Your basic building "Ayi" sorting office paper out of bins.  Tons of paper is recycled this way and sold to middle men as added income.  One office building  generates a lot of paper and plastic, every bit resold. 

As of Thursday, I am “Ayi free,” (sounds like "I-ee") meaning I let my cleaning lady go. The term “ayi” literally means “Aunt” or “Auntie,” but it is also the name everyone calls the cleaning ladies at every school and business.  “Ask the ayi,” is a common response to any domestic question at school.  Many of them are electronic whizzes, who can get uncooperative overhead projectors to work by poking them with a stick (they know where to poke…)

However, having an ayi clean your house is another story.  My friend, Kat, and I share the same ayi. She cleans Kat’s apartment Thursday morning, mine Thursday afternoon.  She does a good job cleaning, and is absolutely trustworthy, but Kat is firing her too, for different reasons, after one year. 

Brassewae has written about his Spanish cleaning lady, and I always laugh when he complains she puts the books back on the shelf, mixing the read books with the unread books.  Mine did the same, she was always on the look out for how to organize and reduce by putting something inside something else. She loved containers, was always putting my clutter in various recycled Coffee-mate jars or plastic take away bins. 

However, things would go missing, not stolen--missing, just she put stuff some place and I can’t find it. For example:  my one and only black leather belt.  I had to wear droopy pants for over two weeks when I could not find my only belt after she had cleaned.  She had sorted and rearranged all of my closets and drawers, and in-between a pile of old jeans, I found my belt. 

One day I could not find my “American” wallet.  This is the wallet I keep my American bank cards and other ID that I do not use in China.  There was no money in the wallet, just credit cards and driver’s license.  But I needed my credit card number, and I hunted all over in every drawer.  Finally I found it, in a small orange make-up bag I keep in my underwear drawer (it has condoms in it….).  Why she chose little bag to hide my wallet, I have no frickin’ idea. 

My renewed brand new passport went missing.  I travel on the weekend for another job, and even if I take the train (don’t need passport to get on), I still need it for the hotel, and I used to keep my passport on a shelf under my computer on the coffee table.  It went missing, and it is 5 a.m. Saturday and I have to be at the air port by 7 a.m. and I can’t find it.  I happen to see a blip of blue inside a composition notebook, and sure enough, when I opened it (also on the shelf under the computer) there was my passport, but I thought, “Why would she stick it inside the notebook where it was hidden?” 

She would mess with my medication.  She would cut up the strips the tablets come in and I had to have Kat really yell at her twice (she does not speak English) to never touch my medication, but it took a few months for that to sink in. 

She hated dog hair.  The one argument I got into with her was over the way she insisted on vacuuming my bed for 30 minutes, because I let HaHa sleep (on top of his own blanket) at the foot of my bed.  I had the dog before I had the ayi, and I told her to just strip the bed, put the sheets in the wash, and knock off all the vacuuming (I wanted her gone by 5 and she would putz around doing stuff like that). 

I actually pulled the sheets off in front of her and gave her clean sheets, and she still kept vacuuming.  I was yelling at her that I could handle a little dog hair, but she could not.  She would do the same to the couch (where HaHa is also allowed to be). I’m screaming in Chinese, “Wa MAGAO” (American).  Using sign language, “WE LOVE OUR DOGS LIKE FAMILY.”  Sign language again, “YOU THINK HAHA IS DIRTY!”  She understands “dirty” and nods her head yes, HaHa is dirty and she points to the couch.  I continue to yell “I DON’T CARE IF HE GETS DOG HAIR ON THE COUCH!” 

I burst into tears (I had had a bad day at school and was in no mood for further Chinese logic in my own house) and asked her to leave and she ignored me and kept cleaning.

It's not like the Chinese aren't into clean.  Beijing will always be dusty and they have to put up with that, but they are starting to enforce better public hygiene.  There are certain things about China you just have to accept.  Lowering your standard in public is one of them.

  

The final straw was the ayi told us last February she only wanted to be paid once a year.  She didn’t have time to go to the bank, and she rode her bicycle and didn’t want to carry cash around.  Sounded like a good deal then.

Until what we thought was 80 rmb a week or 320 a month ($50) turned into 100 a week or 400 rmb a month or $70 a month.  It’s not the amount that counts. The Chinese do this all the time.  The land lord will try to raise the rent at the very last second when you are about to sign your lease.  It's bullshit, and sometimes, as a foreigner, you fire or walk away when someone does that.

 We all agreed to 20 rmb an hour with a minimum of 4 hours.  Then she says 25, and Kat and I both agreed after that, she had to go.  I owed her 5,000 rmb ($900) for the year, so it does add up.

   Now, I have my house back!  I did my own dishes for the first time in a year, washed all the rugs and put the laundry away.  Yes, there will be a little more dog hair at my house without her vacuum rages, but that’s the price you pay if you visit me.  I have a dog hair roller, you can still leave the hair at my house. 

DOGS RULE, CLEANING LADIES DO NOT! 

Because Brass is such a sport, one last shot from China: