I like to be comfortable.
As mentioned in some of my emails to family and friends, the story goes that our good friend Mr. Mao was advised that everything North of the Yangtze River was frigid in the winter and everything south of it was – if not warm – then quite tolerable.

It turns out that here in Nanjing, it gets pretty damn cold during the winter. It’s regularly freezing temperatures and apparently snows fairly often as well. To add to this, from what I’ve been told, Nanjing has approximately two seasons: Frigid Winter and Burning Hot Summer.

Back to my point: I like to be comfortable. Especially in my own home, so in Feb and early March I basically had my heating running full steam the whole time. I also assumed that my apartment had utilities included and that, worst case scenario, stuff would be cheap here. Lo and behold, three weeks into keeping my apartment as the lovely oasis from cold that it was, I’m told that electricity is actually the most expensive utility here!

Today was the day that I was to pay for my heating, so sadly, in preparation for the absolute worst, I brace myself to hand over up to maybe 1,000 RMB. I figured it probably wouldn’t be that much, but I had heard stories of electricity costing more than the monthly rent…

So I trudge over to the bank and get in line. At this point, I had already memorized how to say

I’ll come back tomorrow with more money

The teller looks up my information and calmly says

yi bai liu shi er

The Mandarin word for thousand is “qian”
Hundred, on the other hand, is “bai”

I stare at her, dumbfounded…

bai?! I ask.
bai she responds.
Kuai? I blurt out…maybe she wanted it in dollars?
Dui she confirms

I pay the good woman and walk out victoriously.