An incident on the other side of our apartment.

Rare readers or glancers, who may have been reading my blog lately, may just recall, if they were paying attention, to my reporting of the standoff at a government building that can be seen from my apartment which I often refer to as Casa Kaulins.  If you don't recall this, I suggest that you look at the archives of this blog for details.  During this incident, extra security and the police had to be called in to deal with two angry women.

 

Another incident involving an angry woman, security, and the police occurred Tuesday afternoon, this time on the other side of my third floor apartment, also know as Casa K,  which overlooks a lane containing entrances to apartment buildings.  I first heard the screams of a man and woman.  Looking out the window, I saw a man standing on the back of a flat deck truck, screaming upwards at a woman on a upper floor of the building next to ours.  The truck contain floor tiling.  The man was a worker.  Not seeing the woman screaming, I wondered if it was a certain woman, I had seen in the process of decorating an apartment, who looked like a complete battle axe, pardon my french.  A few minutes later, I saw that the very woman I suspected had descended to scream at the workers some more.  "I hope Battle axe doesn't try to beat those poor workers!" I said to myself and my wife whose attention I brought to the ongoing incident.  "Don't you think that woman is nuts" I asked my wife.  She demurred.  And then I thought of the struggles and yelling my wife had to do when decorating Casa K.  The woman then began to cry.  And my image of her as the ideal battle axe was punctured.  I got my wife to watch, and she picked up that the woman was calling the police and expressing hatred of the workers.  That woman is nuts and not such a sorry figure, I then thought.  Three security guards from our apartment complex and then two policeman arrived on the scene.  My wife watching and listening, told me that the women was upset after having lost money that was to be paid to the workers for the tiling.  The money had been left in the apartment.  And so the incident all made sense to me.  The women having lost her money, suspected the workers, and so could not pay them for the tiles.  The workers, I saw, were carrying them all back to the truck.  What happened was tragic, I realized.  Could you imagine losing the capital you need to build your home halfway through the process?  You could be faced with the possibility of having to live in an uncompleted home.

 

I later learned that the amount of money in question was 200 rmb.  I thought it was a mere pittance to be calling the police about.  But then my wife put me in my place but pointing out that 200 rmb is a lot of money to many people in China.  So, I was the one who was reacting out or proportion.