Well, it's been a bit of a chore getting all the utilities on our new place (photos of which to come soon) set up and working. Electricity and gas, on the face of it, seem to be quite simple; they both work on a prepayment system. Put money on a card, put card into meter, get two of the necessities of modern living piped into your lovely abode. Not quite so simple, sadly. For instance, where do you go to fill up these cards? Quite strangely, no one seems to know. The leasing office were unable to help, they didn't know. Management couldn't supply the information (which seems insane, surely the management of the apartment complex should know these things!). It turns out that because people spend a lot of their formative lives (in most cases beyond even marriage) living with their parents, they just do not need to know this basic household information and thus are unable to help. The only way to sort this out was to actually go into every bank we came across and try to top up the cards.

Going into a Chinese bank is a challenge in itself. They have a nice queuing system (completely at odds with the rest of Chinese culture, which surely does not contain a literal translation of the word "queue" because they pay no heed to any of them) whereby you walk up to a machine and press a button to take a numbered ticket and then sit to wait until your number is called. Again sounds simple. Not so. There are four options on the touch screen interface that will provide a numbered ticket. These four options all provide tickets with a different numbering system. Each of these options then corresponds to different tasks you wish the bank teller to carry out for you. These options are, of course, written in Chinese and differ in every bank. If you choose one of the options at random and then go to a teller when it's your turn and the option you chose is incorrect, they will shoo you away and bring on the next customer in your place. The solution? Choose every option and go to the teller when each of your numbers come up. Guaranteed to get the job done (although I don't think the security guard approved, if the stare he gave me was anything to by). Until, as if I need to say it, you discover that the bank you are currently in does not provide the service of topping up your electricity or gas cards. Onwards, then, to the next bank, going through the same rigmarole until the cards have been successfully topped up.

The Chinese government, in an attempt to keep China from polluting and destroying more than I suppose it already does, has also done away with posting bills for utilities to customers. They use a controversial new system of letting their customers know when bill payment is due known variously around the English speaking world as guess work. Each individual is supposed to automatically know when to pay bills and then, as with the gas and electricity examples, locate the correct bank to pay them. A rolling penalty charge is applied at 3% for every day that payment is late and if you have guessed that payment is due and it isn't, ye gads what a mistake, you'll be cast out of the bank with a look of disgust as if you should have known when to pay the bill. For instance, after going to the local get-connected-to-the-internet bureau, I was given an invoice for the first months connection, amounting to 120RMB (that works out to be about £7.80, which is pretty reasonable for what is supposed to be a 10Mbps connection, which it blatantly isn't), so I trotted off to the bank like a good British expat, determined to pay everything on time only to be told that it wasn't due for another month and then glared at until I duly hung my head in shame and shuffled out the door - after, naturally, having gone through all this a few previous times trying to find which bank to pay at.

The best example of this was actually told to me by another expat. He was riding in the car of a Chinese colleague who was being unusually careful when driving on one particular stretch of one of the expressways. She told him that the road they were on was loaded with speed cameras. If you get snapped by a speed camera, as anywhere else, you have to pay a fine and get some points on your licence. If you do happen to get caught, however, no notification will be sent to you. No post, no picture showing the offending car going above the limit. Nope. You have to go to a web site to find out if you've been speed trapped and then pay a fine and go to the Police station where they will administer the points. Failure to pay on time results in a heavier fine (increasing all the time that payment is late) and eventually more points on your licence. You have to know you've been clicked. If not, I suppose the only other solution is to regularly check that web site. I guess it's a good way of testing your heart every now and again.

Plumbing the washing machine in has been more than tricky as well. I was actually a little annoyed that the landlord hadn't managed to do it before we had moved in (the same can be said about the TV, which had to be tuned to each television station, a touch on the difficult side when all the instructions are in Chinese, as is the remote control and the words that appear on the TV screen when any button is pushed). But with a true British stiff upper lip and a manly posture, I announced loudly (to no one at all) that I would do it myself. After all, how hard can it be to connect the water to the machine, make sure that the outflow pipe isn't positioned over the floor and that the washing machine is actually plugged in?

After about half an hour, the tap the water pipe was connected to was still leaking when the tap was turned on, so I tightened the little device that I had connected to it. The result? The tap broke. Cursing very loudly, I marched out the door and straight to the management office, who told me that they would get a repairman to come up in 10 minutes (wow, service!), so I scarpered back to meet this repairman who would enable Hannah and I to wear clean clothes. He arrived and immediately saw the problem; that the tap itself was fine, but that the little attachment that enables the tap to connect to the washing machine was ruined beyond repair. He removed it, tried unsuccessfully to attach the water pipe to the tap without this attachement, gesticulated wildly at me for a minute or two and then made me sign a little form telling his bosses that he had done work here (well, that's my guess anyway). He then put is hand to his head is if talking about making a telephone call, smiled and left. Who is to make this telephone call? And to whom should it be made? Will he do it to get a replacement tap attachment? I hope so because I've got no idea who to call (although I am off to the management office to beg and plead for help soon) and I've had to do all the washing by hand. Can you believe that? How 19th century.

No matter what else I get from the Chinese experience, a thick skin and reduced pride has already been guaranteed.