Beijing is a bone-dry climate where things
get dusty and brittle and sand storms ruin the spring with sand that blows in
off the Gobi Desert. The winter is cold
but it rarely snows. So, it is always
strange to confront the city when its wet.
This morning I was up early and I could hear the steady fall of rain
outside. The summer is when we get our
rain. And you can’t begrudge it because Beijing always needs precipitation.
The first year we
rented this home it rained ferociously while we were away for the summer and
when we returned, the little basement room, which we used for some storage, was
flooded. Electrical equipment, books,
musical instruments were all ruined. And
now we don’t keep anything of any great value down there. What’s there is mostly on palettes.
A few hours later,
my wife called out that the basement was once again flooded. Sure enough, there was about a foot of water
down there. And though I wasn’t worried
about any of the goods that were still there as they were either not especially
important or up away from the water, we were all concerned though with how to
get the water out.
My wife, the ayi
and I all took positions as scoopers and shunters and dumpers getting the water
out of the basement, bucket by bucket.
At first it’s is hard to tell if this effort really makes any
difference. You scoop and remove but
aren’t the walls and the ground just saturated, bleeding back in the water you
just removed? Eventually though it becomes clear that we are making
progress. The water table is lowering,
gradually. Soon the water level is so
low that the bucket method isn’t practical. The little broom and dustbin, some towels to
soak and squeeze out. All the while I
was concerned about slipping and hurting myself. I sensed that if I turned too quickly with a
bucket full of rain water, my feet would slip and I’d pull something. But we all finished it off without any bodily
harm and the cellar now is pretty dry.
Wednesday
8/08/18
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