out of bed. It turns out arrangements had long since been made. We could shower at a spa down the street (open 24 hours) and the building would reimburse the charges. Why didn't anyone say so in the first place?!

Shower facilities aren't exactly optimal at the spa down the street but between the two of us we have managed to get 3 warm showers and 1 cold one there in the last few days. Why did we pay for the privilege of taking a cold shower? Well...it turns out that unlike in most places I am familiar with, hot water is provided from centralized hot water plants scattered around the city, not by hot water heaters in the individual buildings, let alone apartments. The spa heats some of its own water in addition to the hot water it gets from the city which is why it is able to provide at least some warm showers. So why has there been no hot water for over a week (no...the hot water did not come back on Nov. 5 as promised...it is still off)? Apparently we are served by the hot water plant that was constructed to service the Olympic zone. Now that the Olympics are over the city has taken that hot water plant offline. I would guess that close to 10,000 apartments (granted many not occupied) and businesses lost their hot water. The city is now working "around the clock" (although most of the workers must be invisible because I have only once seen any sign of them) to reconnect all of us whose water they turned off to other hot water supplies. Why did they not simply leave the hot water plant running or, at least, tie us into the other systems before shutting down the hot water plant? Beats me! TIC (This Is China).

Signing off cold in Beijing...