China Segment

The other night I was teaching at a company whose offices are on the 9th floor of a building. We finished up at around 7:30 pm. This being a formerly state-owned company, everyone had long since cleared out and gone home. Likewise for most of the other offices in that building except for a bar/KTV club that operates a few floors above. When we went to exit, we found the doors leading to the elevators and stair wells locked from the inside (both being located in the center of the building, with offices occupying a ring around them). No one had any sort of keys, and besides, we were on the wrong side of the locks. The security guards (保安) had come and locked up as per their usual routine, not hearing us as we were far off in a room with the door closed. One of the staff called down to the front desk and the guy came up quickly, apologizing, but saying he saw no one around and didn’t hear us.

An easy mistake, to be sure. But I wondered what we’d have done if there had been a fire. And how many other office buildings are like that, with locks that security personnel are responsible for but that regular staff cannot use. The newest nicest places all have key cards, but those kinds of buildings are few in Shanghai, and surely many cities in China do not have them. I can see why things needed to be locked up, and especially with a bar in located in the same building. But being trapped inside an office tower didn’t exactly sit right with me. The North American in me though of law suits. The Westerner thought of ’safety first.’ The Chinese influence on me thought that it was a perfectly fine system, just administered wrongly by the guard. It happened the next week as well. Obviously the system needs a bit of re-thinking.

It reminded me of other places I’ve worked where the company was located on one floor, but rented some space on another. To save time (elevators are hideously slow in Shanghai) I would take the stairs, but often the doors to the other floor would be locked, in the middle of the day, so no one could get in from the stairs. Being a firefighter would have to be a really frustrating job in this country. Fire doors are routinely blocked or propped open. Most buildings (including those in my in-laws’ brand new apartment compound) do not have sprinklers or smoke detectors. Commercial buildings, oddly, are better equipped that residential buildings with these ‘modern’ features, along with fire extinguishers and axes. Better to save money and records than families and memories.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen any extinguishers or axes in my 20-year-old apartment building. Nor sprinklers, smoke detectors or fire alarms. Makes me all the more scared that they just changed the building over to natural gas. (It’s not the gas that scares me but the workmanship on the pipes, etc.) We actually have a pipe that simply sticks out of our apartment into the hallway for the fumes from burnt gas to vent out. Mandated by the gas company in fact. Nice, fresh source of carbon monoxide. Mmm, fresh CO. The hallway is on the outside of the building (as are many in non-centrally heated Shanghai buildings) and the windows are always open, winter or summer. A rainy day, however, might be a good time to avoid breathing in to deeply if someone goes to close all of them. Smells, air and noise seep through the cracks around our door, windows and old oven vent quite easily. Never even heard of house insurance in China, though if we were going to be here longer I’d be looking in to it. Glad I’m moving out in 6 months.

Filed under ‘unsafe’ tag.

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