Our New Flat Is Just Walls and Windows — Epoche A2
June 15th Today we collected the key to the new flat. I will write down what the flat looked like, because my cousin in London did not believe me on the phone. It is grey concrete. No floor, no doors inside, no lights — just wires hanging from the ceiling and closed pipe ends in the walls. This is normal here: in China a new flat is usually sold as a "rough house", maopifang. The developer gives you the walls and the windows; everything inside is the buyer's own project. So the flat is not a home yet, it is a plan. First the electrician will move the wires to where our lamps will go. Then the walls will be smoothed, then the floor laid, then the doors, then the kitchen. The property office gave us a rule sheet with the key: drilling only from 8 to 12 and from 2 to 6, and never on Sundays. The rule exists because the whole tower is doing the same thing. The lift already smelled of cement, and a washing machine rode up with us to the ninth floor. Mother says our work will take three months. The man from the eighth floor laughed and said his took seven.