A common occurrence here in Xining is when our shower hose busts. What exactly is a shower hose? you might be asking yourself.

Well, the plumbing situation here in China is quite interesting (as I’ve explained in detail in many posts.) Here’s a diagram of a typical shower setup:

As you can see the shower hose is the trendy little connector between the shower mount and the shower head (or hand shower as labelled above).  Typically, in western countries I’ve called home, the shower mount is located in the vicinity of the shower head so you do not need a long hose.  In Xining, this is not the case…at least in our apartment complex.  On this dusty planet, the shower mount is connected to the faucet that is used to fill the bath tub.  There is a good four feet or more from the bathtub faucet to the shower head.

What typically happens is that I buy a shower hose, i.e. a long metal hose (they only have one kind of these here that I’ve seen,) and after a few months the outer layer of spiralled metal somehow punctures the inner tube which the water flows though.  (This can be quite exciting if you’re taking a shower when it occurs.  Just picture a firemen loosening a bolt on a fire hydrant.)  I don’t know why the inner tube is so flimsy and easy to puncture; but I have a not-so-complimentary term for this phenomenon though:  Chinese crapmanship.

Anyway, so I have gotten used to buying new shower hoses.

This last week I went to buy a new tube at the little hardware store across the street.  I didn’t know the word for "shower hose", but I knew the word for "shower" (xizao).  I was confident.

I also knew that I needed a longer hose than what was standard (since I had mounted my shower head at eye-level and not at navel-level.  Based on shower placement navel-level seems to be the common height of the locals.)

I was prepared with all my magical Chinese words.

I went into the hardware store and started speaking in my flawless Chinese.   I told them what I wanted (a shower).  I told them through motions and pointing what it sort of looked like.  "No, not that wire.  Yes, something that would attach to that sort of thing."

You wouldn’t believe the confused looks on their faces.

The store clerks put their heads together and elected one of their own to talk to this American savage.  I kept saying "Liu me!  Liu me!" because I knew I needed a shower hose that was longer than 4 feet.  I thought six would be good.

They were speechless.

I also knew that I couldn’t use the word for "feet" because they are on the metric system here in China.  So it was a good thing that I said me because that is the word for meter.

Finally, they pulled out a shower hose.  A-ha.  Only it was one of the shorter ones, not the longer ones that I needed.  I was getting somewhere.  I looked at the lady who was selling the hose and I said, "Tai shao…da!" with hand motions.  (Too small, big!)  She understood me.  Finally, she got it.

She asked me if I could come back later because they didn’t have a shower hose quite that large.  She asked if I could come back in the evening.  I replied in the affirmative, "Hao le" (Good/OK).

It wasn’t until I was half way home that I realized that my math was REALLY wrong.  I had remembered the word for six correctly AND I had remembered the word for meters correctly.  Unfortunately I had put the two together…

And asked for 18 feet of shower hose!

I was too embarrassed to go back to this store and buy the needed hose.  (I went somewhere else and asked for 2 meters.)  I really hope they didn’t try to assemble an 18 foot shower hose to appease the foreigner.  From what I’ve seen and heard that would probably require too much initiative on their part.  They probably just wanted to get me out of their shop by whatever means possible.

I guess now there’s at least a few hardware store clerks in my neighborhood who would view this American as a real hoser…so to speak.