All that glitters is not caulk

As I have written before, entirely too much of my life in China revolves around trying to fix things. First of all, that already is my nature, as I am an obsessive fixer. Second of all, every thing in China needs to be fixed.

This is no country in which to be an obsessive handyman, as I have mentioned ten or twenty times before. Everywhere I turn, something needs done or done right. However, this new item takes the grand championship.

I was walking down a hallway a few days ago. There is a large floor crack that has been covered with a metal threshold. The piece was sticking up well off the floor, so I pulled it off and set it to the side so that no one would trip over it.

I expected that the piece would be held down with caulk. Everything in China is held together with caulk. The only problem is that no one knows how to apply it.

This reminds me that I have a long list of caulk-related photographs that I have intended to post. I will get back to them, even though this particular entry is going to supersede all of them. Other than its general and appropriate uses, I have seen caulk used to do the following: hold down floor tiles, hang pictures, fix pipes, plug wall holes, and on and on. It's as if caulk was the first home-improvement substance they ever learned about, and they think it fixes everything. Caulk is the duct tape of China, except that it is even less useful than duct tape, which is actually only really good for, I don't know, sealing ducts? I was already horrified by how many lame attempts at duct tape repairs I see in America. It is far worse with caulk in China. There are likely to be entire buildings here held up with caulk.

Actually, that last one is a little too close to the truth. I don't like thinking about the construction of Chinese buildings, as I just barely noted in my last post.

Back to the caulk. I see it everywhere, but rarely have I ever seen it applied well. Honestly, I think that half the problem is that the Chinese construction boom is so vast, that anyone who has any legitimate skills and experience already has a job somewhere. The repairs are all left to the unskilled.

Whatever. Back to my story. I pulled up this metal threshold, and then inspected. I'd like you to look closely at the photograph and see what they had used to hold it down. Don't read ahead until you have guessed.



That's right, boys and girls... it was held down with....

GLITTER GLUE! That sparkly decoration that has graced millions of grade school posters!

I really should make more jokes here, but I'm speechless.


I went down the same hallway only 1/2 hour later. I'll say this for Chinese workers, they are prompt. They were already sticking it back down. This time, they were using a hot-glue gun.

I suppose that is better than using duct tape, but maybe that's next.

Maybe we should live in a Yurt

I don't have any time these days. Here's a quick one, borrowing from the efforts of someone else. An apartment building fell over in Shanghai. Link here.

Pray for us that there is never an earthquake.

My New Favorite Book

Some months ago I found a book in the school library. The Longman's Visual Dictionary of Chinese is a treasure trove of laughs. I tried to find my own copy on the internet, but to know avail. So I have instead scanned a number of pages, and I will share them with you, dear reader, whenever I feel like it.

The pages cover almost an amazing range of topics. Some are absurdly specific. Most are useless. To say more would be to deprive you of the joy of discovery, so you will just have to wait until I make a new post. If, however, are visiting a Chinese machine shop anytime soon, and really need to know how to say "geared headstock" or "wheel flange" anytime soon, just let me know.

In the meantime, I will start with a page that teaches you necessary vocabulary that is much closer to home: underwear and baby clothes.




Now as you can see, there is a wide variety to choose from. All appear extremely uncomfortable. By the way, this book was published in Hong Kong in 1997, which was the year of the handover from Great Britain. I suspect that they just recycled pictures from some older book, however there are a few pages that almost appear to be calculated insults of the mainland Chinese as backwards and provincial. More on that later. The resolution on the page is good enough to see all the illustrations and text clearly if you click on the image. I will highlight just two.

This was my personal pick for "most uncomfortable looking underwear" (unless it is number 13). In fairness, I would hazard a guess that no one in China under the age of 75 is wearing anything remotely similar.




Now if the picture above looks like something Medieval, what you see below is actually still widespread in China. "Widespread", of course, is a very bad pun in this case, because that is exactly the pose in which you see a whole lot of Chinese toddlers, as their mothers hold them over gutters, tree wells, and sometimes the middle of the sidewalk. Sometimes the toddlers just decide to take care of business on their own schedule. A friend of ours got peed on by a little boy standing in a shopping cart next to her in line at a store.




Disposable diapers are for sale in the stores these days. They probably remain too expensive for most Chinese. If you want proof that bare baby butts are still a common sight in China, here is a photo for you. In case you are wondering, the front of those pants is just as wide open as is the back.



Occasionally, I feel guilty for taking surreptitious pictures of people, but they certainly don't have any compunction about doing it to us, so I guess it is all fair.

Finally, this one reminds me of another little saying we have around here: "China doesn't have a five-second rule".

Think about it.