Laundry

Last Monday I wore the last clean shirt that I had brought with me to China, which posed a serious problem. I would either have to re-wear clothes for the rest of the semester or dare to attempt doing laundry in Dorm No. 6. The fact that I'm writing this post on Friday may give you an idea of how long it has taken me to make this decision.

When we first moved into the dorm, there was a large red bucket under the sink in the bathroom. At first I thought it was where the water from the sink drain went (that should tell you something about the state of the bathroom in general - for a great description of our bathrooms, check out Cortne Edmonds' blog "Of Applesauce and Broken Mirrors," also on blogspot). When I found out that the bucket was for washing our clothes, I only hoped that they had a lot of tide-to-go pens in the chaoshi because I have no idea what goes on inside a washing machine, and I definitely was not capable of doing it myself. Unfortunately, instead of tide-to-go pens, you can buy washing boards at HIT's chaoshi, washing boards like the ones you see in museums or old movies. I remembered how I've been told that when asked what the most important invention of the twentieth century was, great-grandma Castle said the washing machine.

Fortunately, it turns out that the floor we live on does have a washing machine (one washing machine and not one that could be easily identified as such but still an electric appliance that supposedly washes clothes). Dryers, on the other hand, are basically nonexistant in China, but it was a huge relief to know that I would only be using the red bucket under the sink to carry my clothes to and from the laundry room. It appeared that the laundry machine ran on coins, but no RMB denominations seemed to work. I then remembered that we had been told to buy tokens at the front desk in order to use the machine. When I went downstairs, the guard said the tokens were 两块五一个, but I heard 两块五个. Thinking that I could do five loads of laundry for 2 RMB, I was shocked at how cheap it was. Then I realized that it was 2.5 RMB for one load, still a seventh of the cost at Georgetown (although that does include drying). Anyway, I gave him a 10 and got four tokens.

After using the washing machine and carrying the clothes back to my room the problem of drying them arose. He Wei had dried his clothes on the shower rod in the bathroom, but since it was the morning, I wasn't sure who else wanted to take a shower, so that didn't seem that the best idea. Plus, I didn't have nearly enough hangers to hang up my wet shirts and undershirts from the first load (let alone the other two that I would do), so I had no choice but to lay them out flat around the room. My clothes covered my bed, desk, chair, and part of the floor, but I finally have clean clothes again! They are definitely a little stretched out though. It will be nice to get back to the United States and put them in a dryer. I clearly need to do laundry more often in the future though, but I doubt that will actually happen given my schedule.