I had written a couple weeks ago that while I was traveling the States I was notified water was coming up from the floor of my Suzhou apartment. The landlady as much as admitted once the jackhammers had torn up the tiled concrete of the kitchen floor the plastic piping for the water main was substandard and the workmanship even less so.

Despite her making the place unlivable then, forcing me to find new digs, she still refuses to ante up any compensation for damaged furniture, an unlivable apartment, another deposit forked out to yet another skin-flint landlady, and the time and hassle spent finding a new place, moving there and then getting re-organized. Three weeks on and the bare concrete floor still has no faux-wood paneling to recover the dining area and living room. And perish the thought I should get my deposit back on the place.

I kept ALL the keys and the electricity and water and gas cards; she’s apparently changed the lock on the front door, though, according to my former real estate agent. So much for that bit of leverage. She clearly did her math, carefully weighing the hassle factor of getting new keys and cards against the money she had in the bank from the gullible foreigner.

A Chinese friend explained that of course she wants to hold on to the last month’s rent and deposit since now the place is emptied at the height of winter at the start of what looks like will be the mother of all recessions. It will be difficult for her to find new tenants soon. Still, I hope the water pipe just installed bursts again with no one but the downstairs neighbors to discover it once the water has completely saturated the ceilings and drips brown stains on all the hapless neighbor’s furniture. BWAH HAH HAH!

And as those of my gentle readers will recall my exploits a couple years ago at the Lakeview Tower on Jinji Lake (though it should now be called used-to-have-Lake-View Estates), I was bilked out of that deposit as well: all the construction noise and dirt and violence (yes, violence), was not enough to convince the owner of the flat to cough up the deposit. I hope they demolish the Tower by dint of eminent domain to make way for Phase III of the apartment complex.

An American friend of mine that also lives in Suzhou told me how despite numerous complaints to his landlord about a leaky toilet he also did not receive his deposit back at the end of the contract. The landlord claimed the guy and his girlfriend clearly did not flush the toilet right.

The kicker to all this is: there is NO legal recourse! One Chinese suggested I call the local TV station to show them the photos of the damage to the place and to plaster the landlady’s face all over every TV set in Suzhou. (For those of you who do not live in China: that is literally how so many Chinese civil issues are decided: through public shaming on local TV.)

So I’ve been thinking a lot about 20th-century Chinese history, and recollecting just why the Communists beat the hell out the landlords. Clearly, it’s BECAUSE THEY DESERVED IT! That’s my exalted conclusion. If modern-day Chinese new-money are behaving just as poorly as their fallen ancestors, then I will have no sympathy for them when the dispossessed of today’s China cry out in unison: “We’re sick and tired of it and we’re not going to put up with it anymore!” And actually do something about it.

Then we’ll see who holds the keys in the end.