Apparently a Phone-fixer

My friend wanted to know if this pollution was bad.  I considered asking “what pollution?”  This?  No.  This isn’t bad. This is merely notable.  When it’s bad you want to weep.  “You see that rock over there?  You can’t when it’s bad.”  It was cold though.  We went to one meeting and another in the cold.  The first meeting we were dropped off at what appeared to be the company headquarters.  Our meeting, it turned out, was down the road a-piece.  We trotted off past one and then another building.  The foyer was freezing as we entered and tried to dial the person we were scheduled to meet.  Behind the receptionist, whom I felt ever so sorry for siting there in the cold, was a large waterfall contraption that must be nice to look at in the heat of summer, but merely added to the frozen sensibility, here in the third week of January.

Later we need to head across town to Haidian.  My younger one had lost her phone playing out in the snowy front yard back home in New York.  The cure was worse than the sickness and in searching for it with various shovels and tools we smashed the glass.  Driving across town I called my man Mr. Wang, the phone-fixer in Zhong Guan Cun.  I’d used him on an iPhone battery swap and charger port replacement last about two months back.  “Yes.  Hello.  Sure.  I recognize your voice.”

My colleagues and I had two and half-hours to kill before our next meeting as we rolled up to the Ke Mao market.  This is one of four our five such buildings that lie squat about Zhong Guan Cun with beehive’s of component sales, and repair possibilities.  I seem to recall mentioning that it reminded me of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, in a dirty run-down sort of way, with escalators and cross bridges heading off at odd angles, when I last wrote about my visit here.  I rang the phone-fixer guy once again, when we arrived.  He now informed me that he wasn’t actually at the building, but that someone else would meet me on the third floor.   I stood there, waiting.  Called back.  “He’s on his way.”  Looking around I considered the area.  Surely the place I visited last time is right around the corner, over there.  I ventured over and looked but it seemed to have changed.  I asked the couple sitting there and they confirmed that they were not in the business of fixing iPhones.

Soon, a young guy in his thirties showed up and took me to his booth.  He, himself, was apparently a phone-fixer.  I had assumed that he’d be taking me over to some new booth as had been done last time.  The guy got to work and quickly informed me that that case and the glass itself would need to be replaced.  I OK’d this without asking what the cost would be.  I had a general sense that it could only be so much, certainly considerably less than what Apple would want. I made small talk with my colleagues and apologized for all the time we were taking to complete things, here in this interesting but decidedly odiferous location. 

A woman came up with a Xiaomi phone.  The adhesive that connects the screen pad to my daughter’s iPhone was drying on my device.  “How much time do you need?”  I asked. “Fifteen minutes.”  More small talk in English.  And now suddenly the woman who’d just arrived offered up audibly what was on her mind: “So foreigners bring their phones here too?  What is the problem this foreigner has with his phone?”  Ahh, that “laowai" assignation. I couldn’t help but say aloud in Chinese: “You certainly do care a lot about other people’s business.”  The phone fixer laughed.  She was mortified, but only for a second.  Laughing nervously she said, sensibly, “this is what we Chinese do!”  I couldn’t argue with that though this proved to be the end of our exchange. 

Tuesday 01/17/17