Jason & Susan

In China, most people don’t have dryers. They hang everything dry - shirts, underwears, bras, socks, blankets, quilts - right out in the open. If people have balconies, they hang their clothes on the balcony. If they don’t have balconies, they stick a bamboo stick outside any and every window they find. Hanging laundry is prevalent everywhere, it’s hard to find ANY place without these colorful decor, even next to a five star hotel or some ritzy part of town. Rumors go that this was one of the reason MI3 was not released here in Shanghai, all because of scenes showing some gal’s pink underwear and A size bra giving the city a poor image.

Anyway, our living community service center just sent out a notice this morning to all the residents stating rules and regulations regarding how we hang our laundry. Basically LQ wants to maintain a certain aesthetic beauty of how our community looks because they consider hanging laundry very 不好看 (ugly). Thus, they are regulating how we hang our laundry so that all laundry are hidden behind the height of the balcony railing. The regulations seem pretty reasonable… until we get to the part that states what happens if residents do not comply.

In the past when the same notice was sent out (recalling about 4 years ago), they issued a penalty of something like 150 RMB ($20 USD) if any resident do not comply with the regulation. That didn’t quite seem to work as people continued to hang their laundries above and beyond their balcony. Every so often, we also find on our balcony random fallen pieces from our neighbors’ upstair. However, this time, the notice stated a different penalty! As follows:

We will periodically audit residents’ hanging clothings conditions and will warn those who disobey the regulation. And if resident receives the warning for more than three times, we will publicize his/her name on LQ bulletin board and ask company discipline committee to deal with.

WHOA! So serious! Perhaps this time people will really stop hanging their laundry above and outside their balcony! By the way, how many people read the LQ bulletin board anyway? They should consider posting the names on Hanghai Daily! (excuse the pun)

On a different note, our living community has a strange aesthetic taste. We think the colorful hanging laundry suits perfectly well with the color combination of LQ! Don’t understand why they are making a big fuss about adding more colors…