My Asian Life

Something happened to me today for the second time in my life, something I never imagined would happen even once: my kitchen cabinets fell down. Thankfully, this time they didn't fall completely off like the first time. That was back in our first year here, when we moved into an apartment that was an empty concrete shell. The kitchen initially had only the old Chinese yellow cabinets that are knee high, with nothing on the walls. Ok, maybe not knee high, but they might as well have been for how useful they were. So we had some cabinets made. And apparently the workers didn't anticipate us actually putting anything IN the cabinets because the second we did, they fell down. They conveniently had already left for Chinese New Year break, so our cabinets sat in our dining room for a good month before someone could come back and reinstall them.

Fast forward 10 years to another apartment in China. This afternoon, I heard a crack. I thought the kids had dropped something, but they both plead not guilty. Later, when we went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, we noticed that the cabinet doors didn't line up anymore, and the bottom of the cabinets was hanging precariously low. We tried using our tripod to boost it back up (of course without all its contents) but it was reluctant to bear the weight. Erik went into our neighbor's backyard and found a discarded two by four left over from making their deck. The workers had left their circular saw behind so Erik was able to cut the 2x4 to the exact length needed. How convenient! So our cabinets are being supported by a piece of wood, and all the contents have been transferred to something that is resting on solid ground.

Ah, China. I shake my head and laugh. Do these kind of things happen anywhere else?