Electric Genius!

Today:
I played in puddles! I also got us cards to recharge our cellular phones. Everything here is on cards.

Chinese cards:
When we got the internet hooked up, Cullen purchased a card. To pay for the internet, you recharge the account by buying cards for it.

The cellular phone system is such that you buy cards to charge your account by monetary amounts. Each card has a value, you enter the code from the card into your cell phone... viola... cell phone has more time!

We encountered the most fascinating use of cards yesterday.

I cooked lunch and returned to my computer. It had a message saying the battery was getting low, and the fan in the room was off... It was noon on a sunny day, so I hadn't noticed previously, but the power was off. Cullen got home for lunch and tried to reset the breaker outside.. it would reset and then turn back off immediately. After eating lunch, we went to talk with our contact.

We had to "charge" our electricity card. I didn't quite understand what this could possibly mean. She had the land-lord (I assume this is his job... it's who we pay the rent to) show us what the card looked like. Cullen went back to the house and found it, while our contact explained that we needed to go to the bank and put money into the card... ??

Ok.. so we went to the bank... put money into the card... now what??

Suspecting that the electricity would be similar to electricity back home, we were thinking... 24-48 hours and the power would be back on... but what do we do with the card??

Cullen called to find out. He followed the very strange instructions...

First, looking for the slot to put the card into....
He put it into a slot in the meter which had a red display below it....
wait a moment... the red display went from reading 00000 to reading 00600 (we charged the card with 600 units of electricity)
turn the breaker back on...

The power was back on in the apartment.

All of it...

No power company guy was involved....

There wasn't any waiting for the guy to come switch it back on... there wasn't any "Sad day, I can't pay the back-payments or the late payment fees"... It was just back on.

China appears to live in a society where you pay first, then you use it. If you don't have any money, you don't have any electricity. There is no late payment fee, no billing adjustments. They tell you what you will pay for the power when you get to the bank, you pay for the amount you would like to pay for... then you go and put it in the meter YOURSELF! That's so awesome.

Bad credit? not important
No credit? not important
Over due on a bill? Not possible with Electricity.

You can even charge the card while you are out shopping. There is an "electricity" bank on every corner... it doesn't get more convenient than that.