Staring At The Mess

Got home to a flooded basement.  Our home may be the only one in the compound that has a basement.  It isn’t big enough for much of anything besides some storage.  But we put a lot of the musical equipment down there as to a rough-hewed five-foot ceilinged jam-room.

The summer is when it rains in Beijing.  And this is our first time living here, in the summer. My landlord wrote me asking about the basement, and combined with the reports I’d heard about flooding I flew up assuming the worst.  There were two inches of water in the basement.  Everything down there that had been on the ground is ruined. 

Staring at the mess was daunting.  I really didn’t want to spend my evening moving wet cardboard boxes.  Box by box, basket after basket, I schlepped all the stuff up from the wading pool, into our kitchen area.  I had visions of mopping out that could wait for another day. 

I will try to remember the time when the water table was only a few feet below the surface like this, later in the year when everything is parched and it’s dusty wherever you gaze.  But for now, the forecast suggests more rain.  It’s as muggy here as it was in Shanghai.